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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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Republicans have started laying the blame after Democrats won almost everywhere in the midterm elections, delivering stunning losses for the GOP in a sharp rebuke of President Donald Trump and his party.
Democrats ousted Republicans across the country, winning control of both the House and the Senate and giving Democrats the power to obstruct Trump’s legislative agenda and investigate his administration for the final two years of his second term.
While the midterm elections typically result in losses for the sitting president’s party, the scale of GOP losses—including in states that Trump carried handily in 2024, like Texas, Kansas and South Carolina—was a direct repudiation of Trump, as voters grew increasingly frustrated by high costs and the unpopular war with Iran.
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Vice President JD Vance squarely blamed the Iran war as the primary reason for the GOP’s losses. And while Trump has conceded that the war affected the midterms, he also defended the decision to go to war.
Other Republicans including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have pointed the finger squarely at the president, and said the results reflect the need for a wider Republican reckoning.
Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment via email.
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Trump Acknowledges Iran War’s Toll
The president has conceded that his war with Iran was responsible for his party’s stunning midterm losses, though he defended his decision to launch it.
“I think it's largely true because it drove the gasoline [prices] up a little bit, short term,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.
“At the same time, if I had to do it again, I’d have to do it again,” he added. “You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
And while the president made himself the central character of the midterms and urged voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot,” he distanced himself from the results once the scale of Republican losses became clear.
"I don't like to consider it a defeat for me. I wasn't on the ballot," he told Fox News.
On Truth Social, he wrote: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”
JD Vance Blames Iran War
The vice president broke with Trump’s defense of the Iran war in a lengthy post-mortem on social media following the Republican Party’s losses.
In a post on X, he said the war was the main reason for the losses.
"The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night," he wrote. “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so."
He said the Republican Party’s problem was not that its voters had stayed home, but that some who had voted for Trump in 2024 had decided to vote for Democrats.
He listed four actions that Republicans could take to win back their voters: end the Iran war, focus on the cost of living and inflation, put America first, and change the U.S. relationship with Israel.
Ron DeSantis Calls It 'Rebuke' of Trump
The Florida governor, who ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, placed blame for the losses more directly on the president.
"Look, this midterm, no question, was a rebuke of the president and the Congress by Democrats, independents, and some Republicans that crossed over," DeSantis said on Fox News.
DeSantis also blamed GOP lawmakers for failing to deliver enough conservative wins while they controlled both chambers of Congress.
“A lot of our voters who stayed home, they stayed home because they were frustrated with the lack of productivity from Republicans in the House and Senate,” he said.
Ted Cruz Says GOP Didn’t Care About Voters’ Struggles
In a lengthy examination of the party’s defeat, Texas Senator Ted Cruz said the GOP saw “Watergate-level repudiation” because they lost touch with voters’ concerns.
In a post on X, he said the losses stemmed from the failure of Republicans to do enough to address the “very real pain” of Americans struggling due to the surging cost of living.
“That is very real pain from real Americans, and too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand or they didn’t care,” Cruz wrote.
“Food is too high, gas is too high, diesel is too high, insurance is too high, life is too high,” he added.
He pointed to Trump’s tariffs that “have made everything too expensive” and said the Iran war “has dragged on too long.” He also pointed to an “economic disconnect,” saying the construction of data centers were turning “billionaires into centibillionaires” while average Americans were seeing their electricity bills soar.
“Understandably, people were pissed off, and elected Republicans didn’t do enough to address their very real pain,” he said.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Blames Trump
Greene, a Republican former congresswoman who resigned in January after an acrimonious split with Trump, placed the blame for the midterm losses directly on the president.
In a post on X, she called the results “a total referendum on Trump.”
She added: “He told people to vote like he was on the ballot, and they did.”
In the post, she criticized the president for his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and accused him of putting his wealthy donors before Americans struggling due to rising prices.
“Trump covered up the Epstein files protecting rapists and pedophiles, started a foreign war no one wanted and killed a school full of kids, put his rich elite donors before the struggling Americans who put him in office, made life unaffordable with his tariffs, and caused gas and diesel prices to skyrocket while he played the market and sold crypto,” she wrote.
“And Republicans stood behind him silently clapping like trained baby seals.”
Greene seems to be referring to the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, a small city in southern Iran, at the start of the current Iran conflict. Trump and the White House have also repeatedly denied claims that they covered up the Epstein files, and have released millions of pages to the public.
Senator Thom Tillis Says Several Factors To Blame
Tillis, a retiring North Carolina Republican, has rejected Vance’s explanation for the losses as “oversimplified.”
“That is one of several factors,” he told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins.
“Do you honestly believe, for example, respectfully, Mr. Vice President, that we saw the departure of Hispanics over the war? Give me a break. It's more complicated than that, and we owe a thoughtful analysis so that we get it right.”
In the interview, he cited the administration’s immigration enforcement, the Iran war and tariffs as other reasons for the results.
“I think that it has to do with failure by the Secretary of Homeland Security Noem in terms of proper interior enforcement, it has to do with probably Pete Hegseth not providing a clearminded strategy for how do you get in and get out of Iran, it has to do with Howard Lutnick’s Liberation Day which was an abject failure,” he said.
Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Edward Pearcey.
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