On Wednesday, following the GOP’s midterm massacre, Fox News admitted once and for all that voters have “had enough” of President Donald Trump. While pro-Trump media has frequently twisted itself in knots trying to deflect from the president and his party’s failings, the midterm results spoke so plainly that even Fox had to face facts. “This election made one thing clear,” noted Fox host Laura Ingraham. “Voters are not happy.”
“There is no question,” agreed a Fox political analyst. “When you look at the polling, 40 percent of Americans said they were voting against Donald Trump. When you look at Democrats, 75 percent of them said they were voting against Donald Trump. This isn’t necessarily about, ‘We have fallen in love with the Democrats, with their platform’ as much as they’ve said, ‘We’ve had enough.’”
And the midterm results certainly speak to that. Democrats ended up gaining seven Senate seats, bringing their majority to 56. And while the final House numbers have yet to be determined, Democrats have already flipped 25 seats to secure 228, handing them control over the chamber. The party also gained five governorships as of this writing, and appears to be poised to win another in Alaska. Many of these victories came in shocking states, such as Texas, which elected its first Democratic senator in 40 years while flipping the governor’s office blue for the first time in 30. In South Carolina, voters chose a Democratic senator for the first time in 28 years. And in Kansas, they elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in nearly 100 years.
According to Fox, the reason voters kicked out Republicans across the country is impossible to deny. “They’re angry,” explained the analyst. “They’ve looked at the direction of the country, and they feel like cost of living hasn’t been addressed. They don’t feel like Donald Trump has a plan.” In the analyst’s assessment, this represents a “huge shift in how people view Donald Trump,” noting that when he was elected just two years ago, a large majority of his voters believed that he was fighting for the American people. “Now,” notes the analyst, “they feel like he’s fighting for his best interest. And he was a big reason [for the losses]. He asked people to act like he was on the ticket, and they did.”
While some voices on the right have chalked up the loss to the GOP’s failure to rig the election, the majority of Fox News hosts and analysts – some of whom have voiced growing criticism of Trump as of late – conceded that Republicans paid the price for the president’s personal and policy shortcomings. Exit polls found that voters’ top concerns involved the economy, war, and corruption – all issues linked directly to Trump.