Donald Trump concedes Iran war angered voters, Republican insiders fear President is a volcano about to erupt

US President Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance blamed Republicans’ stunning midterm losses on the administration’s unpopular war with Iran, though Mr Trump said he had no choice but to launch the conflict and would do it again.

“It’s largely true because it drove the gasoline (prices) up a little bit,” the president said Wednesday afternoon (local time) on the site of his half-finished White House ballroom, his first public appearance since voters handed Democrats significant majorities in the House and Senate.

“At the same time, if I had to do it again, I’d have to do it again,” Mr Trump said of the war, before directing the attention of his aides and reporters to the helipad he had installed on the White House lawn in September.

“You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Though Mr Trump himself made the decision to go to war with Iran - egged on by powerful outside advisers and some aides, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth - Mr Trump continued Wednesday to distance himself from the GOP’s losses.

Late Tuesday, he insisted that “if I was on the ballot, we would have won.”

On Wednesday, he noted that “thousands” of people packed his rallies in competitive states in the final month of the campaign.

“There was such love at those rallies. It was incredible,” Mr Trump said. “We weren’t able to transfer the love to candidates.”

Mr Trump’s acknowledgement of the war’s role in Tuesday’s Democratic landslide came after Vance posted lengthy remarks on social media saying voters wanted Mr Trump to end the war, focus on the cost of living and inflation, put America first and “change our relationship to Israel.”

“The reason we lost is the war,” said Vance, who opposed the conflict and is considering a run for president in two years.Vance’s post echoed the recriminations among many other Republicans, who blamed Mr Trump for their party’s historic midterm rout.

In private calls and texts through the night and into the morning, Republicans lamented political strategies - like an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting gambit in southern states - that failed to make up for politically damaging actions by the president, including launching the war with Iran and dismissing popular anger over high gas prices.

“At the end of the day, this is mostly the fault of the president and an incompetent White House that pushed every single limit, and the voters responded in kind,” said one GOP strategist involved in midterm races, who like some others in this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly assess the election outcome.

“We haven’t done s...to bring the prices down,” said another Republican strategist. Referring to Mr Trump’s penchant for praising certain GOP physiques, he added: “It turns out voters weren’t voting on the best ass.”

Some Trump allies sought to cast blame on individual Republican congressional candidates, calling those who lost uninspiring, lazy and ineffective communicators who failed to hew closely enough to the president.

Senior White House officials took to social media to remind Americans that Mr Trump was still in charge.

At the White House, as Mr Trump aides and political advisers gathered in the East Room late Tuesday to absorb their party’s shellacking, White House of Staff Susie Wiles vowed that Mr Trump would not take his foot off the gas over the next two years on policy priorities such as cutting taxes and deporting immigrants, according to one White House official who was present.

The president watched the returns with a smaller group of aides including Natalie Harp, Jason Miller and Boris Epshteyn, who debated the merits of having him call into Fox News, a move the president ultimately made.

In the Fox interview and others, Mr Trump said he would accept the election results and that he is ready to work with Democrats when they take control of Congress in January.

“I have a lot of friends that are Democrats. Believe it or not, I’ve already spoken to some of them,” he said, citing calls with a handful of unnamed lawmakers.

Meanwhile, speculation swirled about potential changes in personnel over the next two months, while Republicans still control Congress, both in the president’s Cabinet and on the US Supreme Court, where Justice Samuel A Alito Jr has said he is considering retirement.

Beginning in January, when Democrats are set to control at least 54 Senate seats and at least 228 seats in the House, they will have majorities able to block not only Trump’s legislative proposals but also new Cabinet picks and judicial nominees.

Mr Trump has vowed that he would not make changes to his Cabinet in the coming days. But in 2018, Mr Trump fired his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, the day after Republicans lost the House.

“Trump is like a volcano that is on watch for eruption,” said the second Republican strategist.

“As the pressure builds over the next day or two, I think we’re going to have a very frustrated president, and he may walk into the old board room and start taking up his old ‘Apprentice’ role, busting out a trademark line.”

Even some Republicans have expressed anger with officials inside the administration, particularly Hegseth, a prominent voice in favour of attacking Iran in February; Hegseth initially told Trump the war would last only a short time. In 2006, after disastrous Republican midterm losses driven largely by the opposition to the war in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H Rumsfeld resigned.

On Wednesday, Mr Trump told reporters that he had no plans to fire Hegseth. One Trump adviser said Hegseth’s departure is more likely to come through a potential impeachment and conviction by Congress than through firing by the president.

Hegseth is hugely unpopular on Capitol Hill, and not only among Democrats. Representative Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) has introduced articles of impeachment against Hegseth over his handling of the war in Iran, while Senator Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) has said Hegseth needs to leave his job.

Frustration with yet another war in the Middle East - as well as high prices and corruption - led voters to choose Democrats in an array of red states, including Kansas, Texas, Maine, Ohio, Iowa and South Carolina. The wins were less an endorsement of a broad Democratic agenda - which remains in flux as that party processes the election of candidates across a vast ideological spectrum - than rebukes to a Republican Party that has controlled every branch of the federal government for the past two years.

Internal party polling showed Republicans’ approval rating started to crater after the Trump administration attacked Iran in February, according to one person briefed on the data. Mr Trump’s overall approval rating slid, as did voters’ assessment of his handling of inflation and foreign policy.

Before the attack on Iran, the data indicated a typical midterm election in which the party in power loses some congressional seats but is not necessarily swept away by an angry wave election.

“To too many Republicans in foreign policy circles, the Iran war is about as popular as an ulcer,” one top GOP strategist said.

The results have not only upended Trump’s agenda during his final two years in office but could change the party’s calculus for the 2028 presidential election. Vance was just as integral to campaigning for GOP candidates as the president. And anyone associated with this administration, including Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, could face blowback from voters over the war if they choose to run for higher office.

Wednesday marked a new chapter, too, for Democrats, who will have to decide how to balance voters’ desire for action on the economy with demands from their die-hard supporters to prosecute Mr Trump and other administration officials. On election night, at least, Democratic leaders emphasized affordability.

“Against all odds, we Democrats have won the Senate, and we have five words for the American people: Relief is on the way,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) told reporters Tuesday just before midnight.

Whatever Democrats do over the next two years could affect their chances to reclaim the White House in 2028, the next major national election.

“Everyone campaigned on helping these frustrated voters,” said a senior Trump adviser, referring to popular dismay with the state of the economy. “I don’t think anyone knows how to actually help them.”

Exit polling by the Associated Press and the major television networks showed sharp swings toward Democrats among virtually every demographic group, including Latinos, Catholic voters and voters younger than 30. Latinos had largely supported Mr Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign, but polls show many grew exasperated with persistent inflation, worsened in part by the Iran war, and a mass deportation agenda that they said went too far.

Those frustrations helped fuel Democrats’ success in Texas, where they won both the Senate race and the race for governor, denying incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott (R) a fourth term. On social media, Mr Trump blamed the losses in Texas on Abbott, deeming him a “RINO,” or Republican in name only.

Republicans also suffered from a collapse in turnout, as fewer of their supporters showed up on Election Day than four years ago, according to preliminary turnout data. Sixty percent of voters said they disapproved of Mr Trump, and 81 percent of those voted for Democrats, according to preliminary results from the NORC Civic Health & Elections Project survey, which was sponsored by The Washington Post and other organisations.

Voters named the economy, health care and the war with Iran as their top issues, the survey showed. Just 12 percent said their family was getting ahead, while 29 percent said they were falling behind.

Democrats had a 12-point advantage with voters who named the economy and jobs as their top concern, and those voters made up a majority of the electorate.

Two years ago, such voters favoured Mr Trump by 20 points.