Donald Trump said it 47 times, and it cost him the midterms

November 8, 2026 — 2:00am

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Nick Bryant is a journalist and author of the substack, History Never Ended. He has covered and written extensively on American politics.

Fitz: Nick, I reckon you’re about the most heavily qualified journalist I’ve talked to on this subject. You’ve got a degree in history from the University of Cambridge; a doctorate in American politics from the University of Oxford; written three books on US politics, and worked extensively as a BBC correspondent on the ground in Washington and New York. Am I missing anything in terms of your qualifications?

NB: Oh! Look, my one great boast is that Joe Biden kept one of my books on the shelf in the Oval Office, which was very different in those days. There was my book, but there wasn’t any gold...

Fitz: I’m a world expert at working in gratuitous book plugs to extraneous subjects. What was the book?

NB: When America Stopped Being Great.

Fitz: Which brings us to those staggering election results, with Republicans even wiped out of such strongholds as Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and maybe even Mississippi. What is the cause of that level of rejection? From a neophyte point of view, I’m tempted to say because Trump’s a disgrace and a danger to shipping, but that is no different to what he has been, in my view, for a decade. Why now?

NB: Part of it was: “It’s the economy, stupid”. Every single gas station in America became a billboard for the Democrats, as was every single supermarket checkout. And let’s not forget fertilisers in these rural states that the Republicans lost. At the polls, voters identified two clear decisions from the president: “Liberation Day”, when tariffs even hit penguins on uninhabited Australian islands and second, the decision to go to war with Iran. People got to know about the Strait of Hormuz, a little-known choke point that I dare say most Americans had never heard of, but they know it now and they know the impact that it’s had on their hip pocket.

Fitz: And the other part?

NB: Another key factor was alleged corruption, concerns that the Trump family and its acolytes have enriched themselves during this presidency – with an Oval Office bedecked with gold, at a time when so many Americans are suffering personal recessions, it was really problematic.

Fitz: Those three factors were all driven by Trump himself. Is the real problem that Trump said, “Pretend I’m on the ballot”, and they listened?

NB: Yeah, Trump said that 47 times, and this was a repudiation of Trump. It’s being called a “blue wave” and a “blunami”, a “red reckoning”, a “red rout”. But none of those descriptors works for me because they don’t include the name “Trump”. This was a total rejection of Donald Trump, and his hyper-aggressive politics, no question about it. And I don’t think the Democrats should necessarily view these results as a great endorsement of them. The polls showed that they were........

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