'Trump has cost us': After midterm losses, MAGA asks if it's over

As Republicans faced a nationwide drubbing in Tuesday’s midterm elections, supporters streamed out of a Dallas ballroom where they’d hoped to toast a win for U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton, a favorite of President Donald Trump.

In the hotel bar, Michael Little, a 59-year-old businessman and three-time Trump voter, stared at the president’s image on a television screen. 

“People are pissed off at Trump. Trump has cost us,” he said, capturing a sentiment rippling through the president’s Make America Great Again movement after the Republican Party’s worst electoral defeat in decades.

Across the coalition, some supporters who once viewed Trump as MAGA’s greatest asset are beginning to question whether he’s become its biggest liability.

Still, the midterm losses amounted to more than a repudiation of Trump. They were a referendum on the political and cultural movement he built. A defining force in American politics that began as a campaign slogan during Trump’s 2016 presidential run now faces a potentially existential reckoning after voters disillusioned with soaring fuel prices, the Iran war and Washington corruption delivered Democrats decisive congressional majorities.

Reuters