US President Donald Trump has congratulated Democrats on their victories in the midterm elections, saying he is prepared to work with the opposition party despite major Republican losses across the country.
In a phone interview with CBS News, Trump said he looked forward to working with Democrats for the good of the country.
‘I know a lot of Democrats. I have total veto power and I’m sure we’ll be able to work things out,’ he said.
Trump added that Democrats would also have an incentive to cooperate with him, warning that he could otherwise veto their proposals.
‘I think they’re gonna want to work with me. Otherwise I’d just veto everything and they’re not gonna want that,’ he said.
Trump blames absence from ballot for Republican defeats
Trump attributed the Republican losses largely to the fact that he was not personally contesting the election.
‘I feel that I wasn’t on the ballot, and there was nothing that could be done about that. If I was, we would have won,’ he said.
He also blamed some defeats on candidates who were unpopular with voters or had not secured his support, saying the Republican base had stayed away from the polls.
In a separate phone interview with The New York Times on Tuesday night, Trump said he had no regrets about endorsing candidates who subsequently lost their Senate races, including South Carolina Republican Senator Darline Graham and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
While watching the election results at the White House, Trump expressed surprise over Graham’s defeat and wondered how the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who died in July, would have performed had he contested the race.
Trump said he believed Lindsey Graham would most likely have won.
Asked whether he was upset by the Republican defeats, Trump said he had tried hard to help candidates get elected and had ‘left it on the field’.
However, he maintained that Republicans would have performed much better had he been on the ballot.
Trump defends presidency and Iran war decision
Despite the Republican setbacks, Trump insisted that he had no regrets about the first two years of his second term.
‘I consider it to be the most successful two-year period in the history of any president,’ he told The New York Times.
He also described his decision to go to war with Iran as a ‘very wise decision’.
Separately, Trump said the conflict with Iran would end when he decided it was over.
‘It’ll end when I say it ends,’ he said.
Trump’s pledge to accept the midterm election results came after a year of efforts to raise doubts about election security.
On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security published a series of social media messages vowing to arrest non-citizens who voted, although the administration had struggled to identify such voters.
