Republicans accuse Trump of election failure

The Democrats hold the majority in both houses of Congress - with a wide margin in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, the majority may grow further. Votes are still being counted in Alaska and Mississippi, which tend to vote Republican, but this year the election is tied.

Among the Republicans, the mood is subdued, but the party leaders have so far been tight-lipped. On Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance said voters punished the president for the war in Iran.

"Everyone knows that's why we lost. The president himself said it last night," he writes on X.

At a lower level and among losing candidates, discontent simmers:

- It sounds a little ironic, but I'm still optimistic about the future because Trump will be gone in two years, says Republican Bobby Charles, who lost the gubernatorial election in Maine, to Politico.

Others believe that voters are tired of Trump's ways and showed this in the midterm elections.

- I think we will see a part of the Republican Party advocating a return to normalcy, which does not mean distancing yourself from Trump's ideology and policies, but rather from Trump's style, said Matt Dole, chairman of the Licking County Republican Party in Ohio.

During the election night, Trump criticized the conservative TV channel Fox News and first said he would cooperate with the Democrats, but in later posts he has instead emphasized that he will act as a brake on the Democrats' policies.

The Trump side doesn't seem interested in taking the blame either.

His adviser Alex Bruesewitz instead blames the result on weak Republican candidates who he perceives as "uninspiring, lazy and ineffective."

- Trump has paved the way for them in the primaries. Most of them have never had to fight a tough election campaign and have forgotten the basics of an election campaign and how to reach voters in the digital era, he says.

An anonymous senator disagrees and instead blames the loss on the president.

- It is no longer about the quality of the candidates. It's a bloodbath and it's Trump's fault, the senator told Politico.

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election on the wallet issue. Now it instead became his and the Republicans' downfall.

In polling polls by the major media houses, 75 percent of respondents said they were not satisfied with the country's direction, while two-thirds blamed Trump for the deteriorating economic situation in the country.

Jon Fleischman, former director of the California Republican Party, says the election results show that voter dissatisfaction is due to economic development and the war in Iran.

- They cannot directly show their dissatisfaction with the president. Instead, they directed it at the president's party, he told The New York Times.