On the morning of Election Day, President Donald Trump placed one last call to his friends. “Fox & Friends,” that is.
He preached to the choir about his imaginary achievements. “The inflation is solved,” he told them. And the Iran war? “It’s been totally successful.”
“Yes sir,” replied host Lawrence Jones, without a trace of irony. “It’s been one of the greatest victories of this administration.”
Yet even while swaddled in Fox News’ cocoon of love and affirmation, Trump must have known that bad news was coming, for he also floated a most innovative exit plan.
“I’m at 99 percent approval rating in Israel,” he said. “If people ever got tired of me in the U.S., I’ll move to Israel, become prime minister.”
Well, Mr. President, nesiah tova. Have a good trip.
For the last couple of months, Trump endlessly pleaded with voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” And they obliged — to a greater extent than he could have imagined.
The result was an overwhelming repudiation of the Trump presidency and of Trump personally. Even more than a win for Democrats or a loss for Republicans, Tuesday night’s result was a resounding vote of no confidence in Donald J. Trump himself.
Democrats easily won the House and Senate, but it was much more profound than that. They won Senate seats in deep red South Carolina, Iowa and Kansas. They swept a Senate seat and the governorship in Texas, the party’s first statewide victories in 32 years. They won House seats in districts Trump won by a dozen points, even 15 points. They romped in Ohio and Georgia and were poised to run the table of Senate races.
I chose to experience the evening as Trump did, by watching Fox News. Even his favorite network could not sugarcoat the day’s events for him — and Trump erupted at Fox in fury.
Just before 6 p.m., Fox began to release results from its exit poll, showing the anti-Trump tsunami that was building:
Sixty-two percent of voters disapproved of Trump, 53% of them strongly.
Forty-three percent said their vote was to express opposition to Trump, while only 16% said they were expressing support.
Sixty-two percent said Trump prioritized his personal interests over the country’s.
Sixty-two percent blamed him for higher prices and 64% said his tariffs hurt.
And majorities said Trump has the wrong priorities, is not a strong leader, doesn’t fight for people like them, had worsened economic conditions — and doesn’t have the mental capacity to serve.
Trump hadn’t merely lost the election for Republicans. The voters were rejecting him in an intensely personal way, rejecting not just his policies but his character, his motives and his fitness. It’s hard to see how he recovers from such a low standing regardless of what happens with, say, gas prices or the Iran war.
The president must have recognized that, for he fired off three posts on Truth Social attacking Fox News.
“The FoxNews Poll, always the worst, is so insulting with the questions they ask. Every question is a hit job, and every answer is ‘BULLSHIT!’”
Minutes later, he erupted at Fox again: “FoxNews Ratings are way down (27%!) because they’re spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats! All of those people who used to watch Fox, and no longer do, get it. It’s them, not me — My numbers are better than they have ever been.”
The rant went on for another 139 words. “No wonder FoxNews Ratings are collapsing, and they’re going to go down a lot further. They’re way down, not because of me, but because they are AGAINST me!”
But Fox wasn’t against him. The country was against him.
This was the hoped-for redemption for those who kept up a tireless and sometimes lonely struggle against his abuses over the past two years.
Tuesday night was a win for the memory of Alex Pretti and of Renée Good and for the millions terrorized by an out-of-control ICE.
It was a win for farmers losing their livelihood because of Trump’s tariffs and runaway fertilizer and diesel prices.
It was a win for the thousands crushed by DOGE and for many others persecuted by a politically corrupted Justice Department.
It was a win for the media outlets, universities and law firms holding the line against Trump’s intimidation, and for the scientists struggling to keep their research going despite his assaults.
It was a victory for the men and women of the U.S. military, who watched Pete Hegseth politicize their service and strip it of its ablest leaders.
Above all, it was a win for ordinary Americans who are paying in high inflation for a war they didn’t need or want; who are watching their cost of living soar while Trump rakes in billions for himself, his family and his cronies; and who are tired of having their lives run by Elon Musk and the crypto and AI overlords who tried to buy the election.
The American voter rejected the massive spending for Republican candidates by the likes of Musk. They rejected the hateful warnings about jihadists, the ludicrous claims that children would undergo forced sex-change operations at school and the anachronistic alarms about communists on the march.
Two years ago, Trump swept back to power with a convincing win, with majorities in the House and the Senate, and with the advantage of learning from the mistakes of his first term. He launched his second term with a flexing of executive muscle that hadn’t been seen in generations. He set his opponents, and the courts, on their heels as he rolled over one guardrail after another. He terrorized the federal government and had people asking, in earnest, whether there would even be a midterm election.
Back then, I wrote that the democratic backsliding Trump had set in motion “could last the rest of our lives,” as one democracy advocate put it. But there was another possibility: “They could overreach, and they could implode.”
They did overreach. And, Tuesday night, they imploded.
The election was probably going to be a referendum on Trump anyway, but he guaranteed it by making himself the face of the election. “President Trump Completes Historic Travel Blitz: 30 Events, 20 States, 32 Days,” the White House boasted this week. Trump, in remarks on Tuesday morning that didn’t age well, said his tour “had a big effect” on voters, and “the results are going to be better than you think.”
He struggled all along to come up with a winning message, other than his admiration for Sen. Jon Husted’s butt. He attempted to give his closing argument the previous day outside the Lincoln Memorial, but he couldn’t stop talking about his repairs of the Reflecting Pool. He mentioned the word “algae” 10 times. Contrary to Trump’s election-night rants, Fox had tried to resuscitate him. But he couldn’t be saved.
Fox’s Sean Hannity edited Trump’s closing message in an interview with the president Monday night. “I’m going to scroll a list of your accomplishments,” he offered.
During the day on Tuesday, Fox had Attorney General Todd Blanche on the air to allege that “fraud” had occurred in the Alaska Senate race.
It had Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on to offer his thoughts on Hillary Clinton: “I just can’t even stand hearing her voice.”
Fox News hosts denounced James Talarico (“absolute freak … no cojones”), the “smug” Abdul El-Sayed and the Democratic Party (“an abscess … a toxic tumor”). “Socialism is on the ballot!” warned host Will Cain. Former Congressman Jason Chaffetz assured viewers that the polls were wrong because Republicans don’t take polls.
Then came the exit polls, which were bad, and the actual results, which were worse.
“I don’t feel great,” Trump-friendly host Jesse Watters said during the 5 p.m. hour. “I feel like I’m about to play a game that I know I’m going to lose.” A GOP strategist had already cautioned Fox viewers that “Republicans are turning out, but Democrats are turning out at historic numbers.”
As the results came in, the mood grew darker and darker.
“Things are not looking good.”
“Not super optimistic.”
“It doesn’t look great for Republicans.”
“It’s troubling.”
“Shocking.”
“This is 2010 shellacking territory,” Bret Baier said after 10 p.m. “One Republican official said ‘total fiasco’ to me.”
Even as the grim results piled up, the Fox team sought to absolve (and perhaps console) Trump.
Laura Ingraham assured viewers Trump has been “phenomenal,” regardless of what voters said: “He’ll go down as the best president in the last 100 years, in my view, still.”
“Laura is dead right,” Hannity said. “The policies are rock solid.”
Half a dozen of them reminded viewers that Trump wasn’t on the ballot.
But as the scale of the GOP debacle became apparent, Brit Hume asked whether Trump “making himself the centerpiece of the whole fall campaign was a wise move.”
Hannity acknowledged that Trump’s campaigning may have turned out more Democrats than Republicans. “I think the hatred for this man is unprecedented,” Hannity said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
I haven’t either. As the exit polls showed, the voters had registered not merely their disapproval of Trump, but something like disdain.
Republicans didn’t lose because Trump wasn’t on the ballot. They lost — emphatically — because he was.
Dana Milbank is a Washington Sun Perspectives columnist.
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