President Donald Trump's top strategists turned to Israel for gallows humor on a private video call held six days before Election Day and one day after Israelis voted, The New York Times reported. "At least Bibi won. He'll protect us," James Blair, who left the White House to run midterm strategy, said sarcastically of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu's bloc fell short of a majority, with the prime minister poised to remain in power for the foreseeable future. "Maybe we could get asylum in Israel," Tony Fabrizio, the president's chief pollster, said.
Trump's top strategists had convened to discuss the likely outcome of the midterms, and the mood was funereal, The New York Times reported. Tony Fabrizio, the president's chief pollster, opened by asking: "Do you want the white pill first, or the black pill first?"
A summer slide deck from Blair showed the Democratic lead swelling amid hostilities, narrowing during talks over a "memorandum of understanding" and spiking when the ceasefire failed. By July's end Democrats led by 10 points, and the slide's "bottom line" said Republicans could keep the House against only a four-point lead. "But that won't happen without an extended cease-fire, Hormuz open & gas prices falling," the slide warned. "A final result approaching D+10 would likely cost us the Senate."
Estimates from The New York Times put Trump's party on course to lose the national popular congressional vote by about 13 points, the worst result in half a century. Before the polls had shut, Trump was already brooding. "If we never went into Iran, what do you think would happen in the midterms?" the president asked privately, according to a person who spoke to him.
The war handed voters a simple narrative: Trump promised no new wars and began one, and promised lower prices but delivered inflation. An early October Fox News poll named corruption voters' top worry. Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said: "The President only acts in the best interest of the American people. There are no conflicts of interest." "A small price to pay," Trump insisted of soaring gas prices.
This week, Democrats seized a large House majority and the Senate, flipping GOP strongholds such as Kansas, South Carolina and Texas, according to interviews with more than 70 insiders, many of them anonymous.
