The White House on results night – the grimmest watch party in history

It’s a crowded field, but it must surely have been one of the most surreal press conferences ever held at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

For 25 bizarre minutes there was not a single mention of the midterm elections, an elephant so large it would barely have fitted inside the ballroom itself.

Not a word on the fact that Democrats had won a huge majority in the House of Representatives and flipped the Senate. Not a word on the reasons why: that voters were infuriated with Trump ignoring their concerns over the Iran war, the cost of living, and corruption, while at the same time pursuing vanity projects like the $400m ballroom and a giant triumphal arch.  

Instead Trump’s inner real estate tycoon waxed lyrical on Corinthian columns – the “crème de la crème” of classical design, apparently – kitchens, drone ports, helipads and other arcane construction details.

“It’s going to be not only one of the biggest, but it’ll be the most beautiful ballroom I think anywhere in the world,” Trump said as construction workers looked on from the rafters and a giant Stars and Stripes flapped in the breeze.

Between starting a global trade war, launching real wars against Venezuela and Iran, launching an oppressive immigration crackdown and cosying up to Russia and China during his first two years in office, it turns out Trump was also busy shopping for marble.

“It’s a vein that people have been after for 50 years, and the owner of the quarry didn’t want to sell it, but he liked me,” Trump boasted.

When he finally did take questions from the press, he seemed barely bothered by the historic drubbing. A third impeachment by the Democrats? They wouldn’t dare, he said.

“Our country’s more successful now than at any time in its history – watch the beam go up.” The strange segue came as Trump broke off to watch the hoisting of a giant girder that he had earlier signed with his trademark Sharpie pen and the word “love”.

For sheer nonchalance the moment rivaled George W. Bush’s “now watch this drive” comment when he broke off from comments about Middle East violence to hit a golf shot back in 2002.

Yet at least Bush, like most other presidents, held a formal press conference after his own shellacking in the 2006 US midterms. After that debacle, Bush sacked his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, over the quagmire in Iraq.

Twenty years later, Trump merely had an impromptu chat with reporters on the sidelines of his event – and insisted that, unlike Bush, he had no intention of firing his own Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, over the war in Iran.

Suggested Reading

Kid Rock, gold wheelbarrows and a bigger recount: How Trump and his inner circle spent election night in his half-built ballroom

Henry Morris

Iran still rumbled in the background of Trump’s extraordinary ballroom reveal, just as it had throughout the midterms campaign, as Americans found themselves struggling to pay for petrol and groceries while the Strait of Hormuz remained effectively blocked.

Trump faced questions about vice president JD Vance’s desperate attempt earlier in the day to put some distance between himself and the Iran war. Watching his hopes of a 2028 presidential bid dwindle after the midterms, Vance had posted a lengthy social media screed that stated: “the reason we lost is the war.”

Trump was sanguine about that too. “I know how he feels about it. I think it was fine, I thought it was good.” Then it was back to showing off the ballroom, which incidentally features a subterranean five-storey military bunker.

Yet the previous night, a bunker mentality pervaded the White House. Trump and cabinet members including Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio had holed up in the East Room for what turned out to be one of the grimmest watch parties imaginable.

White House officials told me first that the mood was “cautious optimism.” Some staffers, they said, were dining on take-out from the Cheesecake Factory, an American chain known for its lavish desserts. That in itself was a juvenile dig at former president Barack Obama, who had described Trump’s makeover of the White House as “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”

But a couple of hours later, as the networks broadcast the first signs of a Democratic “Blue Tsunami”, the White House said the mood was “defiant”. South Carolina fell, then Texas, then Kansas, a rout in Republican strongholds that had stood for decades. We would not be going to any White House party.

Trump finally commented, posting on his Truth Social network that if he had been on the ballot, then it would have been a Republican landslide. Yet it was Trump himself who had repeatedly said “pretend I’m on the ballot” as he rallied across the country.

This was Trump’s loss and Trump’s alone. It was a referendum on his leadership, and Americans had given him the thumbs down.

Dire predictions had filled the media before the midterms about how a furious Trump would lash out in his last two years if he did indeed become a lame duck president. More war with Iran? Election denial? Troops on the streets?

What we got instead was a somewhat unnervingly conciliatory Trump. He called Fox News, congratulated the Democrats and said he was ready to work with them (although threatening to veto their legislation). The Iran war, he admitted, may have contributed to the Republican defeat.

The calm before the storm? Apparently not. The next day, as the Republican party started to tear itself apart over how to move on from its Trump addiction, the man himself once again appeared serene as he admired his ballroom.

Suggested Reading

Watching the fall of Trump with New York’s MAGA hardcore

Marie Le Conte

It became hard to avoid the suspicion that this is how Trump will spend the rest of his term: pottering around the White House. His equally weird press conference on the eve of the midterms at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool – reopening after a botched renovation – suddenly made sense.

Perhaps this wasn’t Trump accidentally looking out of touch with voters – it was a policy statement. Trump rose to fame building skyscrapers with his name on them. As president he has been open about wanting to leave a physical legacy, even if it is plastered with gold.

And how better to thumb his nose at Democrats after the midterms than by flaunting his self-branded makeover of Washington. Or perhaps he’s simply enjoying himself.

“It was sort of mentioned a little bit during the campaign that why does Trump spend time on the White House?” Trump said at the ballroom. “I like it. For me, it’s relaxing.”

The rest of the world, however, is unlikely to relax until the volatile Trump finally leaves the White House.