WASHINGTON – President Donald President Trump says the Iran war has been worth it despite acknowledging its role in losses in US midterm elections in which his Republican party lost control of Congress.
“The Iran thing we had to do, and we continue to do it,” he told reporters.
The Iran war was responsible for a spike in gasoline prices that were seen as a strong factor in why Democrats made big gains in the elections.
President Trump said the war has been worth it to stop Tehran from “having a nuclear weapon.”
He said he was okay with Vice President JD Vance’s social media post earlier on Wednesday in which Vance referred to deep electoral losses and said “the reason we lost is the war.”
“I can tell you that as far as that war is concerned, I would have done nothing different,” President Trump said.
President Trump also again said that if he had been on the ballot, he believed “we would have won.”
“But…you couldn’t transfer that love. There was such love at those rallies, it was incredible and we weren’t able to transfer the love to candidates,” he said.
Markets rally
As investors digested a historic Democratic sweep in US midterm elections overnight, markets rallied.
This was apparently based on a bet that gridlock in Washington will curb some of the worst-case outcomes in areas such as the Iran war.
The rally was despite fresh worries, most notably about the backlash against AI infrastructure buildout that has driven economic growth and corporate profits, investors said.
“Gridlock is the market’s friend,” said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide. “Regardless what either side is saying right now, anything that isn’t absolutely necessary is very unlikely to pass in the next two years, which does add to the predictability of the environment for investors.”
Markets have been jittery for weeks about how the election would affect the fiscal outlook, the AI regulatory backdrop and the Iran war, which have raised prices and wreaked havoc in bond and stock markets in recent weeks. Now, investors say they are treating the results as a license to add to risk.
Global stocks rallied, with all three main Wall Street indexes trading higher. Treasuries rose as well, as investors expect divided government to curb government spending, with AI regulation also possibly slowing growth and reducing the need for rate hikes.
Democrats vow to use numbers to rein in President Trump
Democrats vowed to use their resounding midterm victory to rein in President Trump, setting up two years of possible deadlock in Washington.
A wave of anger over President Trump’s policies, particularly the US-Iran war’s role in pushing the cost of living higher, helped Democrats take the Senate, where they flipped seats in deeply Republican states for a majority of at least 54-44, and the House of Representatives, where they gained at least 28 seats.
It will be the first time that President Trump, a Republican who also held the White House from 2017 to 2021, has had to contend with a Democratic-controlled Congress.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the incoming majority will be focused on affordability and accountability.
“We don’t work for Donald President Trump,” Jeffries, a New York lawmaker who is on track to become the first Black speaker of the House, told reporters on Wednesday. “We work for the American people. And the days of the House of Representatives functioning like a wholly owned subsidiary of the President Trump administration are over.”
Reuters
