President Donald Trump on Friday evening at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral faulted Republican candidates for the party’s historic midterm losses — insisting the results would have looked different if he himself had been running.
“By the way, I was not on the ballot. Just in case you had any question,” Trump told the crowd. “Because if we were on the ballot, we would have won, but we weren’t.”
The remarks, reported in NBC News’ live blog at 6:23 p.m. EST and also covered by The Guardian’s live blog, came after months of Trump telling voters to “pretend” he was on the ballot at midterm rallies he repeatedly cast as successful.
Trump also pointed to the sharp stock-market drop after the election, which wiped out roughly $2.8 trillion in wealth. “You know our country lost 3 trillion, all because of an election,” he said. He added that if markets had gained $3 trillion instead, he “probably would have been more unhappy” — casting the plunge as a sign investors thought “somebody else did well” in the election.
In short: after a blue-wave midterm, the president blamed the candidates on the ballot, not his own record — and framed a multi-trillion-dollar market hit as the price of voters choosing differently.