JOE MUST BE JOKING

Republican Finds Bizarre Scapegoat for Midterms Wipeout

One Republican is doing some spectacular mental gymnastics to explain away the GOP’s midterm rout.

A MAGA congressman has offered a creative interpretation of the GOP’s crushing midterm defeat.

The Republican blame game is officially underway, as the party tries to make sense of how the party lost both chambers of Congress and the popular vote by its widest margin since 1976.

But while much of the GOP’s soul-searching has centered on President Donald Trump’s priorities, particularly his war with Iran, Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris took the blame game on an eyebrow-raising detour.

“Well, look, the bottom line is we’re still recovering from the Biden inflation blitz,” Harris, 69, said in an appearance on Newsmax on Thursday. “It’s going to take years to get over that.”

But voters made clear Tuesday that they hold the president and his party responsible for the current high prices.

When President Joe Biden left office in January 2025, inflation had cooled to 3 percent.

But by the time voters went to the polls Tuesday—more than a year and a half since Trump entered office—it was sitting at 3.7 percent.

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An Associated Press exit poll found that most voters largely blamed the Trump administration for high prices, with six in 10 saying unusually high costs were “more because of Trump’s policies” than “more because of factors outside Trump’s control.” The top issue for voters was the economy.

Trump, 80, failed to deliver on a laundry list of promises he made during his 2024 campaign, when he vowed to “end the devastating inflation crisis immediately,” “cut the price of energy and electricity in half,” and to get gasoline “below $2 a gallon.” On Election Day, the average price of gas was $4.15.

In an NBC News exit poll, 59 percent of voters said they were “very concerned” about the cost of gas and diesel.

Harris acknowledged that the Iran war and “elevated” gas and diesel prices played a role in the GOP’s midterm drubbing, saying, “There’s no question about it. People felt it, and they responded at the ballot box.”

While Republicans elsewhere took a beating, Harris held on comfortably in Maryland’s lone Republican-held district, winning with 55.84 percent of the votes.

Several Republicans, led by Vice President JD Vance, have blamed Trump’s deeply unpopular war with Iran for the party’s electoral losses.

Vance explained in a striking statement that he had heard from trusted sources that 2024 Trump supporters largely turned their backs on the administration over the president’s war on Iran, the cost of living, a lack of “America First” policies, and the U.S.’s relationship to Israel.

Trump, meanwhile, has claimed that if he had been on the ballot, Republicans “would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”

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Erkki ForsterNight News Reporter

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