Trump toasts his ‘complete victory’ and mocks his own candidates
President Donald Trump has revelled in his party’s victories in the US Senate and mocked fellow Republicans who lost after not seeking his support.
Speaking in a 90-minute White House news conference after his party lost control of the House of Representatives in the US midterm elections, Mr Trump also suggested he may be able to govern more effectively after losing a chamber of the Congress.
Mr Trump faces the prospect, starting early next year, of endless investigations after Democrats formally take control of the House.
But he celebrated Republican success in retaining the Senate and seemed to blame losing candidates from his own party for distancing themselves from him.
Mr Trump told reporters: “I thought it was very close to complete victory.”
He also belittled the number of high-profile Democrats, including his predecessor, who supported their candidates, while suggesting that he alone was responsible for the Republican triumphs.
“I only had me. I didn’t have anybody else,” Mr Trump said.
Though boasting that Republicans appear likely to hold the highest number of Senate seats in 100 years, Mr Trump was quick to distance himself from his party’s failure to maintain control of the House.
In a remarkable scene, he called out defeated Republicans by name.
He said: “Mia Love gave me no love and she lost.”
“Candidates who embraced our message of lower taxes, low regulation, low crime, strong borders and great judges excelled last night,” he continued.
“On the other hand, you had some that decided to, ‘Let’s stay away. Let’s stay away’. They did very poorly. I’m not sure that I should be happy or sad, but I feel just fine about it.”
The president’s rebuke was felt on Capitol Hill. Ryan Costello, a Republican from Pennsylvania who announced his retirement from the House earlier this year, tweeted his displeasure with Mr Trump.
He wrote that his colleagues have had to “bite ur lip more times you’d care to; to disagree & separate from POTUS on principle & civility in ur campaign; to lose bc of POTUS & have him piss on u. Angers me to my core”.
Mr Trump suggested there could be room for bipartisanship, declaring that Democrats - who made opposing him a centrepiece to their campaign - would, in fact, be eager to work with him on issues like infrastructure.
But he also declared that Republicans would retaliate if Democrats use their control of the House to issue subpoenas to seek his tax returns and investigate his business dealings, his cabinet’s conduct and his campaign’s ties to Russia.
“They can play that game, but we can play it better. Because we have a thing called the United States Senate,” Mr Trump said.
“If that happens, then we’re going to do the same thing and government would come to a halt and we’re going to blame them.”
Meanwhile, Democrat Nancy Pelosi has said she is confident she will win enough support to be elected speaker of the US House of Representatives next year.
The California Democrat says she is the “best person” for the job and the person most capable of unifying Democrats now that they have won the majority in the lower chamber of the US Congress.
Ms Pelosi told reporters that her pitch for another turn with the gavel is about the future. She said: “It’s not about what you have done, it’s about what you can do.”
Democrats won the House majority on in the US midterm elections, securing the 218 seats needed for the majority. Ms Pelosi was speaker when Democrats last held the majority in 2010.
Ms Pelosi said Democrats will “strive for bipartisanship” when they take over the majority next year.
She said Democrats “have a responsibility to seek common ground where we can”, adding: “Where we cannot, we must stand our ground.”
Ms Pelosi says she worked productively with former president George W Bush when she was speaker a decade ago and would like to do so again with US President Donald Trump.
She said: “We’d like to work together so our legislation will be bipartisan.”
But Ms Pelosi said Democrats were not elected to be “a rubber stamp” for Mr Trump and said they would act as a “check and balance” on the Republican president.
She also said she has no regrets about discouraging Democratic candidates from engaging with Mr Trump on immigration issues during the midterms.
She said it was important “not to take the bait like the president was putting out there”.
Ms Pelosi said immigrants come to the US with values such as determination, courage and optimism, and that they make the country more American.
She said other presidents saw that, but “this president used it in fearmongering. I just don’t think that’s right”.
But she said that in order to get into a position to fight Mr Trump on the issue, Democrats had to first win on issues affecting the financial security of working families.
The House Democratic leader said Democrats will have a “responsibility for oversight” when they take charge in January.
If elected speaker, Ms Pelosi said she will leave final decisions about that oversight to committees. She would not answer a question about whether they will seek Mr Trump’s tax filings
But she said committee requests for documents or hearings will not be “scattershot”.
Democrats are expected to investigate Mr Trump’s business dealings, his cabinet’s conduct and his campaign’s ties to Russia.
Ms Pelosi said: “we’ll know what we are doing and we’ll do it right.”
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said he had spoken with Ms Pelosi about how they might “find a way forward” in a divided Congress next year.
Mr McConnell said the Republicans “had a very good day” despite the House loss.
He said: “I’m proud of what happened. The president was very helpful to us.”
Mr McConnell added that he and Ms Pelosi are “not unfamiliar” with one another as long-time leaders and colleagues.
On congressional action for the rest of the year, he said he could not imagine taking up immigration and acknowledged that the Democratic House and Republican Senate were likely to go their separate ways when it comes to the legislative agenda.
“Areas for legislative agreement will be more limited,” he said.
“The one issue that leader Pelosi and I discussed this morning where there could be a possible bipartisan agreement would be something on infrastructure, but there could be a lot of other things.”
Mr McConnell said that Democrats in the House will have to decide how much they want to “harass” Mr Trump.
Mr McConnell said the contentious, partisan fight over US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination was “very helpful” in winning Senate seats, like an “adrenaline shot” for Republican voters.
Mr Kavanaugh was confirmed last month after a California professor accused him of sexual assault when both were teenagers.
US ATTORNEY General Jeff Sessions has resigned as the country’s chief law enforcement officer.
Mr Sessions announced his resignation in a letter to President Donald Trump and said it came at “your request”.
The decision to leave his post comes after Mr Sessions endured more than a year of blistering and personal attacks over his recusal from the investigation into ties between Russia and Mr Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Mr Trump announced the resignation in a tweet and tweeted separately that he was naming Mr Sessions’ chief of staff Matthew Whitaker, a former United States attorney from Iowa, as acting attorney general.
The resignation was the culmination of a toxic relationship that frayed just weeks into Mr Sessions’ tumultuous tenure, when he stepped aside from the investigation into potential co-ordination between the president’s campaign and Russia.
Mr Trump blamed the decision for opening the door to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, who took over the Russia investigation and began examining whether Mr Trump’s hectoring of Mr Sessions was part of a broader effort to obstruct justice and stymie the probe.
The Justice Department did not announce a departure for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mr Mueller more than a year and a half ago and has closely overseen his work since then.
The relentless attacks on Mr Sessions came even though the Alabama Republican was the first US senator to endorse Mr Trump and despite the fact that his crime-fighting agenda and priorities – particularly his hawkish immigration enforcement policies – largely mirrored the president’s.
But the relationship was irreparably damaged in March 2017 when Mr Sessions, acknowledging previously undisclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador and citing his work as a campaign aide, recused himself from the Russia investigation.
The decision infuriated Mr Trump, who repeatedly lamented that he would have never selected Mr Sessions if he had known the Attorney General would recuse.
The recusal left the investigation in the hands of Mr Rosenstein, who appointed Mr Mueller as special counsel two months later after Mr Trump fired then-FBI director James Comey.
The rift lingered for the duration of Mr Sessions’ tenure, and the Attorney General, despite praising the President’s agenda, never managed to return to Mr Trump’s good graces.
The deteriorating relationship became a soap opera stalemate for the administration. Mr Trump belittled Mr Sessions but, perhaps following the advice of aides, held off on firing him.
Mr Sessions, for his part, proved determined to remain in the position until dismissed. A logjam broke when Republican senators who had publicly backed Mr Sessions began signalling a willingness to consider a replacement.
In attacks delivered on Twitter, in person and in interviews, Mr Trump called Mr Sessions weak and beleaguered, complained that he was not more aggressively pursuing allegations of corruption against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and called it “disgraceful” that Mr Sessions was not more serious in scrutinising the origins of the Russia investigation for possible law enforcement bias.