Happy Thursday. Itâs Andrew and Swin again. Weâre still awaiting some state results, but we already know that Tuesday night was one for the history books. Republicans are â yes â in disarray, and Democrats are deservedly rejoicing at the shocking scale of their victory in the midterms. Conservative politicians know exactly whoâs to blame⊠they just wonât say who, for fear of death threats and lost career opportunities.
In todayâs âFirst Draft,â we get into just how much the GOP elite is now quietly blaming the president of the United States and his American âPrime Ministerâ for their catastrophic 2026 election outcomes. Plus, Chuck Schumer says heâll be Senate Majority Leader again, but progressive voices in his ranks arenât quite so sure, and thereâs more news about Trumpâs catastrophic war. Letâs read in.
Reckoning?
Following their election night âbloodbathâ Tuesday, a wide array of prominent Republicans on Capitol Hill, within the Trump-Vance administration, and in the high-roller donor class are now ready to vent to us about how it is, quite simply, President Donald âTrumpâs fucking fault,â as one very pissed-off GOP megadonor put it.
Almost all blamed Trumpâs illegal war on Iran, which most of them never thought should have been launched. (None blamed so-called âWar Secretaryâ Pete Hegseth, Trumpâs leading Iran warmonger whose job is now reportedly in some danger.) They all blamed rising costs that their infallible god-emperor Trump helped jack up, having won in 2024 with his blatantly hollow campaign vows to bring them down.
But a significant number of these sources also blamed â though they will not dare do so publicly, either â Stephen Miller, Trumpâs most important sidekick, at least when it comes to his domestic policy agenda.
âHe screwed us big time,â a longtime GOP operative who worked on competitive 2026 races said of Miller, the presidentâs top policy architect, his White House deputy chief of staff, and the man who oversees Trumpâs federal crackdowns and ethnic-cleansing campaign.
This consultant, along with several other plugged-in national and battleground-state-based Republican sources, specifically points to the Trump White Houseâs two years of mass-deportation sprees around the country, which helped cave in the presidentâs poll numbers (including on immigration, his signature policy issue) and unleashed a tidal wave of lawlessness, state violence and terror, racial profiling, and the intimidation efforts against legal immigrants and U.S. citizens.
In battleground states â including red states that voted for Trump three times â there has been a large erosion of the president and his partyâs support among Hispanic voters, which reached unusually strong levels in 2024. Internal polling data produced by both Democratic and Republican organs, according to sources familiar with the matter, show