'Trump to blame for rout,' 'historic rebuke': How US media covered the midterms

Major US news outlets described the midterm election results Tuesday (local time) — in which the Democratic Party swept both chambers of Congress — as a historic rebuke of President Donald Trump's governance.

The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial headlined "Trump's Day of Reckoning Has Arrived," said the defeat carried more weight than a typical second-term midterm loss.

"The primary author of this debacle is President Trump himself," the Journal said, adding that Trump had invited some of the losses by intervening in Republican primary elections — backing loyalist candidates over competitive incumbents in Texas, among other states.

The paper said Trump's "erratic and self-centered second-term governance" had driven away a significant portion of the coalition he built during the 2024 presidential election.

The Journal also said the war with Iran had pushed up fuel prices and increased the cost-of-living burden, and that Trump's failure to articulate a consistent strategy and clear objectives for the war had cost him voters' trust.

The Washington Post said American voters had delivered "a historic verdict against President Trump on a scale not seen since 1974," noting that the Democratic Party had scored landslide victories even in areas it had not won in decades.

The Post particularly noted that the shift toward Democrats cut across demographic groups and regions alike. Compared with the 2024 presidential election, support for the Democratic Party rose sharply among Hispanic voters, Catholics and voters under 30, it said.

The New York Times, in an editorial headlined "Americans Have Rejected Trump," said the repudiation of the president "was broad enough to transcend America's political polarization."

Republicans lost even in traditionally strong areas, the Times said, because many independent voters — and even a significant number of Republican supporters — had concluded that the second Trump administration had failed.

Citing Republican-friendly redistricting, false claims of election fraud and attempts to obstruct mail-in voting, the Times said "tens of millions of Americans came to the polls to reject the Republican Party in response to President Trump's repeated attempts to manipulate the midterm elections." It added that "an important check on President Trump's authoritarian behavior has now been put in place."