Donald Trump spent election night shut away in the White House residence as Democrats made sweeping gains in the midterms, while senior officials and Republican allies began discussing who should take responsibility for the defeat.
The President watched the results from upstairs with chief of staff Susie Wiles and aide Natalie Harp, rather than joining Cabinet officials, political advisers and MAGA supporters gathered in the East Room.
As the scale of the losses became clear, the watch party rapidly emptied. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had been present earlier in the evening, was no longer there by the time the House was called for the Democrats shortly before 10pm Eastern time.
By then, many staff members had left the building altogether, with some heading to a nearby bar. Food laid out for the gathering was reportedly left untouched.
A senior official described the mood in the residence as “very, very dark”, adding: “It’s a dark scene.”
By 11pm, Trump was said to have stopped speaking while watching Fox News. A source close to the President said he was “barely uttering a word and paralyzed into silence”.
His anger was more visible on Truth Social, where he launched an unusual series of attacks on the conservative television network and blamed it for the Republican losses.
Trump also turned on Texas Governor Greg Abbott after Republicans lost the Senate. “If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost,” he wrote, despite having endorsed Abbott only hours earlier as “strong”, “highly respected” and “exceptional”.
“We would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Trump declared, adding: “I wasn’t on the Ballot.” In the weeks before the election, he had urged MAGA supporters to behave as though he was.
Trump allies discuss responsibility for midterm defeat
Inside the White House, attention quickly turned to possible scapegoats. Senior officials named Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth among those they expected to face consequences.
“Tonight would have looked very different without the Iran War,” one official said. “I believe you’ll ultimately see POTUS hold Hegseth accountable.”
Another senior official blamed the State Department, while a major Republican donor said: “Rubio is over. Though that’s maybe also true for all Republicans who touched Trump’s foreign policy.”
The conflict has cost taxpayers at least 47 billion dollars, while petrol prices have reached 4.15 dollars a gallon. The raw account also said most Americans have consistently described the war as a mistake.
One well-placed White House source suggested Trump could respond with a sweeping purge, saying: “If the boss is smart he’ll purge everyone tomorrow to save his legacy.”
But the chief of staff herself was also facing scrutiny. One source said Wiles had continued to predict a Republican victory as recently as September, while veteran Republican consultant Chris LaCivita was said to have assured Trump during weekly briefings that the election would go his way.
West Wing staff were reportedly still discussing the possibility of gaining seats in both chambers on Tuesday morning. One source dismissed the optimism as “delusional”, saying officials had remained so “right until the very end”.
Jason Miller, a long-standing Trump communications adviser, was described by one senior official as sweating and panicking as the results appeared on the television ticker.
Some staff later gathered at a bar a few streets from the White House, where they discussed rumours about who would remain in their jobs. One senior official said some were even considering calling in sick the following morning.
There was also speculation about a replacement for Wiles if she were to leave. Several people reportedly backed John McEntee, who ran Trump’s personnel operation during his first term, with one joking that the President should send Marine One to collect him.
However, a senior administration official argued that removing Wiles would not provide an easy solution because she had built much of the President’s political operation around her allies.
“The thing to remember is Susie took over the entire Trump apparatus,” the official said, pointing to her connections with the Republican National Committee, political action committees, Senate candidates and members of the Cabinet.
“She’s the conductor of this orchestra. Anyone she would try to scapegoat would be a person she brought in.”
A former administration official instead criticised Wiles’s deputy, James Blair, who was described as the main architect of a nationwide redistricting effort. The Indiana element of that campaign collapsed after Republican state senators refused to support it.
The fallout was not confined to the White House. A Republican operative involved in the elections said the party should stop allowing commentators Mark Levin and Marc Thiessen to shape its foreign policy, arguing: “This is 100% downstream from Iran.”
Two sources also said Sergio Gor, Trump’s former personnel chief and now ambassador to India, was positioning himself for a role at the State Department. One predicted he could be nominated as secretary of state if Rubio resigned to pursue a 2028 presidential campaign.
Trump has faced a similar election-night collapse before. In 2022, he watched the midterms from Mar-a-Lago as advisers expected a strong Republican performance, only for reporters to be removed as MAGA-backed candidates began to fall and the President turned on his staff.
Three weeks ago, reports that Trump had privately discussed replacing Wiles prompted him to defend her on Truth Social, describing her as his loyal and longest-serving chief of staff and saying she had his complete confidence.
On Tuesday night, however, Wiles was upstairs with the President while staff and allies departed the White House, leaving Republicans across Washington to consider who might survive the fallout from the defeat.
