Ever since election night last week, President Donald Trump and his party haven’t been able to hide how demoralized, angry, and horrified they are. Indeed, they aren’t really trying to hide it, with many of the MAGA and Republican Party elite scrambling to throw one another under the 2026-branded bus, and furiously scapegoat each other, allowing tensions that were previously gurgling beneath the surface to erupt into full public display.
It’s only been a week of this, and all signs suggest that all the intra-GOP chaos, feuding, and backstabbing is going to get a lot worse, probably faster than many of Trump’s liberal opponents would have once expected. Put simply: They’re already starting to eat each other alive. And some of them are doing it on live television.
Prominent Republican operatives and pollsters, GOP lawmakers, and Trump advisers in and close to the administration are now despondently whispering amongst themselves about how it will be exceedingly difficult (if not impossible) for any Republican to win the White House in two years, especially if Trump’s Iran war doesn’t end soon, according to various sources with direct knowledge of the matter. (Many Trump officials, however, have been dooming and glooming for months that the U.S. president has started yet another “forever war,” with no end in sight.)
As Zeteo reported last week, Trump has been livid about the 2026 midterm results, and his vice president and aspiring heir-to-the-MAGA-throne, JD Vance, has been telling allies for months how worried he is that the Iran war will ruin his and other conservatives’ hopes in future elections, including the 2028 race. Trump’s VP has also privately said the war will destroy the Republican Party at large, if it doesn’t wrap up quickly.
Nearly everyone in the party is sounding the alarm; few, if any, are even attempting to sugar-coat the situation. As John McLaughlin, one of Trump’s longtime pollsters, bluntly told Zeteo: “The Republicans forgot what won the 2024 election… We need to rebuild.” Concurrently, one senior Trump administration official added: “MAGA self-immolated.”
We followed up with this official this week to ask them what their opinion is now, as the dust settles in the wake of the midterms. Here’s how they sullenly replied: