Trump Stabs His Most Loyal Republicans in the Back

Hey, it's Will Salatan from The Bullwork. So last week, Donald Trump suffered the worst midterm defeat of any president in the last 50 years. And he took it with all the grace we've come to expect. He blamed everybody but himself. So if you enjoyed his absolute humiliation last week, sit back while I show you this unprecedented loser, turning, turning against all the right-wing lapdogs who supported him. Let's start with Trump's first excuse. He claimed that actually, actually one of the elections last week was stolen. Here's what he posted on Truth Social on Thursday. Trump said that Dan Sullivan, the Republican Senator in Alaska, who's trailing, he's trailing in the vote count, should be declared the winner because there were four candidates in the race. And Trump said all the votes that went to the three candidates other than the Democrat should be given to Senator Sullivan. And then on Saturday, Trump posted this. You can see right there, a guy named Gerald Haikus. He got more than 2% of the vote. And Trump says, if you voted for that guy, your ballot should actually be counted as a vote for Dan Sullivan. That's fraud. Trump is telling Alaska in writing in public to commit fraud. By the way, on election night, Trump also claimed that he won Minnesota. Check it out. But Minnesota is the 1952. Richard Nixon was the last to win it. And it's a joke because I won it three times. And the people that count the votes are much more important than the candidates. That's one. Trump says he won Minnesota three times. Fact check, fact check, he actually lost Minnesota all three times. So his first reaction to any defeat is, I didn't really lose. They stole it. But the problem this time is that the wipeout was so bad that he can't really, he can't really deny it. So he moves on to his next excuse, which is other presidents did worse. Here's what Trump told the press on Friday. And just say the midterm election, just saying to stand, president has always lose them. I don't know why, but they lose them all the time. There were a lot bigger losses than this. No, no, actually there hasn't been, there has not been a loss this bad since 1974. Here are the numbers from Tim Alberta, a writer at the Atlantic. You can see right there. He says the popular vote margin against the incumbent party hasn't been anywhere near this bad in the last half century. Trump is a world historical loser. Oh, but Trump says not me, not me. I wasn't on the ballot. You might remember that every day, leading up to this election, he told his own supporters, vote like I'm on the ballot. But suddenly, after the wipeout, he says, nope, nope, I got nothing to do with it. By the way, I was not on the ballot, just in case you had any question. Is if we were on the ballot, we would have won. The election was in my election. I was on the ballot. If I was on the ballot, you saw the rallies. They were the biggest, most powerful rallies in the history of midterm elections. We were, every arena was full of, we had thousands and thousands of people outside that couldn't get in. You can see in that last clip, Trump doesn't even understand that having a thousand people at one of his rallies doesn't mean squat. When you have millions of people who hate Trump because he's, I don't know, maybe the worst precedent ever, to Trump, those millions of people, they're not real. So he thinks, well, everybody loves me. So the problem must be that everybody doesn't love the Republican politicians who lost their seats in this election. In fact, that is exactly what Trump told Dasha Burns, a reporter for Politigo, on election night. I wasn't on the ballot and we didn't get to people out, but I wasn't on the ballot. If I was on the ballot, we were one. We would have won it all very easily. But you know, Mr. President, you told voters that you were on the ballot to go vote as though you were on the ballot. Yeah, I say, say you're on the ballot. Think about me being on the ballot, but they didn't agree, and then he's like the candidates in most cases. See, that's what a stand-up guy, Trump is. Republican candidates, in every state, kiss his ass. And then, and then when they lose, he just throws them under the bus. In fact, he claims, he claims, the reason they lost is that those candidates didn't support him enough. But looking at this map, it doesn't seem like that message got out to the Republican base. They didn't like the candidates, and some of the candidates that I endorsed that fought me, and they didn't like that they fought me. I mean, and the base would tell me, you know, hundreds of thousands of people would just say, "Sir, they weren't for you," and yeah, that didn't spell out all the flaws anymore than I did about these people. In some cases, in other cases, they just didn't inspire the people to get out and go. I want to show you one example. Just to show you what a backstabbing liar, Trump is. Here's what he posted at 8.19 in the morning on Election Day. He wrote, "Greg Abbott is the strong and highly respected governor of Texas. He has my complete and total endorsement." And then, and then here's what Trump posted at 11.30 that same night after Abbott lost. He called Abbott a rhino, meaning a phony and anti-Trump Republican. And he said, "That's why Abbott lost. I don't need to tell you that Trump is a dirtbag. You can see it right there in those two messages." This message is brought to you by Quince. So, the best pieces in your closet are the ones that you can reach for again, and again, and again, whether you're just getting dressed for work or heading out for the night, or just keeping things casual. That's why I love Quince. 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One thing was not getting things approved in the Senate. Oh yeah, it wasn't the war. No, it wasn't the price of gas or groceries. No, no, no. The reason why Republican voters stayed home is they were mad that their senators didn't pass Trump's voter ID bill, right? Hey, and while we're at it, why not blame Fox News? That's what Trump did. Here's what he posted on election night. Look at this. Fox News bears responsibility for these losses by constantly putting on the Democrat opposition. Are you kidding me? Nobody, nobody tried harder to help Trump in the midterms than Fox did. They were spouting his talking points the whole time. But you know why he's mad? He's mad because Fox actually published real polls, polls that show he was in trouble. And and on election night, he called in to Fox to complain about it. And then I read it Fox said, I'm not popular. You know, I mean, the Fox polls are terrible. You want to get yourself a good post because your post is the worst. But tonight actually the results are pretty close to what the Fox polls show. Well, I don't know about that. I can just tell you about speaking for myself. and the results with Vox with me were wrong for 12 years. - You heard Brett Baer. They told him, they told Trump the real numbers, and he just wouldn't listen. And then even after the election, after he got wiped out and Baer tells him, see, we were right, even after all of that, Trump still says, no, no, no, no, your polls are fake. Let me show you the final poll, the exit poll of actual voters. The poll asked, if Trump was a reason why you cast your ballot for Congress. Okay, look at these numbers. 40% of people said he wasn't a factor in their vote. 60% said he was a factor. Of that 60%, nearly three quarters said they were voting to oppose Trump. The exact numbers were 44% against Trump to 16% for Trump. In other words, Trump, by himself, cost his party 28% of the vote. He killed his own party. But you know what, he cares less about that than he does about controlling his party. Let me show you one more clip. This is Trump talking about the Senate race in Texas. You might remember that Trump knocked out, he knocked out his own incumbent senator, John Cornyn, and then Trump endorsed a different candidate, Ken Paxton in the primary. So Paxton won the primary, but then he lost the general election to James Talleriko. So Trump actually screwed his own party. And on election night, Brett Baird asked him if he regretted doing that. - Do you have regrets about Ken Paxton or Darling Graham looking back at the beginning of this choice? - Well, I had no choice. Ken Paxton was a good guy, and I just wasn't a fan of Cornyn, you know? I just wasn't a fan. I found him to be a disloyal guy. He was not a fan of mine. When it was vashing, he kissed my ass, all right? But, you know, I remember the other days, and I just felt I couldn't endure some. - There you go. Trump thought Cornyn wasn't loyal enough. Cornyn, Cornyn, who voted twice, twice, to save Trump when Trump was impeached. Cornyn kissed Trump's ass and Trump stabbed him in the back, and he has no regrets. Even though it cost the Republican party a senate seat in Texas, Trump doesn't give a damn about the Republican party. Trump only cares about himself. And if his party had an ounce, just an ounce of dignity, after he wiped them out, they'd be throwing him under the bus. See you next time.