Defeated Trump’s Late-Night Call Devolves Into Breathless Tirade
The president phoned his favored network just five minutes after trashing its coverage.
Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERS
President Donald Trump has run to Fox News to deliver a bizarre, 23-minute-long rant as Democrats won control of the House and Senate.
The head-scratching appearance came on the same night that Trump, 80, relentlessly trashed the network’s polling and coverage of the election. He called in to speak with hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum around midnight, repeating his greatest hits—raving about his war in Iran, having the “greatest” economy in American history, and his new deal to sell arms to Israel.
The president also blamed the blue wave on his MAGA-endorsed candidates simply being bad—not on his tanking approval rating.
“They just didn’t inspire the people to get out and vote,” Trump said of Republicans. “And I wasn’t on the ballot. If I was on the ballot, they would have gotten out.”
He then spiraled into an incoherent rant about his rallies and how big they supposedly were.
“Look, they got out for the rallies. You never saw rallies that big. I mean, outside of the rallies I have, when I have, you know, the general election, which is you know, a step above. In all fairness, like maybe a few steps above. Outside of that, I mean, these were the biggest rallies ever,” he said. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. I left every one of those states, and the places were packed with thousands, and in some cases 10s of thousands of people outside, trying to get in and having to watch a jumbotron, as they call it.”
Trump's panic tour of midterm rallies did little to quell the impending blue tsunami.
Vincent Alban/REUTERS
His ramble continued, “These big, massive television screens that we would hook onto the sides of the building so they could see. So, you know, they just weren’t inspired, and they didn’t want to. If I’m not on the ballot, they wouldn’t go. And they did. By the way, it wasn’t that they didn’t go. They didn’t go enough. You know, some people did win tonight. We had some wins that were not bad wins at all.”
Trump also didn’t rule out a “large” strike on Iran in the coming days, saying “a lot of people would like to do the heavy hit.”
But despite Democrats retaking control of both the House and Senate, the president offered his “congratulations” to the opposing party he frequently dubbed “Dumocrats.”
“They did a good job,” Trump said. “They’ve been looking for this one for 11 years, and they finally got it. But I don’t view it as a hit on me.”
He continued, “We’ve had the greatest two years in the history of the presidency, in terms of the economy, in terms of all the things we have done.”
Trump hopped on the call with the Rupert Murdoch-owned network just five minutes after blasting former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s appearance on its election coverage panel on Truth Social, and hours after raging over its liberal panelist, Jessica Tarlov.
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