CNN anchor Anderson Cooper watched President Donald Trump spend the morning after a massive election loss talking about granite and limestone, then drew the line at a steel beam.
Cooper and co-anchor Dana Bash were on the air Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, when Trump took questions at a construction site on the White House grounds, standing outside his unfinished ballroom as the final steel beam went into place — a day after Democrats swept the House and the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterms.
Trump spoke on camera for the first time since Republicans lost both chambers of Congress. CNN carried the impromptu news conference during “Election Day in America Continued,” which ran from 1 to 1:30 p.m. ET.
“And it went on. He talked about the granite. He talked about really every aspect of the construction of the ballroom the day after this massive election loss,” Cooper said after the network played the first clips.
“This will be something very special. And so we’re putting up the last piece of steel. I thought it would be appropriate to have the media here,” Trump told reporters.
Trump called the project “not only one of the biggest, but it’ll be the most beautiful ballroom, I think, anywhere in the world,” and said people had been trying to get one for 150 years. About 525 people built it, by his count. Every worker on the job — steel workers, plumbers, electricians, painters — signed the beam, and Trump said he would sign it last.
“Watch the beam go up,” Trump said.
“Wow. I don’t think we need to watch the beam go up,” Cooper said. He suggested CNN could simply play the beam going up while the panel kept talking.
Not Even a Little Bit
Reporters tried repeatedly to steer Trump to the election. One asked whether he worried about impeachment by the incoming Democratic majority.
“No. Not even a little bit,” Trump said. Such a move would be destructive to Democrats, he said, and there was no reason for it. He said the country was more successful than at any time in its history.
Gobsmacked by Corinthian Columns
Bash, anchoring from Capitol Hill, was gobsmacked that the president had spent the morning discussing Corinthian columns, limestone and steel. She had no clear reason for her own surprise, she said, given that everyone has watched him care about exactly this. Repercussions on the Hill had already begun, she added.
“We did not expect to hear from President Donald Trump publicly like this,” CNN White House correspondent Alayna Treene said. The appearance caught the press corps off guard, and Treene counted roughly 15 to 20 minutes of ballroom features before Trump mentioned the election at all. Many people in the building, she said, woke up unhappy, disappointed and frustrated by the results.
“And there seems to be a bit of denial among the president that there was a rejection of his agenda,” CNN political analyst Alex Thompson said. He also pointed to a candidate quality problem running through the race.
Vance Blames the Iran War
Vice President JD Vance broke with the president in an online post that Cooper read on air, blaming the Iran war for the party’s losses and noting that Trump himself had said so the night before. Vance called for an honest argument from anyone claiming that the loss of the Senate for six years was a price worth paying. The main problem was not turnout, he wrote; instead, many 2024 Trump-Vance backers voted for Democrats in 2026.
Trump offered a different diagnosis. Ahead of the vote, he told the Wall Street Journal that the biggest issue facing Republicans was his own absence from the ballot, and after the returns he posted on Truth Social that the party would have won had he been on it. Trump had personally backed candidates who lost. Cooper said the president “couldn’t translate the love in the rallies he had to the candidates,” who were “largely forced down the throats of voters.”
Paxton Never Called the Winner
James Talarico became the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate seat in 38 years. CNN anchor Erin Burnett asked him whether Ken Paxton, the Republican he beat, had called. Talarico said no call came, that he had seen the concession speech and appreciated the kind words, and that he looked forward to representing all 31 million Texans, Paxton included. Elon Musk sank more than $150 million into electing Paxton, and Texas had not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1988.
Kansas pastor Adam Hamilton won in a state that had not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. Democrats picked up seats in deep-red South Carolina and in Maine, where Susan Collins lost after five terms. The party needed four flips and gained seven, netting 54 seats.
CNN projected at least 232 Democratic seats in the House, past the 218 needed, with 64 races still in play. Two Senate races were too early to call during the broadcast: Mississippi, where dozens of votes separated the candidates, and Alaska, where Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan was in a close contest with Democrat Mary Peltola. Correspondent Kyung Lah reported from Anchorage. Both races were still uncalled as of Saturday, Nov. 7: Democrat Scott Colom narrowly led Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, and Peltola led Sullivan 48.2% to 47.9%, with ranked-choice tabulation set for Nov. 18.
In New Hampshire, Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas defeated former Republican Sen. John Sununu on Nov. 3. Sununu had Trump’s endorsement but ran ads distancing himself from the president, one of them declaring, “I’ve never even met the man!”
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins compared those ads to a 2003 Mariah Carey interview in which the singer said she didn’t know Jennifer Lopez, during the network’s election-night coverage Tuesday, Nov. 3. Co-host Jake Tapper apparently did not get the reference. Cooper said he hoped it would not be the last Mariah Carey mention of the night.