Hours after attacking Fox News twice on Truth Social, President Donald Trump picked up the phone, called into the network and congratulated the Democrats.
Trump phoned into Fox News twice during its election night coverage, and just after midnight on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, he conceded to host Bret Baier that his opponents had won — hours after voters on Tuesday, Nov. 3, handed Democrats both chambers of Congress.
“Congratulations to the Democrats, they did a good job,” Trump said on the call, sounding tired and at times slurring his words. “They’ve been looking for this one for 11 years, and they finally got it.”
Missing from the interview was any claim that the vote had been rigged — an accusation that has featured in his past responses to defeats. He offered no allegation of cheating, and he took no responsibility for the scale of the Republican collapse.
The result capped two turbulent years. Trump’s second term has run through an unpopular war in Iran that sent gas prices soaring, a volatile tariff regime, a cost of living crisis that has not eased, and heavy-handed immigration enforcement that has cost U.S. citizens their lives.
He Told Crowds to Pretend
As the Republican defeats stacked up, Trump reached for a defense he would repeat all night: his own name had not been printed anywhere. Shortly after 10:30 p.m. Tuesday he posted on Truth Social that he had not been on the ballot, and that his party would have won in a landslide if he had been.
Baier did not let it pass. The anchor reminded Trump that he had spent weeks urging rally crowds to pretend he was on the ballot, then added that, judging by the map, “it doesn’t seem like that message got out to the Republican base.” Trump repeated that he had not been on it.
The record from the campaign trail says something else. At an Oct. 22 rally in Sioux City, Iowa, he told the crowd he was on the ballot, and warned that what Republicans had built would be stripped away if they lost. Four days later, in Corinth, Miss., he put it this way: “And in a certain way, I am on the ballot.” He had said the same thing on Oct. 14 in Bullhead City, Ariz.
The Candidates He Said Fought Him
Pressed on where the losses came from, Trump pointed at his own party’s nominees. His base did not like the candidates, he said, and some of the ones he endorsed turned around and fought him; others, he added, simply failed to get voters off the couch.
Several went down in places Republicans rarely have to defend. Ken Paxton lost in Texas. Darline Graham lost in South Carolina. Both states have been reliable GOP territory, and both fell on a night that stripped Trump’s party of its majorities in the House and Senate.
The president rejected the idea that any of it reflected on him. The outcome was not a hit on him, he said, before arguing that the past two years had been the greatest in the history of the presidency, both on the economy and on everything else his administration had done.
His decision to call the network at all was its own twist. Earlier that evening he posted on Truth Social that Fox News ratings were down 27% because the channel was giving too much airtime to what he called Trump Deranged Dumocrats, insisting the problem was the network, not him. In a second post, he faulted Fox for booking former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and said the network bore responsibility for the Republican losses by handing a platform to the opposition. Then he joined its coverage. Twice.
Willing to Deal, Except on Immigration
Looking at a Congress he no longer controls, Trump said he was open to working with Democrats — with limits. He ruled out any compromise on immigration or on transgender issues, two of the fights that defined his second term.
He also made clear what he intends to do with the bills that reach his desk. The veto, he said, is one of the stronger powers a president has, and he expects Democrats to send him legislation he regards as insane — which he said he will reject.