Trump Blames Iran War and Gas Prices for Republican Midterm Losses

Donald Trump has a diagnosis for his party's midterm shellacking: the war with Iran and the price at the pump. In an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, the US president said voters punished Republicans over both. His words: 'They didn't like the war. They didn't like the fact that gasoline went up, 'cause I had it down at a low.'

He floated a third culprit that may raise eyebrows. 'And there's a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel,' Trump said, according to CBS. 'There seems to be a dislike for Israel.' He lumped it together with the conflict and fuel costs as 'the primary reasons' for the losses, which landed last week.

The president also framed the result as a clash with his own base's instincts. Referring to MAGA, he repeated a familiar line, saying he 'always, I wanna keep out of wars' — a promise that sits awkwardly next to the Iran conflict he now says cost his party at the ballot box.

The 60 Minutes sit-down was just one stop in a busy media run. Trump separately said artificial intelligence risks are manageable and that he doesn't 'mind putting up guardrails,' according to the outlet's related coverage. He also insisted he 'was only kidding' about offering UFC boss Dana White the White House press secretary job, saying White nonetheless 'loves the idea.'

In the same stretch of remarks, he defended Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as 'an honorable guy' amid reports about his personal life, and announced upcoming diplomatic talks with Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping. Among the topics he listed: denuclearization and, again, ending the war in Iran.