Trump deflects blame, says abortion issue sank GOP midterm

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Nearly two months after the Republican parties’ disappointment in the 2022 midterm elections, former President Donald Trump has claimed he played no part in the GOP’s high-profile defeats in numerous presidential races. statewide, although he endorsed each of the losing candidates.

Mr. Trump has spent much of the last day of 2022 and the first days of 2023 lambasting repeated defenses of his political record in a series of statements issued throughout his presidential campaign, including a bizarre press release listing Republican senators and House members who chose to retire or were defeated in the GOP primaries after crossing paths with the ex-president in one way or another.

That list included two retired senators, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Jeff Flake of Arizona, whose seats are now represented by members of the Senate Democratic majority. Mr. Toomeys’ successor, Senator-elect John Fetterman, won the seat he will be sworn in on Tuesday by beating former Trump-endorsed TV host and former cardiothoracic surgeon Mehmet Oz.

Voters also rejected Trump-endorsed candidates in top-level gubernatorial races in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as secretary of state races in key states such as Arizona and Michigan, where all past endorsed presidents have lost their statewide races. In exit polls, voters overwhelmingly said their decision to support the Democrats in these races was a response to the extremist views of the GOP candidates, as all of them had been prominent supporters of the lies that Mr. Trump and his allies told about the conduct of the 2020 elections.

Yet the twice-impeached ex-president now claims voters rejected Republicans last year not because of the candidates’ decision to embrace his big lie about the election he lost ago. more than two years, but because of the landmark decision by a majority Supreme Court that included three judges he appointed to the High Court.

Writing on his Truth Social site on Sunday, Mr Trump said it was not [his] fault that the GOP did not perform as expected last year, and suggested that it was the abortion issue that turned voters off because it was mishandled by many Republicans, especially those who firmly insisted on no exception, even in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother, which lost a large number of voters.

He also complained that Republican voters who elected him in part on his promise to appoint judges who would overturn half a century of precedent that upheld a woman’s right not to carry a pregnancy to term if she wished had obtained their wish from the Supreme Court of the United States, [and] simply disappeared, never to be seen again.

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