Trump Sits Down With 60 Minutes For A Rambling Debrief

Was Ross Douthat ready for President Trump? What did the president have to say after last week’s midterm blue wave?

Douthat had the job of sitting down with the president for a long-form post-midterm interview, and when you read the transcript and see the extended interview, there was a ton of cross-talking between the two. It feels extremely choppy in the transcript (which is trying to record every break and comment) than it does on video.

Now, the extended interview is over 51 minutes long, and the version that was aired on TV only ran slightly over 27 minutes. (The transcript covers the extended interview.) Douthat did a pretty good job introducing multiple topics and transitioning pretty cleanly between subjects, but the best segment of the interview was at the very end. But let’s start with the political issues and the fallout from the midterms.

As we have already talked about in previous posts, President Trump doesn’t see this election as his fault, or a referendum on him personally. When Douthat points out that he chose some of these candidates, he brushes off the criticism.

Asked for his analysis of the midterm losses, Mr. Trump told 60 Minutes that voters “didn’t like the war” with Iran or the soaring gas prices that it triggered.

But he said he believes the primary reason for Republicans’ losses was that “I was not on the ballot,” an explanation he has offered several times in recent days. He suggested his pre-election endorsements and rallies “brought a lot of people … a lot closer to victory.”

Ahead of Election Day, the president frequently urged his supporters to “pretend that I’m on the ballot.” So, what happened?

“I think they didn’t vote, really. I think they didn’t vote. I think in some cases, they didn’t like the candidates. And that’s, you know, their prerogative,” he said.

Some of the candidates were picked by the president. He endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Lone Star State’s bitter GOP Senate primary, and he endorsed Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed to fill her late brother’s South Carolina Senate seat — encouraging her to run for a full term.

Mr. Trump argued that “Cornyn would have lost also.”