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President Donald Trump congratulated Democrats on their midterm victories in an election night phone call with CBS News, while making clear he holds veto power over whatever the new Democratic Congress sends him.
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Shop NowSpeaking to CBS News, Trump said his message to Democrats was congratulations and that he looked forward to working with them for the good of the country.
He said he knows many Democrats and expected the two sides to work things out, noting that he has total veto power. “Otherwise I’d just veto everything and they’re not gonna want that,” he said.
Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in Tuesday’s elections. CBS News reported that Democrats are expected to hold at least 54 Senate seats after winning 10 of 11 battleground states, with races in Alaska and Mississippi still unresolved.
CBS News estimates Democrats will control between 251 and 268 House seats once all votes are counted.
Trump attributed the Republican losses largely to his own absence from the ballot. He told CBS News that Republicans would have won easily if he had been a candidate.
He also said that in some races voters did not like the candidates, some of whom he said were not his friends, and that the Republican base stayed home as a result.
Asked whether he was upset, Trump said he had tried hard and left it on the field. He said he had tried to help candidates win but they could not get elected, and that voters did not come out as they should have. He described the result as a point in time and said such reversals have happened many times before.
His explanation differs from the one offered by Vice President JD Vance.
In a post on X on Wednesday, reported by CBS News, Vance said the war in Iran was the reason Republicans lost and that many voters who backed Trump in 2024 supported Democrats this year. In a separate Fox News interview on Tuesday, Trump suggested the war was partly to blame, while saying people understand the importance of what he has done.
On the war itself, Trump told CBS News it will end when he says it ends. The conflict began in late February, when Trump pledged it would last four to five weeks. It is now in its eighth month.
The call was CBS News’ own reporting. The new Congress convenes in January.
