Trump in High Spirits as He Shrugs Off Election Night Drubbing

Tuesday was not a good day for Donald Trump and the GOP — but attendees at the America Business Forum in Miami wouldn’t have known it listening to the president rattle off a list of his accomplishments on Wednesday, and shrug off major losses in nearly every off-year race.

The GOP’s preferred candidates lost by large margins in New Jersey and Virginia, with voters in the latter declining to reject Democrats’ scandal-plagued attorney general candidate rather than vote Republican. Ballot measures in California and Maine went to Democrats by healthy margins, and self-described democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election.

Wednesday, though, saw the president in remarkably good spirits. Just one year prior, he won a hotly contested race to reclaim the White House and, in the process, dodged multiple prosecutions in multiple jurisdictions, memories that Trump was happy to re-live.

“We’re gathered today on the one-year anniversary of the single most consequential election victory — they say, this is them, this isn’t me, I’m a very modest person — single most consequential election victory in American history.”

In anecdote after anecdote, Trump propped himself up as the savior of the American way of life. Vast deregulation, no tax on tips and the whirlwind of trade agreements he had secured over the previous week all stood as examples of his greatness. Key among his boasts was affordability, the same adage his seldom-mentioned foe, New York state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, rode to victory as New York City’s mayoral elect.

“Day by day, we’re making America affordable again,” Trump said. “It’s going to be affordable again at a really record pace,” he said

The president downplayed the impact of the ongoing government shutdown, arguing the nation was so resilient in the face of his many achievements that it would likely not suffer the worst consequences.

“Actually, I don’t think anything is going to hurt. We are so strong now that I’m not sure that anything is gonna hurt, but it would be good to open it up, take care of the people with jobs that aren’t gonna get paid, and aren’t getting paid.”

Republican leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson similarly brushed off the dismal GOP results Wednesday, suggesting that the losses did not hold “any reflection about Republicans at all.”

“What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue,” Johnson said. “We all saw that coming, and no one should read too much into last night’s election results. Off-year elections are not indicative of what’s to come. That’s what history teaches us.”

Trump briefly veered into election night talk in Miami, arguing that Republicans had insufficiently seized on his messages of success.

“And I tell Republicans, you want to win elections, you got to talk about these facts,” Trump said. “It’s really easy to win elections when you talk about the facts.”

Trump at no point mentioned Mamdani by name, but continued to ascribe to him various ideologies that serve as GOP boogeymen.

“The communist, Marxist socialists and globalists had their chance, and they delivered nothing but disaster,” Trump said. “And now let’s see how a communist does in New York, New York City,” he said of Mamdani, who is not a Communist.