OPINION:
President Trump did some great things over the past two years. He gave us a robust economy, cut taxes, tackled government waste, closed the border and deported 1.2 million illegal aliens.
For the first time in 47 years, we confronted the menace of Iran, the chief sponsor of international terrorism, moving relentlessly toward nuclear weapons.
Still, all of it can be undone.
People were interested in these podcasts
The results of the midterm bloodbath can be explained only as a rejection of Mr. Trump, less his policies than his personality.
In reliably red Texas, a state Mr. Trump carried by double digits in 2024, Republicans lost every statewide executive office on the ballot. Before 2026, the last time a Democrat won a Senate race in Texas was in 1988.
A Democrat was elected to the Senate from Kansas for the first time in 94 years. In 2026, Democrats gained the greatest number of House seats since the midterm elections of 2018, and will hold their largest House majority since 1990.
Voters elected sideshow attractions such as Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan Democrat — who will take the oath of office on either the Quran or “The Communist Manifesto” — and James Talarico, Texas Democrat, who looks like Beaver Cleaver’s older brother, Wally, and speaks of six sexes and a nonbinary God. “Gee, Mrs. Cleaver, can the Beav come out and help us destroy America?”
The president forgot a cardinal rule of politics: People want to like the man who leads them.
As Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, explains: “The persona of public officials matters. Reagan was impossible to dislike, which is why he could ride out some unpopular decisions. But if a president is not likable — Nixon and Trump — he cannot ride out bad decisions.”
At times, it seemed that the president did everything possible to make himself unlikable and then dared voters not to like him.
Some of his offhand remarks went beyond bad taste, such as saying that the murders of director Rob Reiner and his wife were related to Trump derangement syndrome. This showed appalling insensitivity toward a grieving family.
He forged new frontiers of arrogance and ostentatiousness at a time of middle-class angst over the rising cost of housing and healthcare. Living large at a time when so many were forced to live small did not endear him to voters.
At times, he acted more like a Roman emperor than a U.S. president, like when he tried to add his name alongside that of former President John F. Kennedy to the arts center and planned to build a Triumphal Arch (the Arc de Trump?) near Arlington National Cemetery.
The day after the midterm elections, he bragged about the rare marble he plans to use in his new White House ballroom. It was truly a Marie Antoinette moment.
Mr. Trump’s pledge to give every adult American $5,000 provided that his party retained control of Congress was a clumsy attempt at vote-buying.
Sometimes it seems that the president creates his own reality. After the returns were in, Mr. Trump declared: “We had an interesting little election. I was not on the ballot. Please remember that.”
Calling 2026 “an interesting little election” is akin to calling the Battle of Little Bighorn a skirmish. If he were on the ballot, it would have been worse.
According to exit polls by NBC and Reuters, 75% of voters said they were dissatisfied or angry about the country’s direction, 65% said Mr. Trump’s policies made the economy worse and 62% blamed him for high prices.
Voters think the Iran war has dragged on too long. The problem is not the war itself but the way it has been conducted. The president’s pronouncements are a roller-coaster ride of indecision. It has variously been the case that Iran wants a deal, we are on the verge of getting a deal and we do not care whether we get a deal. Maybe we will start bombing again.
Mr. Trump lost the war when he said there would be no boots on the ground. You can destroy nuclear facilities and infrastructure and degrade Iran’s military by bombing, but you will never overthrow the regime without troops to dig out the entrenched Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The way the president has tried to micromanage the Iran war is reminiscent of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s bungling of the Vietnam War.
The course for conservatives is to support Mr. Trump where we can — including saving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and getting voter ID passed — and take a walk where we cannot.
Now, if we can just get the president to stop sabotaging himself …
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
Follow the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.