Inside Team Trump’s Historic Collapse in the 2026 Midterm Elections
Politics|‘I Have Seen the Enemy, and It Is Us’: Inside Team Trump’s Historic Collapse
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/04/us/politics/trump-midterms-losses-republicans.html
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‘I Have Seen the Enemy, and It Is Us’: Inside Team Trump’s Historic Collapse
How an unpopular president and an unpopular war provided an opening for Democrats to make sweeping gains in the midterms.
‘I Have Seen the Enemy, and It Is Us’: Inside Team Trump’s Historic Collapse
How an unpopular president and an unpopular war provided an opening for Democrats to make sweeping gains in the midterms.
President Trump at a campaign rally in Kalispell, Mont., last month.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Six days before the election, more than two dozen of President Trump’s top strategists logged onto a private video call.
The mood was grim. The discussion began with talk of cyanide.
“Do you want the white pill first, or the black pill first?” asked Tony Fabrizio, the president’s chief pollster.
Tim Saler, one of the Republican Party’s top data consultants, laid out two scenarios. In the first, the $400 million MAGA Inc. super PAC was reaching the voters that it had wanted and expected to vote. “That’s the optimistic scenario,” he said.
The other was a wipeout.
“I’m getting my affairs in order,” James Blair, who left the White House to oversee the president’s midterm strategy, said to laughter, according to four people on the call. “I suggest everybody else do the same.”
For roughly 30 minutes, the call ran on gallows humor: funeral arrangements, prison food, presidential pardons, even a brief riff on fleeing the country.
“At least Bibi won. He’ll protect us,” Mr. Blair said sarcastically of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country had voted the day before. (Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc fell short of a majority, and his party soon claimed the election had been stolen.)
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