GOP Infighting Erupts After Democrats’ Historic Blue-Wave Wins

Donald Trump’s MAGA coalition appeared increasingly fractured as Republican leaders searched for explanations after a devastating midterm performance, with conservatives turning their criticism on one another.

Democrats emerged from Tuesday’s historic election with commanding control of the House and Senate, while also capturing a majority of governor’s offices nationwide.

The finger-pointing began inside the White House. Trump blamed weak candidates and argued that the outcome would have been dramatically different had his own name appeared on the ballot.

‘I JUST WASN’T ON THE BALLOT. IF I WERE, WE WOULD HAVE WON IN A LANDSLIDE!’ Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Vice President JD Vance then made an unusually direct break with the administration’s position, blaming the war in Iran for the Republican losses as he seeks to define his own political future.

‘The reason we lost is the war,’ Vance said. ‘If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so.’

He continued: ‘Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.’

Donald Trump Jr appeared to welcome the remarks, posting that ‘every word of this is…’ before adding three 100 Points emojis.

That brief show of unity did not last. Commentators and Republican figures from across the party soon began criticizing Vance, Trump and each other.

National Review writer Noah Rothman accused Vance of weakening the administration while laying the groundwork for his own ambitions.

‘Frankly, I don’t know why this White House tolerates the frequency and extent to which JD Vance feathers his own political nest at the expense of this administration’s own position,’ Rothman said.

‘He’s undermining it from within. They have to know what he’s up to. He won’t discipline himself.’

Fox News host Mark Levin amplified Rothman’s criticism, saying Vance’s alleged insubordination had become ‘open and notorious now.’

Levin then directly criticized the vice president over the failed ceasefire negotiations Vance conducted with Iran.

‘The same buffoons who screwed up our Iran operations with the phony and feckless peace negotiations are now blaming the midterms debacle on the Iran war,’ Levin said. ‘Hence, their frenzied propaganda ops today.’

Former Vice President Mike Pence offered a separate critique in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, arguing that Republicans in Congress had abandoned core conservative principles.

‘Over the past two years, we’ve seen conservatives shrug as a Republican Congress continued to rack up record debt and spending while the administration seized stakes in private companies, imposed unconstitutional tariffs on friend and foe alike and abandoned the right to life, all while copying the other side by offering government handouts and expanding entitlements,’ he said.

Although Pence did not single out specific Republicans, he described the war as ‘an albatross around the necks of Republicans.’

At Turning Point USA, speakers also criticized influential figures in the MAGA media sphere who appeared to abandon Trump during the party’s difficult moment.

‘We saw the Megyn Kellys, the Tuckers, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes break away,’ TPUSA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet said on The Charlie Kirk Show.

Those MAGA-aligned personalities, however, had plenty of complaints of their own about the president.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican congresswoman and one-time Trump ally, described the election as ‘a total referendum on Trump.’

‘Trump covered up the Epstein files protecting rapists and pedophiles, started a foreign war no one wanted and killed a school full of kids, put his rich elite donors before the struggling Americans who put him in office, made life unaffordable with his tariffs, and caused gas and diesel prices to skyrocket while he played the market and sold crypto,’ she wrote on X.

‘And Republicans stood behind him silently clapping like trained baby seals,’ she added.

Tucker Carlson, another sometime Trump ally, criticized Trump over his conduct at campaign rallies, including his repeated compliments about men’s appearances.

‘I think a lot of men who voted for Trump two years ago imagine this was a masculine, vigorous leader,’ Carlson said.

‘Here’s a guy who’s vain and venal and indecisive… he’s dancing to YMCA? Wait a second, he kinda seems a little more like a b****y old woman than an alpha male.’

Carlson said Trump’s public behavior was ‘not appealing to men because it’s not masculine.’

Megyn Kelly said on her program that the Republican Party was ‘in ruins, and maybe it needed to be’ after the election.

She argued that Republican candidates had become overly dependent on Trump rather than building independent political identities.

‘They’re going to have to learn how to win without daddy on the ballot, and to find their ethical center, and not just be puppets of Trump’s, not to have their entire political world revolve around Donald Trump,’ she said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who challenged Trump for the presidency in 2024, blamed the losses on the war, rising costs and poor candidates. He was particularly critical of Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

‘Vivek, he’s like a tech guy, did this Alzheimer’s drug, and he wants to bring in foreign workers on visas. That is not the type of person that’s gonna sell. And I know he shot himself in the foot,’ he said.

DeSantis had begun criticizing the administration even before the election results were known, warning that Republicans were misleading voters about the economy.

‘Gas is higher. It hurts working-class people, and it’s higher because of this conflict. That’s just a fact,’ DeSantis told Stephen A. Smith.

‘If you can’t admit that to voters, then you’re gaslighting them, and they’re not gonna listen to you on other things.’

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who challenged Trump in 2016, attacked both DeSantis and Vance for waiting until after the election to criticize the administration.

‘The vice president to me has no credibility,’ Christie told Politico.

‘He’s been sitting in the White House now for the last two years — haven’t heard him say a negative word, you know, until this past Wednesday, and he limited it just to the war in Iran, which is not the only problem we have here.’

Christie also accused DeSantis of changing his position on Trump for political reasons.

‘Now he wants to be critical,’ Christie said. ‘I think the governor is getting ready to leave office, and he’s looking for a way to be relevant and I think he looks like he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth.’

Christie said ‘the Trump era is over’ and blamed the president for Republican losses in his home state, where only one of 12 congressional representatives will be a Republican in January.

Texas also suffered a major shift toward Democrats, leaving Senator Ted Cruz as the state’s only Republican elected statewide.

The former presidential candidate said Republicans had failed to address voters’ concerns about the cost of living.

‘That is very real pain from real Americans, and too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand or they didn’t care,’ Cruz said on social media.

‘Food is too high, gas is too high, diesel is too high, insurance is too high, life is too high.’

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Steve Bannon, often described as one of the architects of MAGA, directed his anger at members of Trump’s cabinet and conservative media figures.

He blamed Fox News and especially Sean Hannity for supporting candidates such as Darline Graham. Bannon also questioned whether Pete Hegseth should remain in his post after what he called the failures of the Iran war.

‘We’re talking about a kinetic war. We’re talking about actually going to a war against the Persians, and here we are a long way from victory,’ Bannon said angrily.

‘Who’s accountable for that? Is [Trump], or is that, the head of the Department of War, or is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?’

John Solomon, a conservative commentator for Real America’s Voice and former Fox News employee, said the network’s influence over right-wing opinion had weakened.

‘I do think some of the mainstays of the Republican Party, the Fox News, the Christian coalition, they frayed in this election,’ Solomon said.

‘There’s still a coalition to be regathered, but tonight, it fractured and it fractured under very clear circumstances, the economy and not sticking to your promises and bad candidates in some cases.’

He said the party’s problems were ‘very fixable for 2028, but some sort of conversation has to happen in the Fox News style of having that conversation with Republicans. That era is over.’

Fox News host Dana Perino also questioned whether Trump’s political era and the MAGA movement were approaching their end.

‘I would say no political movement lasts forever. And President Trump’s was longer because of the interruption in his two terms, right? Because of the Biden thing. So it’s a much longer time,’ Perino said.

Hannity, meanwhile, called for a truce within conservative ranks and voiced frustration over the public infighting.

‘My message tonight is all hands on deck, stay away from circular firing squads, finger-pointing, blame,’ Hannity said on his Fox News show.

‘Allow Democrats to show their true colors as they are now doing; have real answers on the other side.’

Hannity has also acknowledged that the war and the rising cost of living may have contributed to the Republican defeat.

On Wednesday, reports revealed that members of Trump’s own political operation were questioning whether he had selected the right candidates, including Darline Graham, Ken Paxton and Michael Whatley.

‘I have seen the enemy and it is us,’ said James Blair, who oversaw the president’s midterm strategy.

‘In many places,’ added Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s chief pollster.

Still, some figures within the MAGA movement refused to criticize the party or the president.

Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt drew criticism after suggesting that voters did not understand how much money they had in their pockets.

‘Unfortunately, I think the American people forgot about the good policy, maybe listened to the lying media on the other side that is definitely in the back seat of the Democrat Party,’ Leavitt said.

She argued that Democrats lacked workable policy proposals and insisted Trump’s tax cuts had increased Americans’ disposable income.

‘They got more money in their pockets because of the president’s tax cuts,’ she said.

Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, blamed the party’s problems on the aftermath of Joe Biden’s presidency and said Trump’s policies needed more time to take effect.

‘The way this president has set things up will not take effect immediately,’ she told Fox News. ‘It takes a long time to rebuild from the Biden years, from the destruction the Democrats themselves caused to this country,’ she added.

In a late-night interview with Fox News as the results were still coming in, Trump admitted that Democrats had performed better than expected.

‘I’m a little bit surprised, I thought they’d [the Republicans] do better,’ he said, before pointing to the large crowds that attended his campaign rallies.

‘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 tens of thousands of people outside, trying to get in and having to watch a jumbotron, as they call it.’

Trump quickly rejected the idea that his own declining approval ratings were responsible for the Republican losses.

‘They didn’t like the candidates…. this MAGA base is incredible, the most loyal people, the greatest people, the people that built America.

‘I was trying to get people in that were people that frankly I didn’t get along with. But for purposes of the party I went along with it, and the base would tell me… sir they weren’t for you.’

He also suggested that several candidates had failed to energize their supporters enough to produce strong turnout.

‘In other cases they just didn’t inspire the people to get out and vote,’ Trump said. ‘And I wasn’t on the ballot. If I was on the ballot, they would have gotten out.’

Despite the sweeping Republican defeats, Trump acknowledged that Democrats had run an effective campaign.

‘I think the Democrats did a good job, I really do…. They fought hard. They’ve been fighting me for a long time.’

‘I don’t like to consider it a defeat for me. I wasn’t on the ballot,’ he said.

The following day, as pressure mounted, Trump conceded that Vance’s explanation was ‘largely true,’ adding that the conflict had probably pushed gasoline prices higher in the short term.

Trump nevertheless defended the decision to strike Tehran, insisting that the military action had been necessary.

‘If I had to do it again, I’d have to do it again because long term, that’s the only answer. You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon,’ he said.

Democrats had already gained 40 House seats, with 27 races still undecided, while taking seven Senate seats and holding an advantage in two additional contests.

The party flipped Senate seats in states where Democrats had not prevailed for decades, including Texas and South Carolina, along with a once-in-a-century victory in Kansas.

Late returns could give Democrats two more Senate wins in Mississippi and Alaska.

In the House, Democrats had secured 253 seats, a net gain of 38, with 25 races still outstanding.

Democrats also won governor’s offices in 29 states, giving the party a nationwide majority for the first time in 16 years.

They added “trifectas” in several states, meaning Democrats now control the governorship as well as both chambers of the state legislature.