Trump blames midterm rout on not being on ballot, admits deportations 'too tough'

President Trump sat down with 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat days after Republicans took a beating at the polls, and he had a ready explanation: the guy at the top of the ticket wasn't on it. Asked why the GOP lost more than 40 House seats and at least seven Senate seats, Trump said the main reason was that he wasn't on the ballot, arguing his rallies and endorsements pulled candidates close to victory. Where voters actually went, in his view: they just stayed home. He said some simply didn't like the candidates he'd backed — and yes, that included Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. Trump's spin on that one: Cornyn would have lost anyway.

The exit polling he's up against is brutal. According to CBS News, 63% of midterm voters disapproved of Trump's job performance, and 44% said one reason they voted was to send him a message. Trump did concede that voters didn't care for the war with Iran or the gas prices it sent soaring, and he admitted the administration's economic pitch never landed. With three-fourths of voters calling the economy poor or not so good — and 70% of that group voting Democratic — he blamed a sales problem, not a policy one, calling the economy's story a case of bad messaging.

Trump still defended his economic record flatly, pointing to a stronger-than-expected jobs report and declaring the numbers phenomenal and 401(k)s at all-time highs. Pressed that plenty of Americans don't have fat retirement accounts, he shrugged: a lot of people do. Voters saw it differently — two-thirds said his tariff policies hurt the country — but Trump promised the payoff is coming in the next few months through a manufacturing resurgence.

On Iran, Vice President JD Vance had posted the day after the election that the unpopular war was the obvious reason Republicans lost. Trump said Vance ran the plan by him and he told him to write what he wanted, adding he doesn't disagree — with one exception. Would he attack Iran again? An emphatic yes, Trump said, claiming Iran's conventional military has been degraded and its nuclear program set back, and insisting history will treat the decision better than voters did. Since September the two sides have largely avoided major strikes, though the U.S. launched limited defensive strikes on Iranian targets this week, and Qatar is mediating. Trump said Iran is close to a deal, griped that the election gave Tehran a bit of hope, and said he isn't looking to escalate now.

Immigration cut both ways, by his own telling. Trump gave himself an A+ for closing the border but said the deportation push was too tough, because it swept up people with good jobs who'd committed a single violation by entering the country illegally. Exit polls showed 58% of voters think the administration went too far, and Latino voters in battleground Texas who flipped to him two years ago swung back to Democrats. He said he'd love to cut an immigration deal with congressional Democrats.

The interview wasn't even a day old before the shake-up landed. An hour after the sitdown, Trump announced White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was leaving and Stephen Miller — widely seen as the architect of the administration's immigration enforcement — would take her place. On his ballooning fortune, Trump brushed off Forbes' reporting that his net worth has climbed by billions since returning to office, saying everyone's did, and told Douthat he should've owned stock.