Why do you ask? After the craziness of Tuesday’s Election Day results became obvious, it didn’t take long for the blame game to start on the Republican side of the aisle. How many articles have you seen that claim Donald Trump is lashing out at Melania, Sean Hannity, and others whose opinions he trusts and who encouraged him to endorse candidates like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania? A lot over the last 24 hours or so. Now Trump is responding and he calls it a fake narrative.

Trump is “not at all angry” about the fact that his image as a kingmaker in the Republican Party has been dinged up once again in the midterm elections. He’s a stable genius. He put out the word on his Truth Social platform.

“For those many people that are being fed the fake narrative from the corrupt media that I am Angry about the Midterms, don’t believe it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I am not at all angry, did a great job (I wasn’t the one running!), and am very busy looking into the future. Remember, I am a ‘Stable Genius.’”

The kerfuffle began when the New York Times reported that Trump was privately lashing out after Oz lost the Pennsylvania Senate race. He was reported to be blaming Hannity and casino mogul and Republican mega-donor Steve Wynn, and complaining to Melania about the poor advice to endorse him.

ABC News reported that sources said that Trump began “fuming” on Tuesday night as election results began coming in.

“This is a sinking ship,” one top Trump adviser told ABC News. “We’re not going to beat that.”

“This was the end of the Trump era and the dawn of the DeSantis era,” a Republican operative close to the Trump orbit told ABC News. “Like every other Trump catastrophe, he did this to himself with stupid and reckless decisions.”

And, his anger was in contrast to an email that had been sent out before the election returns began coming in.

In an email blast touting “unprecedented successes” that was sent out before any races had been called, Trump boasted that his political action committee had spent “$3.4 million opposing [Oz opponent] John Fetterman in Pennsylvania.”

What is interesting is that it was easy to believe that Trump is blaming others for his choice of endorsements, right? That’s how he rolls. Trump doesn’t lose gracefully, he’s a finger-pointer. And, on the other hand, the media has had it in for Trump since he won the GOP presidential nomination in 2015. He was treated the worst I’ve seen a president treated in my lifetime. Granted, Republican presidents are always treated badly in the press, but with Trump there was a lot of full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome at play. The press willingly played along with Hillary Clinton’s farcical story that Trump was a Russian asset and the partisan mistreatment continued for four years. So, it can be said it’s easy to believe that the press is making up stories now. Who knows?

Probably most troubling for Trump is the fact that the GOP’s non-wave election has interfered with his plans to announce another presidential run. He is supposed to make a big announcement on the 15th and we assume that is the announcement. Trump wants to steal some oxygen from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who is now heralded as the new power broker in Republican politics. DeSantis’ success in turning Florida into a solid red state is laudable. A growing number of Republicans are ready to move on from Trump and DeSantis is a strong contender for 2024.

There was somewhat of a red wave, though wave isn’t really the word. I don’t know what word to use. There were red pockets in specific areas that are noteworthy and it’s exciting. The seats in upstate New York that flipped, the entire state of Florida, and Iowa had a red wave election. There are good stories out there that are worthy of praise, it’s just that so many of us are disappointed we didn’t get an honest-to-goodness red wave across the country. We hoped for too much in such a divided country. It turns out the 2022 midterm election cycle was more of a status quo election cycle.

The GOP will have the majority in the House and that is worth celebrating. Hopefully the same will be true in the Senate. Biden is a lame duck for the next two years. That’s all good news. In the meantime, the GOP has to get its act together and produce a strong ground game in early voting. Democrats are winning elections because they are getting people out to vote in early voting. Georgia, for example, has three weeks of early voting. That’s crazy. So, Republicans have to stop focusing on Election Day dominance and spread out into focusing on early voting. Democrats have figured out how to do it. Republicans have to do that, too.