Republicans urge Trump to delay run
Senior Republicans have attacked Donald Trump, blaming him for the party’s humdrum performance in this week’s midterm elections, days before the former president is expected to announce another tilt at the White House.
The party is still on track to take control of the House of Representatives but the ‘‘red wave’’ it had been hoping for, which many expected would sweep the party to a large majority and wrestle back control of the Senate from the Democrats, has not materialised. Some say the buck stops with Trump, 76, and that he has put personal ambition above the needs of the party.
‘‘Republicans have followed Donald Trump off the side of a cliff,’’ David Urban, a longtime Trump adviser, told The New York Times.
Trump personally endorsed scores of candidates in various races before Wednesday’s elections. Some, such as JD Vance, who won the Senate election in Ohio, performed well, but others proved to be a disaster. Mehmet Oz, defending the Republican Senate seat in Pennsylvania, was soundly beaten.
Several leading Republicans have pleaded with Trump to delay an expected announcement next week that he is running again for president. They fear he will damage the party’s chances in next month’s run-off election in Georgia that could decide control of the Senate.
‘‘I’ll be advising him to put it off until after the run-off,’’ Jason Miller, a former Trump spokesman, said.
However, Trump is understood to have no intention of cancelling any announcement. ‘‘We had tremendous success. Why would anything change?’’ he said in an interview with Fox News yesterday.
Several Trump candidates standing for the House won, but others contesting high-profile battles, such as in governor races in New York and Michigan, fell short. Nationwide, more than 300 Republican candidates denied the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump is said to have been irate when he heard some of the results and even to have blamed his wife, Melania, for backing Oz, a celebrity television doctor.
The former president has brushed off the idea that his candidates performed badly. Posting on Truth Social, a social media platform, Trump said: ‘‘Incredible how the dishonest Fake News Media is. The Failing New York Times has gone crazy. So many of the people I Endorsed went on to victory on Tuesday Night . . . Almost all of the people I endorsed WON, yet if you read the story from two Trump hating writers (who only do as they are told!), you would not even recognise the truth. They truly are, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!!!’’
The media was not alone in pointing out the poor performance of some Trump-backed candidates. Other leading Republicans also have blamed the former president. Peter King, a former member of the House from Long Island, New York, and a longtime Trump backer, said: ‘‘I strongly believe he should no longer be the face of the Republican Party.’’ He added that the party ‘‘can’t become a personality cult’’.
The final arithmetic in the Senate is still to be determined. Outcomes in Nevada and Arizona, where the Republican candidates are Trump followers, look extremely close.
In Georgia the winning candidate is required to win more than 50% of the vote and that means there will be a run-off election on December 6 between Raphael Warnock,
the incumbent Democrat, and Herschel Walker, the Trumpbacked former American football star whose campaign has been dogged by claims about his personal life.
Some of Trump’s former allies in the party have indicated that they believe it is time for the former president to pass the mantle to Ron DeSantis, 44, the Florida governor whose landslide victory was one of the biggest Republican successes.
In addition, a number of House races are yet to declare. At the last count the Republicans had 209 seats, with the Democrats at 191. A party needs 218 for a majority.
Both parties would need to win two of the outstanding Senate elections in Nevada, Arizona and Georgia to control the upper chamber. In the event of both having 50 seats, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, gets the tie-breaking vote.