Trump accepts midterm results as system holds up against election interference efforts

Administration had waged aggressive bid to sow doubt about midterms results but worst fears were not realized

In the months leading up to the midterm elections, Donald Trump’s administration waged an aggressive effort to sow doubt about the results, intimidate voters and election officials, and signal they would use the power of the federal government to challenge the electoral process.

But when the results came in Tuesday night, revealing a massive blowout for the GOP, Trump did something almost unprecedented: he accepted the results. Trump said he was “absolutely willing” to accept the outcome and looked forward to working with Democrats. With the exception of the 2024 election, which he won and Republicans performed well in, Trump has raised doubt about every presidential race and midterm since his first election in 2016.

Perhaps he had no choice. “It was essentially too big to rig,” an unnamed Trump adviser told CNN. But even before the results were known, many of Trump’s election interference attempts simply never materialized.

Administration officials had declined to rule out the possibility of deploying immigration agents to the polls. There were worries that the 1,000 justice department monitors deployed to voting sites would attempt to meaningfully disrupt the voting process. Some thought Trump would try something outlandish like trying to seize voting machines or ballots. Others speculated Republicans could try a longshot maneuver to block new members of Congress from being seated on January 3.

None of that happened, and the certification of new members in January looks like it will go smoothly.

That’s not to say Trump and his allies fully respected the electoral process. The administration’s legal efforts in that regard are ongoing, and presumably won’t stop. In a serious escalation in the campaign’s final weeks, the justice department attempted to block certification of the Alaska Senate race and California election officials from counting certain ballots. It has also threatened to prosecute California election officials, serving them subpoenas on Monday, the day before election day. There’s no immediate sign the administration will cease those efforts.

Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer who has been a key player in spreading doubt about American elections, fumed at Senate majority leader John Thune for not passing a sweeping voting restriction bill.

“It’s not a big deal to you that our election system has been taken over and manipulated by the left. That aliens by the hundreds of thousands are on our voter rolls, that there are illegal votes by the thousands in the election results…and that it matters,” she said in a post on X.

“When election results are not close … no one looks under the hood,” she said on another post.

On Tuesday, there were isolated problems at the polls that Trump allies tried to spin into major controversies. “This is how the left steals elections,” Katie Miller, the wife of top Trump aide Stephen Miller, posted as there were problems with tabulators in a competitive congressional race in New York.