Midterm Elections 2026: Trump Blames Israel, Iran War

The midterm elections 2026 delivered a defeat that President Donald Trump is still explaining, and his explanation, given in a television interview that aired on Sunday, points in a direction few Republican presidents have pointed before. Trump said that a “great dislike” for Israel among American voters was one of the reasons his party lost control of Congress on November 3, alongside the war with Iran and a rise in gasoline prices. The remarks, made to CBS’s 60 Minutes, amount to the most direct admission yet from the president that the war he launched in February, and the alliance he has championed for a decade, cost his party at the ballot box.

The election results gave Democrats control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, a result that reshapes the final two years of Trump’s presidency and hands the opposition the gavels in January, when the new Congress convenes on January 3. Trump has spent the days since the vote offering his account of what went wrong, and the 60 Minutes interview is the fullest version of that account so far. It is the biggest piece of trump news since the election, and the one that has drawn the most attention, because of what it says about Israel, a country Trump has called a close ally.

What Trump said on 60 Minutes

Asked to reflect on the result, Trump began with the point he has made before: he was not on the ballot. “I think if I was on the ballot, it would’ve been a much different situation because you saw the level of popularity and love,” he said. He added that voters had not liked some of the Republican candidates, including people he had endorsed. Then he moved to the issues. “They didn’t like the war. They didn’t like the fact that gasoline went up, ’cause I had it down at a low, and there’s a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel.”

The remark about Israel was delivered without elaboration, and none of the reporting on the interview quotes Trump explaining what he meant by it. The Times of Israel, which reported the remarks, noted that Trump did not expand on the point. But the sentence itself was striking: a president who has presented himself as Israel’s strongest friend in the White House, attributing part of his party’s defeat to public feeling about Israel.

The context matters. As CNN noted in its report on the interview, Trump’s comments underscore a sea change in American politics, where Israel once enjoyed bipartisan support and strong backing from Republican and Democratic presidents alike. That support has thinned. Polling has shown that American public support for Israel has fallen since the Gaza war began in 2023, particularly among Democrats. The 60 Minutes interview is the first time Trump has publicly connected that shift to his own party’s electoral fortunes. Midterm elections are routinely read as a verdict on the sitting president, and the trump approval rating has shadowed every reading of the November 3 result.

The Iran war and the price at the pump

The iran war news in the interview was the second item on Trump’s list, and the one he discussed at greatest length. The conflict began with American and Israeli strikes in late February, including an operation the United States called Epic Fury. In the interview, Trump said he agreed with Vice President JD Vance, who wrote on X on November 4 that his takeaways from the election included the need to end the Iran war and to change the American relationship with Israel. Trump said the war was among the reasons Republicans lost — and then insisted he did not regret launching it.

“You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon. I think, historically, this will be a very good decision. Is it a good decision for today and tomorrow? Maybe not. But you know, I have to go with what’s right for our country. If they had a nuclear weapon during my term, I would be excoriated far worse than what’s happened.”

The politics of the war are visible in the polling. A polling average in early November put opposition to the war at about 56.5 percent, according to one report, and an earlier poll found that 56 percent of likely voters believed the war benefited Israel more than the United States, while only 29 percent said America benefited more. Those numbers help explain why Michigan’s Democratic senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, who may have been the most prominent critic of Israel during the elections, drew national attention.

Gasoline prices were the third factor Trump named, and the one he tied most directly to his own record. He said he had brought prices down to a low, and that voters noticed when they rose again. Trump grouped the war and the rise in fuel prices together as concerns voters carried to the polls. The reports on the interview do not give figures for how far prices rose, but the direction of travel was not in dispute.

A shift in the politics of Israel

Vance had made the argument first. On November 4, the day after the election, he wrote on X that his four takeaways from the result included ending the Iran war and changing the American relationship with Israel. He suggested that Republicans would have to rethink their once-stalwart support of Israel if they wanted to win future elections. Trump, in the interview, said he agreed with the vice president’s position.

The reaction was swift. In Israel, the N12 television news outlet carried the clip in Hebrew translation, rendering the Israel remark as a lack of affection for Israel rather than a “great dislike.” The Jerusalem Post described antipathy toward Israel as a key factor in Trump’s account, cited alongside the war with Iran. The Times of Israel noted that Trump offered several explanations for the defeat, and that the Israel remark came last, without elaboration.

The shift Trump described is not confined to one party. The fall in support for Israel has been sharpest among Democrats, but the interview shows that the change is now being felt inside the Republican Party as well. For a movement that has treated support for Israel as a fixed point of its foreign policy, the idea that the alliance itself might be an electoral liability is new, and the fact that it is the president saying so makes it harder to dismiss. The republican party news since the election has been dominated by this question, and the 60 Minutes interview is the clearest statement yet of where the president stands on it.

The $4 billion aid announcement and who pays for the war

The interview was not the first time Trump had signalled a change. On the morning of the election itself, he said the United States would end four billion dollars in annual aid to Israel by the end of 2026. The announcement, made on election day, gave the interview’s argument a practical edge: the president was not only describing a public mood, he was already acting on it.

Trump also used the interview to say that other countries, including Israel, would have to share the costs of the war. “Those countries that we’ve protected are going to pay us back any and all costs that we’ve had for the war ’cause without us, they wouldn’t exist. Without us, Israel would not exist,” he said. The demand reframes the alliance in transactional terms: protection given, repayment expected. None of the reports on the interview say whether Trump intends to alter his administration’s policy towards Israel, and the question of whether the aid decision and the demand for repayment amount to such a change is one the coming weeks will have to answer.

Tehran’s reaction and the week after the vote

In Tehran, the interview was read as vindication. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that peace talks had been paused while the political fallout of the vote was being assessed. On Monday he went further, saying that the American president “clearly recognises that the vast majority of Americans are disgusted with Israel.” “Americans are evidently sick and tired of Israel bamboozling US administrations into forever wars,” Araghchi wrote on X. “They had enough. So has our region.”

Trump, for his part, has cast doubt on a resumption of the fighting. He has threatened to resume strikes in recent weeks, and American media reports had suggested that hostilities could restart after the midterm elections. But in an interview with CNN on Sunday he said renewed fighting was “highly unlikely.”

The week of the interview also brought Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader since the midterm loss. Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who is also the country’s foreign minister, was due at the White House on Monday.

What happens next

The immediate question is whether Trump’s diagnosis becomes Republican policy. The party’s strategists are now studying where their coalition thinned, including in the swing states that decide control of Congress. Vance has already argued for a changed relationship with Israel, and Trump has now agreed with him in public. The next test is whether that agreement shows up in policy — in the aid decision, in the posture toward the war, and in the party’s message to voters who opposed the war.

Trump’s first explanation was about voter turnout in all but name: he was not on the ballot, and the voters who turned out did not like some of the candidates he had endorsed. The harder explanations are the ones that follow it — the war, the prices, and the feeling about Israel — because each of them points at a decision the president himself made.

The second question is the war itself. Trump says renewed fighting is highly unlikely, but the talks Araghchi described as paused have no announced date to resume. The third question is the one Trump raised himself: whether the “great dislike” he described is a passing mood or a durable shift in how Americans view Israel. The polling suggests it has been building since the Gaza war began in 2023. The midterm result suggests it has now acquired electoral consequences.

For the Democrats, who take control of both chambers in January, the interview is a starting point rather than a conclusion. The new Congress will have the power to investigate the war, to question the aid decision, and to demand answers about the costs Trump says other countries should repay. The midterm elections 2026 are over. The argument about what they meant has only just begun, and the trump approval rating will shadow every part of it — the question of whether a president who was not on the ballot can still carry his party.

Source: CNN