Sean Hannity has a warning for Republicans picking through the wreckage of the midterms, and it isn’t about Democrats.
The 64-year-old Fox News host used his monologue on “Hannity” on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, to press Republicans not to turn on one another after Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterms.
“My message tonight is all hands on deck, stay away from circular firing squads, finger-pointing, blame,” Hannity said. “Allow Democrats to show their true colors as they are now doing; have real answers on the other side.”
His audience includes the president. Hannity hosted President Donald Trump for an exclusive interview Monday, Nov. 2, the eve of the vote. Trump spent much of election night posting on Truth Social to complain about Fox’s midterm coverage, arguing the network spotlights Democrats too much and his own accomplishments too little.
Hannity’s Own Verdict on the Iran War
A night before his plea, Hannity had already named a cause. Asked by Fox anchor Bret Baier on Tuesday, Nov. 3, whether the results would have looked different had the war with Iran not been on voters’ minds, Hannity didn’t hedge.
“I think 100 percent, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,” he said.
The underlying economy is solid under the administration, Hannity argued, but that counts for little when voters don’t feel it. He said people want the border secured yet disliked much of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement footage that Democrats played up during the campaign. Unhappiness with the Iran war and what it has done to the economy, he said, is now the stronger force. Hannity was also among the outside advisers who quietly pushed Trump to take voters’ cost-of-living pain more seriously during the campaign.
Dark Jokes About Funerals and Pardons
Inside Trump’s operation, the mood had already soured. Less than a week before Election Day, more than two dozen advisers joined a video call, according to leaked accounts of the campaign’s final stretch, and the conversation slid into gallows humor about funerals, prison and pardons.
“I’m getting my affairs in order,” said James Blair, the former White House deputy chief of staff steering the midterm effort. He suggested everyone else do likewise. Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio floated the idea of seeking asylum in Israel.
On an earlier call, Blair had aimed at the candidates themselves, mocking some of the Republicans his team was trying to elect and telling colleagues the problem was their own side. Blair will temporarily leave the White House.
Why Trump Says It Wasn’t Him
Five weeks before the election, Trump had told his base on Truth Social to pretend his name was on the ballot. After his final pre-election speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, he told The Wall Street Journal that a bad night would not be his fault, pinning it instead on his absence from the ballot. Once the votes were counted, he posted that the party would have won had he been on it.
He also ran the counterfactual. Before polls closed, Trump asked what the midterms would have looked like if the United States had never gone into Iran. On election night, he told the Journal he knew the war had played a part. The next day, Nov. 4, he spoke to reporters at the construction site of the East Wing ballroom at the White House as the final steel beam was raised.
A White House official said Trump was not on the ballot and that Trump voters turn out when he is. Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, rejected the leaked quotes as invented gossip and disparaged the people circulating them.
Reagan Lost Big, Then Won 49 States
Hannity’s defense of the party rests on the calendar. Speaking during Fox’s election coverage alongside Harris Faulkner and Larry Kudlow, he argued that midterm wipeouts are predictable and that the more dominant a president’s personality, the more brutal the loss. He walked through the cases: Ronald Reagan won in 1980, was battered in the 1982 midterms, then carried 49 states in 1984. Bill Clinton beat a sitting president in 1992, absorbed a major defeat in 1994 and won re-election anyway. Barack Obama won in 2008, met the Tea Party in 2010 and was returned to office two years later.
Exceptions are rare, he said, pointing to elections shaped by the Sept. 11 attacks and World War II. He also allowed that Republicans have lessons to take from the night.
On his radio show Nov. 4, Hannity worked through the pressures that moved voters — rising fuel costs, the Iran conflict, impatience with the pace of the recovery — and reacted to the victory speech of Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed, before turning to whether his party can rebuild before 2028.
The hunt for someone to hold responsible has already reached the Pentagon. Trump has been sounding out allies about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s performance, as a growing bloc of Republicans accuse the hawkish Hegseth of steering the president into Iran with no way out.