Earlier in the day, US President Donald Trump called the results of the 2018 midterm elections a “tremendous success” amid projections that Democrats will take control of the US House of Representatives and that Republicans will maintain majority in the Senate.
“History really will see what a good job we did in the next couple of weeks,” Trump said, pointing to what he said was the Republican Party’s success in stopping the so-called “Blue wave” promised by the Democrats in the runup to Tuesday’s vote.
Trump claimed that historically speaking, the midterm losses his party faced with him as the sitting president were the lowest since President John F Kennedy’s in 1962. President Obama lost 63 House seats in 2010, compared to 27 in Trump’s case, Trump noted.
“I thought it was a very close to complete victory,” Trump said of the overall election results, pointing to Republican victories in Georgia, Florida and Iowa, among others.
Trump characterized the performance of Republican candidates for governor as “incredible,” saying that Republican governors now firmly control the majority of the US’s 50 states.
The president said that he was looking forward to working with Democratic lawmakers including leading House Democrat Nancy Pelosi on issues including trade, the economy, healthcare, infrastructure, and prescription drug assistance. “There are a lot of great things that we can do together,” Trump said.
Calling current US economic growth a “miracle” and “really amazing,” Trump said that the previously “dead” steel and aluminum industries were back, with miners back to work. Noting that he was looking to protect the environment, Trump added that he didn’t want to put US industries at a disadvantage to Washington’s foreign competitors.
Trump said that he expects the Democratic House majority to come up with some “fantastic ideas” including the environment and prescription drug prices. “I would like to see bipartisanship, I would like to see unity…and I think we have a very good chance of seeing that,” he said.
“We need the money to build the wall, the whole wall, not pieces of it,” Trump stressed. “We need the wall, many Democrats know we need the wall, and we’re just going to have to see what happens.”
Commenting on the probe into alleged Russian meddling into the 2016 election, Trump urged Democrats against continuing the endevour, and said he was “not concerned” by the investigation, which he called a “hoax.”
“It’s been a long time. They’ve got nothing, zero. You know why? Because there is nothing,” Trump said. “They can play that game but we can play it better,” he added. The Russiagate investigation has been “very bad for our country,” the president said, with the Mueller probe failing to find anything. “There’s no collusion,” Trump said.
Calling the investigation a “disgrace” and a waste of taxpayer money which should never have been started, “because there’s no crime,” Trump said he had no plans to stop it. “I let it go on, because I don’t want to do that, but you’re right, I could end it right now — I could say that investigation is over.”
Going off on CNN reporter Jim Acosta over a question on the migrant caravan, Trump called him a “rude, terrible person,” and said that “when you report fake news, you are the enemy of the people.”
“It’s such a hostile media, it’s so sad,” Trump later quipped, commenting on another reporter yelling a question without being called upon. “I come in here as a nice person wanting to answer questions and I have people jumping out of their seats screaming questions at me,” Trump said of the “hostile” atmosphere at the press conference.
The Democrats won a majority of the US House of Representatives in Tuesday’s midterm elections, and will officially take over when the new Congress takes office in January 2019. Republicans will still be in control of the US Senate in January, as they were able to hold and grow their majority of seats in the election.
