WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — US President Donald Trump congratulated Democrats on winning both chambers of Congress, but said Republicans would have won had his own name been on the ballot, and warned he would “veto everything” if the new majority refused to work with him.
“My message is, congratulations to the Democrats, and I look forward to working with you for the good of our country,” Trump said in a telephone interview on election night. “I have total veto power and I’m sure we’ll be able to work things out.” He added: “I think they’re gonna want to work with me. Otherwise I’d just veto everything and they’re not gonna want that.”
He placed the blame on his party’s candidates. “In some cases they didn’t like the candidates, and in some cases those candidates were not my friend and the base knows that better than anybody,” he said. “We would have won easily if I was on the ballot. But I wasn’t.” In a television interview aired early on Wednesday, he said Democrats “did a good job”.
Trump had spent the final weeks telling voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot”. As results came in, he posted: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” He also shared a picture of a red baseball cap with the word “veto” on it, after vowing to be “Mr Veto” before the vote.
Several of the candidates he personally backed lost, including Ken Paxton in Texas, Michael Whatley in North Carolina and Darline Graham in South Carolina.
Asked if he was upset, Trump said he had “tried hard” and “left it on the field”. “It’s a point in time. Happened many times before,” he said.
He was also asked about the war with Iran, in which Pakistan has been a central go-between. It would be over “when I say it’s over, basically”, he said. “It’ll end when I say it ends.”
