Senator Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that President Trump is “delusional” for claiming the midterm elections were a Republican success.
“If we had told you a year ago we were only going to lose two or three seats, people would have said, ‘Forget it. What are you smoking?’” the Senate minority leader said. “When the president says what happened in the Senate more than undoes the losses they suffered across the board elsewhere, he’s delusional.”
Both parties pointed to Tuesday’s results as reason to celebrate. Democrats picked up more than the 23 seats they needed to retake the House, while Republicans gained at least three seats in the Senate, solidifying their previously tiny two-seat majority.
“I will be honest, I thought that it was a very close to complete victory,” Trump said Wednesday. “Looking at it from the standpoint of gridlock, and I really believe there is going to be much less gridlock because of the way this is going than any other way. It’s all about dealmaking, and again, if we had the majority and one or two or three votes to play with, we would never, we would have been at a standstill.”
Schumer cast his party’s House victory, as well as the seven states Democrats flipped in gubernatorial races, as portending success in the 2020 elections.
“If I were him and I were looking at 2020 and beyond, I’d be very nervous,” the New York senator said. “The map in 2020 is much better. We’ll have a very good shot. I think originally the Republicans hoped they could hold us down to 40, 41 [seats]. . . . We’ve lost one, two, or three seats tops.”