Amid election night thrashing, Trump complains about Fox News, Greg Abbott and Bill de Blasio

As votes were being counted on election night, and all signs pointed to a blue wave crashing down on the GOP, President Donald Trump began identifying those responsible for the rout: Fox News and Greg Abbott.

The results — Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, with close races and even some Republican losses in states that appeared ruby red just a few months ago — amounted to a stinging rebuke of the president and his party. But that wasn’t how Trump was seeing it.

"If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn't become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn't have lost," he wrote on Truth Social, using an acronym for "Republican in name only." (Earlier that day, Trump had given Abbott his "Complete and Total Endorsement.")

Fox News, he posted 18 minutes later, “bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse.”

On Tuesday, Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated Abbott, becoming the first Democrat elected Texas governor in more than 30 years, the AP reported around midnight. Hinojosa’s bid had seemed a long shot at first, and Abbott largely ignored her on the trail. The latest tally shows her leading Abbott with 53% of the vote, to his 46%.

More broadly, around 7 a.m. ET on Wednesday, the Democrats had flipped the Senate, holding at least 54 seats, and had netted a majority in the House, with at least 228 seats.

“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Trump wrote, seeking to distance himself from the results.

Trump’s post about Abbott was his only message on election night that singled out any particular Republican candidate — though the president suggested more might eventually be on the way. “I’m going to become a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost,” he wrote. It wasn’t immediately clear what he meant by “both good and bad.”

Before many of the polls had even closed, Trump was already complaining on Truth Social that Fox News was giving too much air time to “Trump Deranged Dumocrats.”

“No wonder FoxNews Ratings are collapsing, and they’re going to go down a lot further,” he wrote. “They’re way down, not because of me, but because they are AGAINST me!”

Later in the evening, he complained about the presence of former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Fox’s election night panel. Trump said de Blasio was “ranting and raving like a Lunatic.”

Just before midnight, Trump posted a photo of a red MAGA-style cap with "VETO" stitched on the front in white, signalling what his relationship with a Democratic congress might look like over the next two years. But even that seemed uncertain. On the phone with POLITICO on election night, Trump said he didn’t want to be “just sitting there for two years vetoing everything,” adding that he’d spoken with “certain leaders of the Democrat party” about working together.