by Hunter Woodall | Nov 4, 2026 | Congress, elections, News, News Analysis, White House
For the last decade, Donald Trump tormented Democrats and defied expectations of what it meant to lead and endure in American politics.
On Tuesday, the old rules finally caught up with him.
Trump wasn’t on the ballot, but he made the midterms emphatically about himself, urging his supporters to turn out as if he were. After a decade in which he dominated the national narrative, the voters who had sided with him so often before appear not to have followed him en masse.
Democrats were projected to retake both the House and the Senate from the Trump-led GOP. They won governor’s races in red states and were closing in on upsets in deeply conservative congressional districts that, just days earlier, had looked all but unwinnable.
Plenty of races remained uncalled at 1 a.m. But the early returns pointed to one of the best nights for Democrats — if not the best — since Trump ran for the White House in 2016.
If those projections hold, the rest of Trump’s term will look very different. A Democratic House and Senate would be able to stall his agenda and investigate his administration, and the Senate would decide the fate of his nominees, including to the federal courts. That could be a significant check on a president who has already reshaped the Supreme Court.
The night also suggested that Trump’s appeal doesn’t transfer. Candidates he embraced or campaigned for lost in deep-red Kansas and South Carolina. Vivek Ramaswamy, an ardent ally of the president, lost the Ohio governor’s race. Trump’s conservative magic, it turns out, doesn’t extend to the candidates further down the ballot. That’s an uncomfortable reality for
by Steve Benen | Nov 3, 2026 | Maddowblog, White House, World, World News
Over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a press conference in Atlanta, where he confronted a good question about his boss.
Q: The president has been very active on the campaign trail saying he’s glad that Denmark gave Greenland to the US. That is being perceived differently in Denmark and Greenland. So h as the president misunderstood the agreement?MARCO RUBIO: I’m not sure what comments you are referring to — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-10-31T17:07:52.890Z
Donald Trump, the reporter noted, has been “very active on the campaign trail” in recent weeks, telling voters how glad he is that Denmark “gave Greenland” to the United States.
“Has the president misunderstood the agreement that was made?” the reporter asked.
“Yeah, I’m not sure what comments you’re referring to,” Rubio replied, adding that the president is “fully apprised of” the latest details.
It’s curious that Rubio, who recently became the first and only secretary of state ever to hit the campaign trail in support of a political party, claimed to have no idea what his boss has repeatedly said about the U.S. taking control of an arctic island. But making matters worse is the idea that Trump is “fully apprised of” the details surrounding U.S. policy toward Greenland — because if that’s true, it suggests his relationship with reality is irretrievably broken.
In fact, as Election Day got underway for American voters, the Republican president appeared via phone on Fox News, where he falsely declared that Europe “just gave” Greenland to the U.S., which most certainly did not happen. (Lawmakers in Greenland did vote on Tuesday to approve a recent trilateral security agreement with the U.S. and Denmark,
by Steve Benen | Nov 3, 2026 | Iran, Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, White House
On the eve of Election Day 2026, Donald Trump did a live telephone interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, and when the discussion turned to the ongoing war with Iran, the president said something unexpected.
“This is not much of a war, Sean, because there hasn’t been shooting for months,” he said.
The Republican made similar comments several hours earlier during a bizarre pre-election event at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, where he declared, “We had a war with Iran, we won. We had a war with and, you know, I don’t know if you even call it a war, because we haven’t been doing any fighting for months.”
Trump’s timing could have been better. As The Wall Street Journal was the first to report, “The U.S. attacked Iran’s Qeshm Island on Monday, U.S. officials said, in the latest of a series of limited strikes Washington has secretly carried out against the country in recent weeks.”
Observers were left to wonder whether the American president was trying to deceive the public with his rhetoric on the same day, or whether he simply didn’t know about the latest U.S. military operations in the war he initiated eight months ago.
Making matters slightly worse, in the Hannity interview, Trump also said, “I heard a very stupid congressman on Fox, on, I think it was ‘Fox & Friends,’ saying about we spent $30 billion on this war with Iran. Well, that’s peanuts.”
Putting aside the fact that $30 billion is a lot of money, it’s just as notable that every cost estimate of the conflict, including the Trump administration’s, is far in excess of $30 billion.
Hours before the Hannity
by Glenn Kessler | Nov 3, 2026 | elections, Opinion, White House
Consistency has never been President Donald Trump’s strong suit, but he has been consistent about one thing: If Republicans do poorly in Tuesday’s midterm elections, as polls suggest they will, he is prepared to blame Democratic cheating. Over and over, Trump has outlined — falsely — the ways he says Democrats will manipulate the vote.
On Aug. 5, for example, Trump was already warning of a rigged election in Michigan. Commenting on the vote count in the Democratic Senate primary, he wrote about Wayne County: “Don’t discount all of those fake mail-in ballots that will ‘surprisingly’ show up at the last moment. Get ready for another Rigged Election.”
Two months later, he released a video with a different message: “Vote early, vote by mail or vote in person on Election Day.” The caption went further: “Whether you vote early, absentee, by mail, or in-person, we must ‘swamp’ the Radical Left Dumocrats with massive turnout!”
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‘The law is clear’: Trump administration sets stage for challenges to Alaska election results
October 31, 2026 / 11:55
When I ran The Washington Post Fact Checker, I compiled scores of prewritten fact checks, totaling 30,000 words, based on my familiarity with things Trump said and his habit of uttering exaggerated, misleading or fully made-up statements.
So here, as a prebuttal, are five accusations that Trump will likely make after Election Day, based on a review of his election-related statements in speeches, news conferences and Truth Social posts in 2025 and 2026.
Myth No. 1: Late-counted mail ballots erased Republican victories
Media coverage of vote counting can create the impression that candidates are jockeying for position in real time when, in fact, the
by Amy Goodman | Nov 3, 2026 | Donald Trump, Interview, Jared Kushner, Trump Administration, White House
Vanity Fair recently published an excerpt from longtime investigative reporter Matthew Cole’s new book, Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East. The excerpt alleged that during President Trump’s first term, Saudi and Emirati leaders secretly put at least $2 billion into bank accounts and gave access to Kushner. At the time…
Source
by Felicia Schwartz | Nov 2, 2026 | elections, News, White House
Secretary of State Marco Rubio had wanted to stay off the campaign trail, wary of the implications of appearing as the nation’s chief diplomat and the speculation his joining the fray would cause about his own presidential ambitions.
But President Donald Trump — fond of Rubio and the applause he gets from MAGA crowds — lured him to two campaign stops in the final midterm stretch last Tuesday and on Sunday evening.
Rubio seemed at ease speaking to the crowd in Salina, Kansas, on Sunday evening in what could be a dress rehearsal for 2028.
“People are loving this guy,” Trump said as he called his chief diplomat and national security adviser up to the stage “to say a quick hello.”
Rubio took a look out at the crowd gathered to support the re-election campaign of Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, and spoke for about 30 seconds, praising Trump’s security record and invoking his inner politician as he paused for applause and emphatically gestured out to the crowd to emphasize his message before departing back into the audience to a roar of applause.
“The most important job every president does is keep you and your family safe. And no president in my lifetime has done that better than the one we have right now,” Rubio said.
As the secretary of state walked off stage, Trump joked that Rubio “is getting too popular.”
Until last week, Rubio had refrained from showing up at political events mostly, declining requests from donors and his political network to engage.
But Trump had asked Rubio to come along last week on some of his appearances, two people familiar with Rubio’s thinking said. It was
