If Republicans are routed at the polls, Hillary Clinton expects the president to answer by taking bigger risks, not smaller ones.
Clinton — a former secretary of state, former first lady and President Donald Trump’s rival in the 2016 election — carried that argument onto ABC’s “The View” on Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, the day before voters decide control of Congress. She was joined by Kara Swisher, the journalist who co-hosts her podcast, “High Stakes with HRC.” The two had worked through it first on the Oct. 28 episode.
Swisher had set up the scenario on that episode: a heavy Republican defeat, with Democrats taking the Senate and the House. Clinton’s answer began with blame. The president, she said, would first insist the loss belonged to everyone but him.
“What I think people need to be prepared for is he becomes even more unhinged and sadly more dangerous, because as I have mentioned before there’s a concept in behavioral psychology where people who are in what’s called the domain of loss, they double down on risk,” Clinton said.
The Prediction That Points at Iran
Then she named the risk she fears most.
“I think that he’s going to most likely launch more attacks on Iran, which I think put more American lives, not just military, but civilian lives at risk. And not just in the Middle East, but in other places as well,” Clinton said.
That forecast landed against a sequence of its own. On Oct. 8, Trump said the U.S. was holding productive discussions with Tehran and pledged that American forces would not attack Iran before the Nov. 3 elections. On Oct. 29, U.S. officials warned regional allies to prepare for possible renewed strikes once the voting ended, according to two diplomats briefed on those discussions, who said no final decision had been made.
Trump struck a different note in an Oct. 30 interview with Kansas City radio station KCMO, saying the Iran war would be “wrapped up soon.” He gave no timetable. Clinton’s warning was a forecast about an election that had not yet been held when she made it, not evidence that the president has settled on military action.
Why She Calls Him a Lame Duck
A defeat, Clinton predicted, would push Trump to demand even greater loyalty from Republicans — and could eventually cost him some of it, as lawmakers grow less willing to follow him. She called him a lame duck, one who may not know it yet, and said a Democratic Congress would try to rein him in through legislation and investigations aimed at his administration, his family, his supporters and allies. She alleged no specific wrongdoing.
By her own political read, rather than any polling finding, Trump is underwater on the issues that carried him to the White House: immigration, foreign policy and the economy.
Shame, she argued, still works. She cited the outrage across the country that pushed officials to back away from the idea of streaming an execution. Winning is only the start, she told listeners, and Democrats then have to show they can govern on two issues — affordability and corruption.
A Democratic sweep would not make any of it automatic. Inquiries would depend on decisions by congressional committees, and legislation would run into political and constitutional constraints.
Staring at Voters on Election Day
On “The View,” co-host Sunny Hostin asked whether Trump would try to interfere with the election. He has been trying, Clinton answered, citing his legal actions and threats, efforts to seize ballots and litigation against states telling them they are not running their elections properly and have ineligible voters. State and local officials, along with legal groups, would answer back, she predicted.
She described herself as optimistic — an optimist who worries a lot — and said she would keep worrying until every vote was counted fairly and the results were in, pointing to Democratic movement in places no one could have predicted three or six months earlier. If Democrats take both chambers, she said, Trump would feel cornered and angry and would hit back, even as Congress gained leverage to hold him to account.
After the votes are in, she expects an effort to convince certain states not to certify results, and possible investigations into particular elections launched by an outgoing Republican-led Congress.
For Election Day itself, Clinton predicted intimidation, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or others “standing there, staring at people,” she told the panel. She does not expect it to work. “I do think people are tougher than that,” Clinton said.