--- title: As Republicans Begin Blame Game, Trump Is the Obvious Target description: Trump spent Wednesday making angry calls to friends and advisors about the red wave that didn't materialize, singling out Mehmet Oz's loss. canonical: https://time.com/6232075/republicans-blame-game-trump-elections/ author: Brian Bennett article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-11-09T23:13:31.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:41:45.143Z article:section: Politics og:title: As Republicans Begin Blame Game, Trump Is the Obvious Target og:description: Trump made angry calls to friends and advisors about the red wave that failed to materialize, singling out Mehmet Oz's loss as especially upsetting. og:url: https://time.com/6232075/republicans-blame-game-trump-elections/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt08c654e2f310f79a/698a37a447ca384ea93ba36c/trump-rally-florida-midterms.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: trump-rally-florida-midterms og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: As Republicans Begin Blame Game, Trump Is the Obvious Target twitter:description: Trump made angry calls to friends and advisors about the red wave that failed to materialize, singling out Mehmet Oz's loss as especially upsetting. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt08c654e2f310f79a/698a37a447ca384ea93ba36c/trump-rally-florida-midterms.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # As Republicans Begin Blame Game, Trump Is the Obvious Target > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=e345ec39-170d-4c3d-a0aa-4430fcf931a2&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Stories Behind Donald Trump's TIME Covers [Watch (HLS stream): The Stories Behind Donald Trump's TIME Covers](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/W8uZ13Pz.m3u8) (5:07)  _Published 2021-01-21. TIME's D.W. Pine looks back at the various covers featuring Donald Trump, from his first appearance in 1989 to the end of his presidency._ by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/) and [Jasmine Aguilera](https://time.com/author/jasmine-aguilera/) Nov 9, 2022 11:13 PM UTC TIME's D.W. Pine looks back at the various covers featuring Donald Trump, from his first appearance in 1989 to the end of his presidency. by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/) and [Jasmine Aguilera](https://time.com/author/jasmine-aguilera/) Nov 9, 2022 11:13 PM UTC Dozens of races across the country remained unresolved as of midday Wednesday, yet Republicans were already engaging in that age-old post-election game among members of the side that underperformed: Who’s to blame? And in many conversations among players late Tuesday and early Wednesday, a clear target was emerging: Donald Trump, who inserted himself into dozens of races and even said on the eve of the election that he deserved the credit if his party did well, but not the blame if they didn’t. “The election was a lot closer than it should have been because Trump endorsed some candidates in Republican primaries who were inexperienced, first time-candidates not ready for a very intense, high-profile Senate race,” says Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist and pollster. Trump spent Wednesday morning at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., making angry calls to friends and advisors about why the decisive wave of GOP victories that he and so many others had predicted failed to materialize, with the former President blaming others for the endorsement decisions he had made, according to a former Trump White House official still in touch with Trump’s inner circle. Trump said in those conversations that candidates that lost should have more fully embraced his lie about winning the 2020 election, singling out TV doctor Mehmet Oz’s defeat to John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania Senate race as an especially frustrating outcome, said the former official, who noted that Trump was also fuming that the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York _Post_ printed the headline “DeFuture” to describe Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whose landslide reelection victory on Tuesday topped Trump’s 2020 margins in the state. **Read more**: [_How John Fetterman Beat Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania_](https://time.com/6231291/how-fetterman-won-pennsylvania-senate-seat/) By the afternoon, Trump had simmered down a bit, writing on his social media platform Truth Social that the election results were “somewhat disappointing,” but saying that from “my personal standpoint it was a very big victory” tallying his own count of wins and losses for candidates he endorsed—“219 WINs and 16 losses in the General.” Those losses, however, included some of the most expensive and hard-fought races of the midterms, ones in which Trump all but determined the Republican nominee with his endorsement. Many of Trump’s own supporters criticized his involvement in midterm races.  A Trump supporter at a rally in Miami Andres Kudacki for TIME While the former President sulked, Republicans took stock of what impact his candidate picks and [election denials](https://time.com/6228686/trump-rally-iowa-election-lies/) had on the outcome, which wasn’t the clear rebuke to Joe Biden’s presidency they had expected. Instead, Republicans are looking at the prospect of controlling the House by a razor-thin margin, if they flip it at all, which would make the prospective speaker Kevin McCarthy beholden to fringe members of the Republican caucus. Control of the Senate remains too close to call. Matt Langston, a general consultant in Austin, Texas, at Engage Right, a conservative strategy firm, pushed back on the notion that Trump’s involvement in the midterms was a mistake, saying such an assessment couldn’t be determined until the final partisan make-up of the next Congress was known. “The takeaway of last night was either a referendum on Trump or a referendum on Biden—that answer is not clear just yet,” Langston tells TIME. Biden, for his part, thinks the answer is not in doubt. “Democrats had a strong night,” he said Wednesday afternoon, speaking to reporters in the State Dining room of the White House. Biden said that “while the press and the pundits were predicting a red wave. It didn’t happen.” The results, although incomplete, were seen inside the White House as a vindication of Biden’s measured approach to leadership and his warnings about the dangers that election deniers present to American democracy. “With their votes, the American people have spoken once again and proved that democracy is who we are,” Biden said. Ayres agrees that a major drag on Republican candidates was Trump’s denial of the 2020 results and his efforts to overturn the election certification on Jan. 6\. “It turns out that trying to overturn an election is not widely popular with American voters,” he says. Ayres pointed to election denier and former TV news anchor Kari Lake’s campaign for Arizona governor against Democrat Katie Hobbs, which as of late Wednesday remained neck-and-neck as ballots were still being counted. “Kari Lake is a very polished, very effective candidate,” Ayres said. “Katie Hobbs is a very unpolished, ineffective candidate. And yet that appears to be something close to a dead heat, because of Kari Lake’s election denialism.” **Read more:** [_How Kari Lake Went From Local Anchor to New Face of the MAGA Right_](https://time.com/6225004/kari-lake-arizona-maga-right-interview/)  Supporters cheer as it rains on a Trump rally in Miami Andres Kudacki for TIME What Trump does in the coming weeks could once again impact which party controls the Senate, or at least, by what margin. In the Georgia match-up between Trump-backed candidate Hershel Walker and Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, neither candidate broke 50 percent of the vote, sending the race to a [Dec. 6 runoff](https://time.com/6231670/how-does-georgia-runoff-work-2022/). Trump is widely expected to declare his candidacy for President on Tuesday, Nov. 15, at his Florida club. The night before the midterms, Trump told a rally in Dayton, Ohio he’d be making a “very big announcement” that day. But having a blitz of headlines about Trump’s campaign for President may not be what Republicans need in their bid to control the Senate. Some Trump allies, such as former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEneny and Trump’s former senior advisor Jason Miller, said they had advised the former President to delay major announcements until after the Georgia runoff was decided. Langston suggested that the outcome of the midterms might actually make Trump more likely to pull the trigger and announce . “History has taught us that you are dealing with a candidate and a team of advisers that, the more of an uphill climb it seems, the harder they fight,” he says. ## Transcript I happened been on their cover like 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all time record in the history of Time magazine. Donald Trump has always had a fascination with time. He first landed on the cover on January 16th, 1989, 28 years before his inauguration, since before his election. Trump has regularly campaigned to be named Time's Person of the Year using rallies and his Twitter feed to comment on Time's choices. They should have picked me for the Person of the Year, but they didn't know. They said. And perhaps most notably, fake time travelers were designed to hang in his golf course clubhouses. Time has a long history of featuring presidents on the cover, and Trump has been no exception. Eight of the top ten people to appear most often on Time's cover are U.S. presidents. Trump finished his term with 35 covers, the fourth most of any president behind Richard Nixon's 55 covers. Ronald Reagan with 46 and Bill Clinton with 40. Rounding out the top ten are George W Bush with 32. Barack Obama 31. Jimmy Carter 27. Jesus 22. And Hillary Clinton and George H.W. Bush tied at 21. We first introduced candidate Trump to Time's readers in August of 2015, when photographer Martin Schaller and Time editor at large Paul Moakley brought a live bald eagle to the Trump Tower in New York City for a portrait. This symbol of democracy was particularly animated during the photo and video session, even angrily nipping at the president's hand during the 2016 campaign. We produced seven covers featuring Trump and created an original visual language for this president with the artwork of artist Adele Rodriguez. Rodriguez, who worked as Time's international art director in the 1990s as a strong, simple, graphic style that immediately grabbed worldwide recognition with the meltdown cover, a reflection of his slumping campaign following the Republican National Convention. Two months later, in response to the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, Rodriguez followed with an updated image with the headline Total Meltdown. Of course, TIME reports many different topics, and the visual approaches on the cover reinforces that variety. We have presented President Trump as a frenetic Twitter user, crumbling at the Washington Monument, a punching bag, a graphic wrecking ball, an angry character with his hair on fire, a cross between himself and Vladimir Putin, a king looking into a cover, a slingshot holding fighter, dueling with Nancy Pelosi, a happy president, whistling under an umbrella in the rain, and a man who has painted himself into a corner. We've also photographed Trump for multiple covers, including a White House tour for our May 22nd, 2017 cover and an Oval Office conversation in the summer of 2019 on Trump's plan to keep the White House. My favorite time cover of Trump is nothing to See Here from February 27, 2017. I believe the strongest time covers leave space for a variety of perspectives for this cover. If you're an opponent of President Trump, you look at the cover and you see all the chaos that this man has created. And if you're a supporter of the president, you look at it and say, even among all the chaos in Washington, look how resolute he is sitting behind that desk. That is a great place for a time cover to be. That image was created by longtime Time collaborator Tim O'Brien, who has painted more covers in the past 30 years than any other artist. It was the first of what would become a series of four paintings from O'Brien depicting Trump in a growing storm within the Oval Office. Our Trump covers have certainly not been without debate. An image we created of Trump staring down at a young immigrant girl for our Welcome to America cover sparked controversy. During the campaign, Trump frequently used the cover, proclaiming how Trump won as a selling point on the campaign trail. On numerous occasions, the president also tweeted out a fake time cover animation of how Trumpism outlasts Trump. A cover from October 22nd, 2018. But for most of the past year, the president's image on the cover took a backseat to front line workers. Racial injustice, protests and the rising COVID numbers. And even though the image of Trump wasn't physically shown on two recent covers, his influence was still present. While Trump's presidency has come to a close, it's certainly possible that we haven't seen the last of him. 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