Trump questions whether midterms were 'honest' days after vowing to accept results

Trump aired the doubts in a Monday post on Truth Social, asking, "Does anybody really believe that this 'Election' was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong???" He pointed to early voting "dumps" he said were too large to overcome and closed with "It's all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!" — without elaborating. Asked about the post, a White House official pointed back to Trump's pre-election caveat that he would respect the results "if they're honest elections."

The shift comes days after a far different tone. Trump told the New York Times on election night that he was "absolutely willing to accept those results," and announced he'd become "a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost!" In another post he wrote, "I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!" Before the vote, the Justice Department sent legal letters raising the specter of noncitizen voting and fraud in Democratic-led states that a judge found was an attempt to intimidate election officials.

In his Sunday "60 Minutes" interview, taped Friday, Trump ticked through his own explanations for the Republican drubbing: that his deportation policies "might be too tough," that voters "didn't like the war. They didn't like that gasoline was up," and that "in some cases they didn't like the candidates, and that's their prerogative." He again stressed he wasn't on the ballot, saying if he had been "it would have been a much different situation, because you saw the level of popularity and love."

His rhetoric began turning on Saturday, the same day he swapped longtime chief of staff Susie Wiles for MAGA favorite Stephen Miller. That day he reposted a Truth Social user questioning how so many states could see votes swing by 15% in the midterms. The post called the pattern "demands answers at the ballot level: paper ballot hand counts, poll-book check-ins against votes counted, and voter files showing who actually turned out."

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, told NBC News the claims are "completely false." "The systems worked," he said, calling the election "a massive rebuke of his leadership." Of Trump, he added: "He's upset because he lost and people are holding him accountable." Aguilar also said election officials cannot and do not pay attention to opinion polls. "We follow the law," he said.

Rigged-election chatter was thin as polls opened. Most claims latched onto real mishaps — bad weather in Arizona and malfunctioning machines in Westchester County, New York, where officials switched to backups under contingency plans and said every vote would count. University of Washington researchers tracking false narratives said early analysis showed the rumors spread far less than in past elections, with professor Kate Starbird noting "what's missing for election denialism this cycle? Widespread shared grievance." Trump ally Mike Lindell, who was hit with a $2 million defamation judgment last year, pushed "matching algorithmic patterns" claims. Pew Research Center's preliminary analysis found this cycle's polls understated Democrats' winning margin but "captured the direction of this year's election." Trump, who once dismissed Democratic-favoring surveys as "Fake Polls" and "Demoralization Operations," now asks how the polls could be so wrong.