LAME DUCK À L’ORANGE

Trump Allies Declare His Era Over After Election ‘Apocalypse’

As the president blamed GOP candidates, his allies mulled over the end of Trump.

Donald Trump’s allies have declared that his midterm “bloodbath” could spell the end of the president and his administration.

A “political earthquake” saw Democrats seize control of the Senate and the House, flipping ruby-red seats at a canter. “It’s a bloodbath,” one longtime Republican strategist who worked on Senate races told NBC News.

They put the staggering losses down to the issues Trump chose to ignore. “It was a confluence of so many issues: pocketbook issues — gas prices, inflation, healthcare, broader cost of living.” Trump called the cost of living crisis a “hoax” invented by his political opponents.

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They added that “corruption” and Trump’s Iran war also inspired voters to go against the GOP. Scott Howell, a veteran Republican operative based in Texas, where Democrat James Talarico beat Trump’s hand-picked and scandal-drenched nominee Ken Paxton, said that “voters are p---ed off,” and so they voted for change.

“They still may not necessarily like Democratic policies, but right now, they are angrier at Donald Trump. And when voters get angry, this is what happens. It’s called democracy,” he added.

“This is a zombie apocalypse,” a Republican senator added, as some of their colleagues began to envision the unimaginable: Life after Trump.

“Everything is going to change now,” one Republican operative said. “We are moving into the post-Trump future rapidly.”

“It’s over for Trump, Johnson, Thune, many, many, many more,” they added, referencing House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota. “This is a wipeout, and we are going to have a civil war.”

“His administration is effectively over,” a longtime Trump ally agreed. “It’s now defense.”

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Trump quickly offered an excuse for the wipeout on Truth Social. “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he wrote on Tuesday evening.

He repeated this excuse in a live TV chat with Politico’s Dasha Burns.

“I wasn’t on the ballot, and we didn’t get the people out, but I wasn’t on the ballot. And if I was on the ballot, we would have won. We would have won it all very easily,” he said.

After Burns reminded the president that he told Americans to vote as if he was on the ballot, the president blamed the candidates: “Yeah. I said, “Say you’re on the ballot. Think about me being on the ballot.” But they didn’t agree, and they didn’t like the candidates in most cases. Just one of those things.”

He stopped short of specifically blaming any candidate.

He said that he intends to work meaningfully with Democrats for the rest of his presidency. “Well, we’re going to work with the Democrats to make sure things go well for our country. Very important. They’ve already called, and they want to work with … [I] have the right to veto everything, but I don’t want to be just sitting there for two years vetoing everything. They want to see things happen, too.”

He urged the GOP to “come together.”

A White House official said the mood there is “defiant.”

They suggested “candidate quality” was an issue, saying, “President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves.”

They said Democrat voters will “have a serious case of buyer’s remorse” and added, “The Radical Left is only going to become stronger. Buckle up.”

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