‘Extinction-level event’: Republicans turn on Trump after midterms rout

Republicans are furious with US President Donald Trump after a historic midterm election defeat that cost the party majorities in both chambers of Congress.

 While Trump and his allies are placing the blame on losing candidates, a growing number of Republicans are pointing the finger at the president himself. Some are even calling for a shake-up of top officials at the White House.

 The Republican Party reeled with shock and anger on Wednesday in the aftermath of the midterms. A veteran Republican strategist told NBC News that the election had been a “bloodbath.”

 “It was a confluence of so many issues: pocketbook issues — gas prices, inflation, healthcare, broader cost of living,” the strategist said. “Corruption first and foremost, plus Iran.”

 One Republican senator likened the results to a “zombie apocalypse.”

Term-limited Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered a similarly bleak assessment. “This is [as] close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country, as we have seen probably in the last 100 years,” he told reporters.

 Some Republicans predict that Trump’s waning political influence will set off an internal power struggle.

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

 “It’s over for Trump, Johnson, Thune,” the operative added, referring to the president as well as House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

 “This is a wipeout, and we are going to have a civil war.”

 But far from accepting responsibility for the party’s trouncing, Trump seemed more inclined to shift the blame to the defeated candidates.

 “If I were on the ballot, we would have won. You saw the people that were packed, thousands and thousands of people at every rally,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “There was such love at those rallies; it was incredible. We weren’t able to transfer the love to candidates.”

 In an interview with Fox News, Trump also claimed that some candidates he had endorsed had rebelled, alienating voters. In particular, he disparaged Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who failed in his bid for a fourth term, as a “RINO,” or Republican in name only.

 Republicans were quick to push back. “We are beyond candidate quality. It’s a bloodbath,” one senior GOP official in the Senate told Politico. “Trump did this.”

 Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who did not seek reelection, slammed Trump’s theory as absurd, arguing that the election had been “a referendum on President Trump.”

 Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who lost his reelection bid, underscored just how unfavorable this election was for his party when he told CNN that “Jesus Christ could have run and would have lost.”

 The conservative Wall Street Journal also laid the blame squarely on Trump in an editorial on Wednesday, identifying him as the “main architect of this rout” and arguing that he was “directly responsible for at least three Senate defeats.”

 In Texas, Trump backed scandal-plagued attorney general Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, the preferred choice of Republican leaders. In North Carolina, his clashes with Sen. Thom Tillis prompted the senator to abandon his reelection bid. And in South Carolina, Trump plumped for political neophyte Darline Graham, sister of late Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died in July, despite concerns about her inexperience.

 Democrats ended up capturing all three Senate seats.

 Demands for accountability are being aimed at Trump’s inner circle at the White House.

 “It’s hard to think of a [White House] that’s sabotaged House and Senate candidates more than this one,” wrote Marc Short, who served as the White House’s director of legislative affairs during Trump’s first term, in a post on the social media site X.

Caroline Sunshine, a former spokesperson for Trump’s presidential campaign, told the Financial Times that the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, should resign.

 “We got wiped out,” Sunshine said. “The coalition Trump built in 2024 got burned down tonight [. . .] if she cares about the future of the GOP, she’ll take that accountability.”

 Veteran Republican strategist John Feehery agreed on the need for a shake-up, telling Reuters, “He needs to clean house.”

 The fallout is already reshaping Republican leadership. Johnson told staff members in a conference call on Wednesday morning that he would not seek the position of House minority leader in the next Congress.

 House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan have both announced bids to succeed him. The GOP’s vote on House leadership is scheduled for Tuesday.

 The crushing defeat has prompted public appeals for the Republican Party to return to conservative principles, including in the personal newsletter of Sen. John Curtis of Utah.

 “Leaders like Ronald Reagan championed limited government, free trade, resolute diplomacy and global leadership and fiscal responsibility. Over the last decade, however, our party has steadily drifted from the principles that once defined us,” the Republican senator wrote.

 “Tonight’s shellacking should be a wake-up call,” Curtis said. “But if our response is to blame the media, the polls or the voters, we’ll have learned absolutely nothing. We might start by looking in the mirror.”