From§Each

Page A228From§Eachthe morning edition — 4 November 2026

Trump blames the ballot for a loss his own nominee's leaked tape blamed on his war.

By LouOne More Question

“GOP grapples with midterm bloodbath: ‘Think Titanic meets Hindenburg’”, 4 November 2026 (Photo via Washington Examiner — the original report)

As it ran on the front

Could somebody walk me through this? Not the policy part — the sequence. I want to stand where each of these men stood and do what they did, in the order they did it, because I've got four pieces of paper on my kitchen table and they won't lie flat together.

Start at the end, since that's where the posting happened. Tuesday night, the screens. I'm told there was a watch party in a Dallas hotel conference room for Ken Paxton, running for Senate, and that barely two hours after the last polls closed the giant screen broadcasting the results went black. Fitting, the paper called it. Texas hadn't gone this way since 1988. Somewhere else in the country the same night, the House changed hands, and the Senate majority Republicans were supposed to keep went with it — one wire service reached for Titanic and Hindenburg in the same sentence, which I take to mean two separate disasters, not one.…

…(cont) So the next morning — Wednesday, this week — the president goes on Truth Social. I want to walk through exactly what he typed, because the order matters. He says the Republicans would have won in a landslide if his name had been on the ballot. Not "we." Not "the party." His name, specifically, as the missing ingredient. Then, same post, same breath near as I can tell, he calls what the Democrats just did — taking both chambers from his own party — a good job. Those are two separate rooms in the same house. In one room, his name on the ballot turns a loss into a landslide win. In the other room, the people who beat his party without his name on the ballot did a good job. I keep trying to stand in both rooms at once and I can't find the hallway between them.

Now the part I actually need walked through, step by step, because I wasn't in the room and somebody was. Somebody in that room asks him, plainly, what's dragging his campaign. And he answers. Not polling. Not turnout mechanics. He says it's the war — the president's war with Iran — and he says it's gas prices, it's diesel, over six dollars a gallon. His own man, at his own table, twenty-seven days before the votes got counted, naming the president's war and the president's economy as the thing sinking him.

So here's what I'd like demonstrated, physically, the way you'd show a man how to bleed a brake line: show me the step where "his name would have produced a landslide" and the step where "his own nominee already told donors it was the president's war and the president's prices" both sit on the same table without one of them sliding off. I've set this up on the hood of the car in the garage, the way I do, pieces laid out so nothing rolls under the seat — the Truth Social post on the left, the Dallas watch party screen going dark in the middle, the October 7th recording on the right. Twenty-seven days apart, the recording and the vote. Twenty-four hours apart, the watch party and the post calling it a landslide-in-waiting.

Which one goes first in the actual story — the war his own nominee named a month out, or the missing name on the ballot the president named the morning after?

Oh — one more thing, before you put the tools away. I don't know what to do with that word yet. I just know it was said, twenty-seven days before the landslide that didn't happen, by the man running on his ticket.

“You tell your own guy's donors it's the war and the diesel prices sinking you, then a month later you tell the country it was the ballot missing your name — pick one. The "good job" to the people who just took both chambers from you isn't manners, it's a man who knows exactly which fact he can't afford to say out loud. Either the war cost him the Senate or his name would've saved it; both can't be true, and he's the one who put both on paper.”
Sal
“Look, the chairman didn't blame the war, he blamed turnout mechanics, voter enthusiasm, redistricting cycles — all the usual off-year stuff. The recording? That's one candidate, one bad week, taken out of context by people who don't want to talk about the real numbers. Though I'll grant the real numbers aren't great either. Did I say that? Strike it.”
Chip

Earlier in this story

The receipts

‘I blame the president’: Stunned Paxton voters fume at historic fumble
Washington Examinerright§

DALLAS — Barely two hours after the last polls closed, the giant screen broadcasting the nation’s election results went black at Ken Paxton’s watch party in a hotel conference center. It was a fitting metaphor to describe Republicans’ night in Texas and beyond. For the first time since 1988, the Lone Star State had just […]

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This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.