US President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, DC, on Nov. 5, 2026.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Monday questioned the legitimacy of the midterm election results, resurrecting his pattern of raising doubts about electoral losses for himself and other Republicans.
Trump’s social media post raising questions about the election came six days after his fellow Republicans suffered historic defeats at the polls nationwide, including in several GOP strongholds like Texas and South Carolina.
“Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote,” the president said. “It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!”
Trump’s post was a sharp pivot from what has been a conciliatory tone after last Tuesday’s thumping of Republican candidates, which resulted in Democrats regaining majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives.
On Election Night, Trump told The New York Times that he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results of the midterms, and that he was willing to work with Democrats.
“We’ll, you know, look forward to working with them,” Trump told The Times. “We’ll probably work something out.”
The next day, Trump said, “I’ll get along probably with the Democrats unless they want to be destructive.”
Later in the week, he announced he was replacing White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles with her deputy, Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement crackdown, which has drawn widespread criticism from Democrats.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who could be the majority leader in the Senate in January, said in a post on X, “Donald Trump’s pathetic return to election denialism was inevitable.”
“He can whine all he wants, but nothing will stop this inescapable truth: For the last two years of his presidency, Trump will face the largest Democratic congressional majorities in decades, all because he has been an unprecedented failure,” Schumer said.
After his electoral loss to former President Joe Biden in 2020, Trump argued, without evidence, that he only lost as a result of widespread ballot fraud.
Trump’s claims, which were joined by dozens of unsuccessful court cases challenging election procedures, culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters after he spoke at a rally outside the White House.
The riot disrupted a joint session of Congress for hours. Later that day, Congress confirmed Biden’s election by the Electoral College.
Critics of Trump’s conspiracy theories about elections have noted that he lost the 2020 race when he was president, but won the 2024 presidential election, when Biden was in the White House.
They also noted that in the past week, Republicans had control of states that saw major Democratic wins that few analysts would have predicted a year ago, including Texas, Kansas, South Carolina, and Iowa.