According to an ABC News count, at least 14 of Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidates are expected to have lost their elections. This outcome has some Trump advisers worried as the former president gets ready to make a “major announcement” on a prospective 2024 presidential race.
Trump was reportedly “fuming” Tuesday night at his Mar-a-Lago home when GOP candidates he had endorsed began to lose or perform poorly, according to sources close to him.
Additionally, according to insiders, several Trump aides were awakened by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ impressive showing in Trump’s adopted home state. Trump’s possible contender for the presidency in 2024, DeSantis, comfortably won reelection.
“This is a sinking ship,” one top Trump adviser told ABC News. “We’re not going to beat that.”
“This was the end of the Trump era and the dawn of the DeSantis era,” a Republican operative close to the Trump orbit told ABC News. “Like every other Trump catastrophe, he did this to himself with stupid and reckless decisions.”
On his Truth Social account, Trump said Tuesday was a “GREAT EVENING.” His candidate for Senate in Ohio, J.D. Vance, was projected to have beaten Democrat Tim Ryan, and his Senate candidate in North Carolina, Ted Budd, was also projected to have won his race — with races in Arizona and Nevada yet to be called and control of the House and Senate still to be determined.
But some of Trump’s most high-profile candidates saw losses in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio.
Trump was particularly upset with the defeats of two Pennsylvania candidates he supported: Doug Mastriano for governor and Dr. Mehmet Oz for the Senate. Just three days prior, Trump had held a rally in the state in support of both candidates.
At a rally on Saturday in Pennsylvania, Trump addressed the crowd, “We have tens of thousands of people here.” “You can’t lose if these folks vote for you, Doug, and if they vote for you, Oz. We cannot fail.”
Before results were announced, Trump bragged that his political action organization had spent “$3.4 million attacking [Oz opponent] John Fetterman in Pennsylvania” in an email blast celebrating his “historic victories.”
However, insiders claim that a day later, Trump was upset with his wife Melania and Fox News personality Sean Hannity for pressuring him to support Oz. The former president also accuses his advisers of leading him astray with regard to some of his other endorsements.
Tuesday night, according to sources, Trump expressed shock that the Georgia Senate race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker was too close to call. According to ABC News, the election will go to a runoff on December 6 if neither candidate receives more than 50% of the vote on Wednesday.
As the results came in, the phones of Trump’s top political aides began ringing off the hook — and by the end of the night only a handful of aides remained around him, sources told ABC News.
As the night progressed, Trump told top aides he wasn’t particularly interested in addressing the crowd he had gathered there, although he did end up speaking for a few minutes, telling the crowd that the numbers were “amazing” so far.
Trump announced on Monday that he planned to make a “big announcement” next week about plans for his 2024 presidential run. Some close to Trump told ABC News they hope the vague nature of the statement could give him an escape hatch should he decide not to run.
But others who have spoken with Trump say he’s unlikely to renege on his plans because he’s spent the last two years teasing a run, official announcement or not.
“Hard to back out now,” one adviser said.
Trump adviser Jason Miller told Newsmax on Wednesday that he was hoping Trump would delay his announcement until after the Dec. 6 Georgia runoff, saying, “I am advising the president to hold off until after the Georgia race.”
Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany, a former press secretary for Trump, concurred that the announcement should wait until after the runoff.
McEnany responded when asked if Trump should support Walker in Georgia: “We should, in my opinion, conduct strategic planning. Given what occurred last night, I believe Gov. DeSantis should be welcomed to the state. You must consider the actual circumstances.”
Trump left ‘fuming’ after at least 14 of his candidates projected to lose in midterms: Sources originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
