The White House spent Election Day broadcasting optimism about Republicans’ chances of holding their congressional majorities, but the mood was much more tense behind closed doors.
Election Day turnout in some states, especially Florida, Ohio, and Texas, suggested that President Donald Trump’s final blitz across red states was working. However, multiple White House and Trumpworld political aides tell the Washington Examiner that the team was specifically worried about their chances in the Senate.
Democrats are widely projected to pick up seats in the House but still need to flip at least four seats and defend their existing holdings to take the majority in the upper chamber.
“We’re projecting optimism for a reason,” one senior White House official told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday before polls closed, noting that President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have held at least 50 rallies in Republican states to boost turnout since the midterm convention in early September. “But [privately] things are a lot more tense. It’ll be down to the wire.”
A veteran of Trump’s past campaigns who is working closely with the political operation this cycle gave a much more dour assessment. That person responded with a crying emoji before adding “poorly” when asked how they were feeling Tuesday afternoon.
White House officials weren’t spending the day sitting on their hands. Aides circulated a one-page memo of talking points to administration officials and surrogates, coaching them on how to talk about critical Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, North Carolina, and Texas across the final hours of the election.
The memo specifically opens by claiming that “there is nobody who has worked harder than President Trump. He has left everything out on the field — traveling across the country holding rallies and tele-townhalls.”
The memo framed the election as “Common Sense vs. the Communists,” continuing the GOP’s core 2026 campaign theme, and highlighted the president’s promise to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans hold onto both majorities, in addition to the administration’s work to combat illegal immigration and fraud.
TRUMP SPENDS NEARLY HALF OF HIS MIDTERM CLOSING PITCH TALKING ABOUT REFLECTING POOL RENOVATIONS
“WE HAVE THE MOST SUCCESSFUL TWO YEARS IN HISTORY,” the memo concludes. “Now the Dumocrats want to burn it all down. Stop the Communists and Jihadists. GO VOTE.”
Trump additionally pushed back on the coverage of his Monday speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, attacking both the Daily Mail and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA). The White House had billed the event as Trump’s closing message to voters, but he instead spent roughly 30 minutes, more than half of the speech’s runtime, detailing Interior Department updates to the Reflecting Pool and various other “beautification” projects across Washington.