They Took Him at His Word

The results first, as of the paper's deadline, with two Senate seats still counting. The Democrats have won the House and the Senate. In the Senate they took seven seats from the Republicans, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina and Maine, held Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia, and stand at 54, from 47 on Monday, with Alaska and Mississippi open. In the House they had 231 seats called to 144 at seven this morning with sixty to go, twenty-nine of them flipped, and NBC's desk estimates the final count at 258 to 177; CBS counted it the fifth time since the Second World War that a party took both chambers in one midterm. The governorships went the same way, Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Iowa, Michigan and Arizona to the Democrats, every one by seven points or more, Alaska leading by twenty, Kansas by half a point, and Florida the one close race the Republican won. Texas, which the President carried by fourteen two years ago, elected a Democratic senator by twelve and a Democratic governor by seven on the same night. Of the ten Republicans the paper rated between October 22 and November 3, eight have lost, Husted, Jackson, Hinson, Marshall, Lombardo, Tiffany, Graham and Tafoya, and the other two, Hyde-Smith and Sullivan, are the two seats still counting. He asked thirty arenas to pretend he was on the ballot. The country did.

The paper will say how the Democrats won, because it is the whole point of what follows and it is not the story they will tell themselves this week. They did not win on anything they did. The NBC exit poll put the President's approval among people who actually voted at 38 percent, which CBS says is on course to be the lowest for any President in any midterm, lower than George W. Bush in 2006, when his party lost both houses; 43 percent said one reason for their vote was to express opposition to him; nine in ten called government corruption a major factor; 65 percent said his policies had made the economy worse and 63 percent said the Iran war was the wrong decision. And the party they handed Congress to is viewed unfavorably by 53 percent of the same voters. They chose a party they do not like over a man they like less. The Republicans knew it in October, when their ads mentioned him one percent of the time, and the paper knew it when it endorsed thirteen Democrats in thirteen days and said in piece after piece that it was endorsing them on the Republican's record and not their own. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is no longer in Congress and no longer pretending, put it in a sentence overnight: "Tonight was a total referendum on Trump. He told people to vote like he was on the ballot and they did." The mandate is against him. That is not a smaller mandate. It is a more specific one, and it comes with instructions.

Here is what he did with it. At 11:35 on Tuesday night he posted that Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, had lost because he "had become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life," which is a remarkable thing to say about a man who lost by seven on a night when the Republican Senate candidate in the same state lost by twelve. Two minutes later he telephoned CBS: "My message is congratulations to the Democrats, and I look forward to working with you for the good of our country," and, in the same call, "in some cases those candidates were not my friend, and the base knows that better than anybody. And they stayed back." At 11:38 he posted that he was "going to become a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost!", at 11:40 a photograph of a red cap embroidered VETO, and at 11:52 that "FoxNews bears responsibility for these losses." Then, at midnight, he telephoned Fox, and spent twenty-three minutes with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum explaining the night. The candidates: "They didn't like the candidates. Some of the candidates that I endorsed fought me and they didn't like me." The base: "hundreds of thousands of people would just say, 'Sir, they weren't for you,' and they'd spell out all the flaws." The turnout: "they just didn't inspire the people to get out and vote. And I wasn't on the ballot. If I was on the ballot, they would have gotten out." Then, correcting himself, "it wasn't that they didn't go. They didn't go enough." Himself: "I don't view it as a hit on me." His Cabinet: "Had nothing to do with my cabinet." Fox's polling: "You ought to get yourself a good pollster because your pollster is the worst," to which Mr. Baier replied that the results were "pretty close to what the Fox polls showed." The war: "I think a part of it was Iran," and "historically, I think I'll be judged for having done the right thing, but that gave us an evening that was not that pleasant." And would he accept the results? "Yes, sure I'll accept them. Why wouldn't I?" The paper forecast on Tuesday morning that he would use the word "rigged" or "cheat" about at least one race the Republican lost by noon today, and as of its deadline he had not; the only "ELECTION FRAUD" of the night was a post at one in the morning on Election Day about the other Dan Sullivan, before a vote was counted. The forecast was wrong and it is graded below.

The pattern is older than Tuesday and the paper will state it plainly: when they win it is because of him, "we get 50% more votes than when I'm not on the ballot," Hannity, Monday night, and when they lose it is because of them. He told the AP the same thing in October 2018, asked whether he would bear some responsibility if the House was lost: "No, I think I'm helping people." A White House official told CBS on Tuesday night, while the returns were still coming in, that "candidate quality matters, and President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves," and "buckle up." In 2022 the excuse was candidate quality, and it was partly true; Herschel Walker was on the ballot. Ken Paxton, Jon Husted, Roger Marshall, Ashley Hinson and Ashley Moody are not Herschel Walker, and they lost anyway, by more, in states he carried by fourteen, eleven, sixteen, thirteen and thirteen, and the two who were most faithful to him, Marshall, whom he flew to Kansas twice to rescue, and Paxton, for whom he did two rallies in a day, lost by five and twelve. When every endorsed candidate in every kind of state loses to the same wind, the common factor is not the candidate. Senator Thune's statement overnight was "Thankfully, we still have President Trump in the White House." Speaker Johnson told a crowd in Shreveport, "I am disappointed, too," and "Come 2028, we will take back the House." Asked whether Mr. Johnson should keep leading the House Republicans, the President said, "I think he's done a very good job." Fox's own hosts had settled on Iran by one in the morning, Sean Hannity "100 percent," which is the nearest any of them came to saying his name. The paper's question for the Republicans who survived is when one of them will say the sentence out loud, and its forecast, dated today, is that none who is staying will before the State of the Union. Thomas Massie, who is leaving, said it at midnight: "it's about holding Republicans accountable for betraying their promises. All Republicans had to do was: 1. put Americans First 2. not start another war 3. prosecute sex traffickers."

Which brings the paper to Steve Bannon, who said it a year ago, from the other side. On November 5, 2025, the morning after the last election the Republicans lost, he told a room at the Conservative Partnership Institute: "If we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison, myself included." In March of last year, on his own program, it was "God forbid we don't win in '28, President Trump is going to prison, just like Bolsonaro in Brazil." And on October 11, three weeks ago, he told Ted Koppel on CBS what the House changing hands would mean: "I think you'll see Bobby Kennedy impeached." "I think you'll see Pete Hegseth impeached." "I think you'll see subpoenas flying every day." "Oh, we can't afford to lose." On his podcast he put it in a word: losing the House would "turn the White House into Fort Apache." The President put it more briefly in Durant, Oklahoma, on October 1, as the reason to pretend: "If we don't win, they'll end up impeaching me." The paper has rated forty-three people in clown makeup since September and never once agreed with any of them about anything, and it is going to agree with Mr. Bannon now, about the mechanism, because he is the one man in the President's circle who knows exactly what a congressional subpoena is. He ignored one in 2021 and served four months in a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, for it. He is not warning the Democrats. He is describing what a Congress is for.

So here is the obligation, dated, since the paper dates things. The 120th Congress is sworn in on January 3, 2027, the lame duck between now and then is still theirs, and nothing the paper asks for ends before November 7, 2028. The Democrats won on Tuesday because voters wanted the man checked. Checking him is not a letter. It is not a strongly worded letter, or a joint statement by the ranking members, or a floor speech with a chart, and the paper, which endorsed thirteen of these people, will rate the first one who sends a letter where a subpoena was available. There are three tracks and they run at once. The first is investigation, with subpoenas and witnesses under oath, and the list writes itself from the paper's own fortnight: the no-bid Reflecting Pool contracts, one to the company that did the pool at his golf club, promised at $1.8 million and billed at many times that, and a $1.7 million algae contract to a donor who once pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe a sitting congressman, followed by the felony indictment of a 67-year-old canoeist that the Justice Department itself withdrew as the product of "hasty and botched" work; disaster aid as campaign currency, a declaration for seven of Ohio's 23 counties signed "at the request of Jon" the day before a rally, the other sixteen still "under review" a month later; the Russian diesel deal that twelve senators of both parties called "a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies"; the Justice Department suit against Alaska's election that a federal judge threw out on Sunday and that the President says he ordered, "I'm the one that said do it"; the Iran war, its price, and "whenever I want it to end"; and the standing list, the Epstein files, the pardons, the money. Every one of those is a hearing with a witness who can be compelled, and the first subpoenas, to the Interior Department for the pool and to FEMA for the declarations, should be out by January 31, which is a forecast.

The second track is impeachment, where the record earns it and not as theater, and the paper will name names because it has asked the candidates to do that for two weeks. The President heads the list. He deserves to be investigated for his corruption, which is not a hidden kind, it is the kind announced from a stage, and it is unlikely, in the paper's view, that a full accounting of the pool contracts, the pardons, the declarations, the Alaska suit and the files leaves him short of what the Constitution calls high crimes and misdemeanors; the paper says it in those words and will say it again when the hearings have put the record under oath. Then the Cabinet. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., against whom Haley Stevens, of all people, filed a single article last December with one cosponsor, for "abuse of authority and undermining of the public health," which the Judiciary Committee has not touched since; the paper would start there, with her article and without her. Pete Hegseth, against whom Thomas Massie read eight articles on the House floor on September 15, for the Iran war without authorization, the "kidnapping of a sovereign foreign leader," the boat strikes and the investigation of Senator Kelly, and whom the Speaker rescued the next morning by sending the House home a day early for seven weeks, "a publicity stunt"; Mr. Massie, who lost his primary and leaves in January, says he will read them again in the lame duck, and the new majority should say this week that it will pick them up where he drops them. Attorney General Blanche, who was asked on October 22 whether there was any scenario in which his department would try to block states from certifying this election and answered, "I mean, is there any scenario? Yes." Jeanine Pirro, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, who indicted the canoeist, withdrew the case, and was told by the President she had "folded like an umbrella." And Kristi Noem, who is no longer Secretary of Homeland Security, the President fired her in March, six weeks after her agents killed two American citizens in Minneapolis, and who is therefore beyond impeachment and squarely inside investigation: her own inspector general told Congress in March that the department had "systematically obstructed" his office, a Republican senator called it "stonewalling" and asked for her resignation, the Judiciary Democrats of both houses referred her for perjury over the $220 million ad campaign, and the Justice Department's own filing says she personally decided to keep the deportation flights in the air after a federal judge ordered them turned around. The paper will also say who does not belong on the list, because it matters: most of the Cabinet has not been accused of anything the paper can find, and a Congress that impeaches people it merely dislikes is the Congress Mr. Bannon was warning about, not the one the paper is asking for.

The third track is the groundwork, which outlasts the Congress: records subpoenaed before they are deleted, referrals written with the statute of limitations noted on the cover, inspectors general put back where they were fired from, and a Senate that confirms nobody for anything until the questions are answered. And the enablers, named, which the paper will begin now. Mike Johnson heads the list, not because a Speaker can be impeached, he cannot, he loses the gavel on January 3 and is then a congressman from Louisiana like any other, but because the record of what he kept off the floor is the record of how a Congress stopped being one. He sent the House home a day early in July of last year rather than let a vote on the Epstein files reach the floor, calling the petition "a political battering ram," kept the chamber out for fifty-three days that fall and did not swear in the Arizona congresswoman whose signature made 218 until she was sworn in anyway, and the House then voted 427 to 1 for what he had spent four months preventing. He said the War Powers Act was "itself unconstitutional," pulled a vote on the Iran war in May that he was going to lose, and then lost his own floor on it three times, in June, July and September. And on September 16 he sent the House home for seven weeks so that Mr. Massie's articles would not come to a vote. On Tuesday night in Shreveport he said that "if they make the next two years about retribution and lawfare and partisan games, every American will suffer by that," which is the sentence the paper expects from every Republican who survived, and which translates as: please send letters. Then the senators who voted for the diesel deal, the ones who signed the letters asking the President to lift the waiver on Lindsey Graham's own law, the ones who carried the "cheat" line into their own states, and the ten the paper rated, winners and losers alike, each of whom will be asked, when the hearings begin, which side of the subpoena they are on.

Day one, concretely, so the paper can grade it. By January 3 the committee chairs are named. By January 31 the Interior and FEMA subpoenas are out. By the State of the Union a Cabinet secretary has testified under oath about one of the items above, and the paper will take Kennedy or Hegseth. By July 4, 2027, articles of impeachment against at least one member of the Cabinet have been reported out of committee and reached the floor. And nothing on the list is forgotten because the person was pardoned, since a pardon ends a prosecution and not a hearing. Those are the paper's forecasts for the 120th Congress, dated November 4, 2026, and it will be here to check them.

A warning to the people the paper endorsed, in the house voice, since the house rule is that nobody gets credit for words. Senator-elect Brown, Senator-elect Hamilton, Senator-elect Andrews, Governor-elect Acton: the paper backed you on the other man's record, and it will rate you on your own. The troupe has room for Democrats. It has already seated one, the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, at four clowns, for the courtship he conducted with the President in public while his party fought for a majority he will now be the fifty-fourth vote in rather than the fifty-first, which is the first thing the paper got wrong this week and the happiest. A letter is not an act. "Working across the aisle" with a man you were elected to check is not an act either, and he has already told Fox how that goes: "they'll send over things that are insane, and I'll veto them. And after a couple of months of vetoes, they'll go out, and they'll say, 'How do we get this stuff done?'" Mr. Jeffries said on Tuesday night that the country has had "enough of the extremism, enough of the corruption," and that "today begins the great American comeback," and the paper will be reading his first speech as Speaker for the word that follows from the first sentence, which is "subpoena."

Two more grades. Florida. The paper endorsed Angie Nixon for the Senate and she lost to Ashley Moody by 2.9 points, 50.9 to 48.0, in a state the President carried by thirteen, against a polling average that had her six behind, a Mason-Dixon poll that had her ten behind, and a market that gave her one chance in eleven. She was the paper's one loss, she was a good candidate who outperformed everyone's expectations but her own, and the paper would endorse her again tomorrow. On the same ballot David Jolly, the converted Republican the paper declined to endorse for Governor, the only statewide Democrat in the country it would not back, lost to Byron Donalds by 1.3. The paper's advice to Florida, offered in the same spirit as the President's advice to Texas, is to find a real Democrat next time, since a real one ran three behind in the same state on the same night and a converted one, in a year when Democrats won Texas twice, could not close the last point.

Then the two seats still open, which are the two Republicans the paper has not finished grading. In Mississippi, Scott Colom led Cindy Hyde-Smith by 43 votes at seven this morning, 462,000 and some apiece, with 95.6 percent counted, the independent at 2.1, and affidavit ballots still to be processed, whose voters have until November 10 to show the ID that makes them count. There is no runoff, a plurality wins, and Mississippi is one of two states with no recount of any kind; what the loser gets is twelve days to examine the ballot boxes and then a petition to the United States Senate, which judges its own elections, and the paper would ask the Senator, who voted to throw out another state's electors once already, to say now whether she intends to ask the body she just lost to. The paper's forecast on October 29 was that she would win, if she won, by less than half of the President's 23 points, and it is content to be graded on that either way. In Alaska, Dan Sullivan led Mary Peltola 48.7 to 47.5 at the state's last overnight count, by 2,470 votes, with the other Dan Sullivan, the retired Petersburg teacher, at 1.7, mailed ballots accepted through November 13 and the ranked-choice count set for November 18 if nobody reaches a majority, which at those numbers nobody will. The Senator has called the second name "the biggest election cheating scandal" in Alaska's history, the President called it "ELECTION FRAUD" at one in the morning on Election Day, and the argument on the President's channels overnight was that confusion of candidates was costing the Republicans the seat. The paper would note that the Republicans lost Texas, Kansas, Iowa and Ohio with one name per line; that a federal judge in Anchorage dismissed the Justice Department's pre-emptive suit over the second Sullivan on Sunday; that the same ballot carried a measure to repeal ranked-choice voting, funded with $1.5 million of Elon Musk's money, which was failing 51 to 49 at 84 percent; and that under the system Alaskans just declined to repeal, the 1.7 percent goes wherever those voters ranked second, which is the opposite of confusion. Alaskans, who watched their Senator make three asks and get three noes and a lawsuit, appear to be better than the President's channels at seeing which way the wind is blowing. The Senator said last night that the national trend was "not good" but Alaska "is different," and that "we're probably going to have some long weeks." The paper will know by the 18th whether that was a forecast or a hope.

The ledger, which the paper promised on Tuesday morning for an afternoon edition that did not appear, for which it apologizes once and moves on. Thirteen endorsements: ten won, one lost, two counting. The forecasts, in order. Wisconsin, October 28: no Presidential visit for Mr. Tiffany, no "Joe Biden won," no diesel letter; all held, and Mr. Crowley won by eight. Mississippi, October 29: no debate, no "Medicaid," no diesel letter; held, and the margin, see above. South Carolina, October 30: no waiver request, no diesel signature, no withdrawn slur; held; and the margin under three points, wrong, Dr. Andrews won by four and a half and the paper undershot her. Minnesota, October 31: no million-dollar independent expenditure, no visit, no contradiction of the "cheat" post; held; and if she lost he would say "cheat" within a day, pending until tonight and, on the evidence of his midnight, unlikely, which the paper will be glad to have gotten wrong. Pennsylvania, November 1: the Senator would be the fifty-first vote; he will be the fifty-fourth, the paper's error. Michigan, November 2: Mr. El-Sayed would win by three to six and carry Oakland County; he won by 6.9 with 96 percent counted, above the paper's range, and he carried Oakland, Ms. Stevens' county, by fourteen points with 95 percent in, where Kamala Harris carried it by just under eleven and Ms. Stevens herself carried it in the primary by six and a half; the county moved three points toward the man she walked out on, after she walked out, and the paper's grade of her endorsement is that it moved nothing but her. Whether Mr. Rogers thanked her by name on Tuesday night the paper could not establish by deadline, having found no concession at all. November 3: no appearance in Wisconsin, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Minnesota or Alaska, held; the last day from Washington by telephone, held; none of the ten could name one thing he changed because they asked, held, and eight of them are now free to think about why; "rigged" or "cheat" by noon, wrong; the pool by July 4, open. The paper's record for the fortnight is most of it right and three things wrong, and the three wrong ones were the same error, which is that it underestimated how much the country meant it.

Steve Bannon gets three clowns, and the paper, which has never given a rating with a straight face before, gives this one with something close to it. He said what would happen if they lost. They lost. What he said would happen is now the only honest description of the next two years, and the people who disagreed with him on Tuesday morning were the ones who spent the night telling Fox it was the candidates. He is a clown because of the rest of it, the room full of people he told would go to prison, the Bolsonaro line, the headset and the three shirts, and because he is a man who was warned what a subpoena was and found out anyway. The paper is not asking the Democrats to be Steve Bannon. It is asking them to read his slate. It says "4 MONTHS," and it is the only campaign promise anyone kept.