Democrats seize Congress as Vance blames Iran war for midterm loss

“Our elections are rigged like this, you have no idea,” Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, tg24.sky.it reported, reviving his claims of electoral fraud even after formally acknowledging the Democratic victory in the midterm elections and congratulating the winners. The result: Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate, picking up seven Senate seats from the Republicans, according to HuffPost Italia.

The defeat lands on a president who had made the vote a referendum on himself — Corriere della Sera counted 47 times in the past month and a half that Trump told voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” After losing that referendum, he reversed course, telling reporters, “I wasn’t on the lists, and that’s why we couldn’t get enough people to vote.”

Vance admits the Iran war and the cost of living cost Republicans the Senate

JD Vance offered a blunt post-mortem that contradicted Trump’s fraud narrative. The reason Republicans lost the midterms, Vance said, was “the war in Iran and the lack of attention on the cost of living.” “If you want to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was an acceptable price, then go ahead,” he added, according to HuffPost Italia. “Everyone knows why we lost,” he said, calling the admission “at least an honest approach.” Vance has been openly skeptical of the conflict with Iran.

Wall Street and oil sell off on the result

Markets absorbed the outcome sharply. The S&P 500 fell 4.3 percent, its worst day since April 2025, when Trump announced sweeping tariffs, Il Post reported. The Nasdaq 100 dropped 5 percent — more than $2 trillion in value — with Nasdaq-100 futures down as much as 2.2 percent overnight. The dollar fell to a one-month low, bitcoin returned to mid-September levels, and Brent crude slid 10 percent to near $93 a barrel, its lowest in two months, a decline attributed to Vance’s remarks. Trump, for his part, blamed the Wall Street slide on “who voted for the Democrats,” Corriere della Sera reported.

Gasparri: Trump attacked Iran, but the war was not won and he failed to make America great

Maurizio Gasparri, the Forza Italia senator who chairs the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said on La7’s Coffee Break that Trump’s campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again,” but that “in reality, this did not happen.” Trump attacked Iran, Gasparri said, but “the war was not won and clearly disappointed a large part of the American electorate, because he failed to make America greater. Today he is suffering electoral defeats.” The senator also described Trump’s behavior as “often bizarre and contradictory,” adding that the Italian government had expressed its dissent. Italy, Gasparri recalled, was clear on Greenland, on Trump’s attacks on the Pope and on tariff policy, and canceled some visits by its representatives, including one by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. On Iran, he said Italy cannot defend “an obscurantist regime that fuels terrorism and massacres its own people,” but insisted the Europe-U.S. alliance “must continue to work regardless of who governs,” whether Clinton, Bush, Reagan or Trump. Gasparri said Trump “seems to have created the conditions for a Republican defeat” in a party he never fully joined, adding that as an American voter he would have chosen Trump over Kamala Harris, but would have preferred “a Reagan, a Bush or a representative of the classic tradition of American Republican politics.”

Trump’s lame-duck sprint before the Democratic Congress convenes January 3

With the new Congress seated on January 3, 2027, Trump is rushing to lock in his agenda in what Washington calls the “lame-duck sprint,” RaiNews reported. Advisers are preparing executive orders to toughen the border line, accelerate tariffs and push through federal appointments while Republicans still control Capitol Hill. Defense funding is the most urgent priority, and the White House had hoped to persuade Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas to retire early so a replacement could be confirmed before Democrats take the Senate — but Alito has said he has no intention of stepping down, closing that window, RaiNews reported. A similar lame-duck sprint in 1974, after Richard Nixon’s resignation, produced 138 substantive bills in a month.

Corriere della Sera noted that Trump has 806 days left in office: the next president takes office in January 2029.

More on this story: Trump Blames Iran War for Republicans' Midterm Election Defeat · US Midterm Elections 2026: Republican Defeat and the US-Iran War Dilemma

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