The resounding Republican defeat on Election Day exposed cracks in Donald Trump’s omnipotence, his biographer said Thursday.
On a new episode of Inside Trump’s Head, author Michael Wolff said the Democratic victories in several high-profile races provided “a measure of optimism” about the state of politics in America.
“We’ve just spent a year since last Election Day with Trump as this omnipotent figure in politics. And while I would not say that today spells in any way the end of Trump, I would say that the end of Trump could well happen,” he told co-host Joanna Coles.
“That’s one of the great things in American politics: reversals, landslides—things that you would not dream of happening—happen… This has been a horrifying year of ‘Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump’ without any sense that anyone could stand in his way,” he went on. “You think these people are permanent, and it turns out that they are fleeting.”
Democrats triumphed over their Republican rivals in key races in New York City, New Jersey, and Virginia on Tuesday. Zohran Mamdani, 34, became New York’s first Muslim mayor and the youngest in more than a century; Abigail Spanberger, 46, became the first female governor of Virginia; and Mikie Sherrill, 53, won the New Jersey gubernatorial race, marking the first time since 1961 that the state’s governor hailed from the same party for three terms in a row.
In California, voters backed Democratic firebrand Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50, a measure aimed at countering conservative redistricting efforts. The move could help Democrats secure five more seats in the House.
The sweeping losses sent Trump into a Truth Social meltdown, firing off a list of demands at lawmakers to abolish the filibuster and pass voter reform, as he cited an unnamed pollster in claiming that “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT.”
“I was on the phone last night with some White House people who were not happy campers about this,” Wolff said.
“And they’re not happy campers because they’ve got to manage Trump?” Coles asked.
“Exactly… That’s the clearest sense of this: it’s not their personal ‘our movement is being defeated.’ It’s like, ‘Oh f–k’.”
The author warned, however, that the story could still quickly turn back in Trump’s favor.
“Remember, Trump’s gift—his preternatural gift—that he will change this subject by tomorrow,” he said, later using the drug boat debacle in South America as an example. “Tomorrow, when we invade Venezuela, it will be another story.”
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung has previously called Wolff “a lying sack of s—t” who “has been proven to be a fraud.”
A White House insider earlier told Politico that “too much focus on foreign policy while people are hurting at home delivered exactly the results you’d expect” in the election.
“The president hasn’t talked about the cost of living in months,” a source close to the White House told the outlet. “People are still hurting financially and they want to know the White House is paying attention and trying to fix the problem as quickly as possible.”
Trump appeared to acknowledge as much in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday.
“I think [prices] are coming down, but they’re down already,” he said. “I think the biggest problem is Republicans don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about the word ‘affordability,’ and the Democrats lie about it.”
Source link
