President Donald Trump questioned on Monday, Nov. 9, whether the midterm elections were honest and blamed voting machines for the results.[1][2] “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.[1] He did not provide evidence in the post.[1]
Related: Trump Names Stephen Miller Chief of Staff as Susie Wiles Leaves After Midterm Losses.
What Trump wrote
In the same post, Trump wrote that “some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote.”[1][3]
“It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” he added.[1][3]
Trump did not explicitly say he was withdrawing his election-night acceptance of the results.[1] Trump had told The New York Times on election night that he was “absolutely willing” to accept them.[4]
How the claims developed
Monday’s post followed a weekend of Trump sharing other users’ posts that questioned Democratic vote totals.[1]
On Saturday, Nov. 7, he shared a post asking of Texas Senate vote totals, “Does anyone believe this at all?”[1][4] Another shared post claimed an unusually consistent shift toward Democrats across 59 Senate and gubernatorial races, and called for paper ballot hand counts.[1]
A third post, from writer Donald Ward, argued that high Democratic turnout in Texas could not be explained by weak Republican participation.[1] Ward wrote that Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa gained 1.7 million votes over Beto O’Rourke’s total four years earlier.[1] “Those are Looney Tunes numbers,” the post said.[1]
On Sunday, Trump wrote that America had taken a “giant step back in History with the results of the last Election.”[1]
Responses and context
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s “return to election denialism was inevitable.”[2]
Democracy Docket, a publication covering voting rights, said the claims Trump shared offered no evidence of irregularities.[4] It said Democratic vote totals rose sharply in states across the political map, citing higher enthusiasm among Democratic voters and movement by swing voters.[4]
The publication also said the “early voting ‘dumps'” Trump cited reflected Democratic candidates in some key Senate races banking large leads through early voting before polls opened on Election Day.[3] Democracy Docket said Trump has pushed false claims about rigged voting machines since he lost the 2020 election.[3]
Democrats won control of the House and flipped the Senate in the Nov. 3 elections.[3] The House majority was the largest for the party in decades.[3]
Results are on our 2026 midterm election tracker. White House actions are logged on the Trump presidency tracker, and more coverage is on the politics and government page.
Sources
- Newsweek: Trump Questions Midterm Election Results After Saying He’d Accept Them
- The Guardian: Donald Trump doubles down on defense of Pete Hegseth and attacks fresh effort to impeach him, as it happened
- Democracy Docket: ‘All about the machines’: Trump claims Democrats’ midterm wins not ‘honest’
- Democracy Docket: Trump promotes posts questioning midterm results
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