Many Democrats have been daydreaming about this Election Night for months: a blue wave, the gavel back in their hands, and finally a little peace and quiet out of Washington.
But Hillary Clinton isn’t so sure about the peace and quiet part.
The former secretary of state knows better than most what it looks like when President Donald Trump doesn’t get his way.
Voters delivered a stunning rebuke to President Donald Trump as Democrats took control of the House.
The victory hands Democrats powerful new tools to challenge Trump and his administration. Their majority could become the largest in nearly two decades, opening the door to congressional investigations and fresh battles over his agenda.
And just as predicted, the president had a meltdown. Trump, after all, doesn’t exactly have a track record of losing gracefully.
Trump has hinted that he knows what’s at stake, too. In January, he told Fox News host Will Cain that Democrats would “find something” to impeach him over if they took back the House, according to Fox News.
He also conceded that presidents “seem to lose the midterms” even when they’ve done well.
Clinton cast her ballot just days after she ripped Trump to pieces on live television.
“Trump has become more and more unhinged,” she told the co-hosts on ABC’s “The View” on Nov. 2.
She zeroed in on exactly that scenario: a Congress with real power to investigate him. Her prediction for how Trump handles it was not the kind of thing anyone says if they expect a gracious concession speech.
Then she got specific. “If we are successful in winning both the House and the Senate, which I hope we will be, then I think he’s going to get even more out of control because I think he’s going to feel cornered,” the 79-year-old said. “I think he’s going to feel angry.”
“I think he’s going to be lashing out,” Clinton continued, “but at least we will have some leverage to try to hold him to account through the Congress.”
Co-host Ana Navarro didn’t miss a beat. “We’d need a straitjacket,” she cracked.
Clinton said she hopes things don’t sink any lower, telling the panel the country is “truly at the bottom.” Her closing pitch to voters was simple. In a clip the show shared on X, she said, “We’re going to get our country back.”
Someone else simply wrote, “Thank goodness it’s almost over.”
She was right. Trump spent Election Day raging at Democrats online and calling out media outlets like Fox News and the New York Times for reporting what he called “Fake news.”
Trump accused the Daily Mail of turning his Final midterms speech into a joke. He joked about naming the newly opened Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after himself, but insisted he was kidding.
“This just shows you how FAKE the News is. I said, very clearly, “I’m joking.” The Fake News is so corrupt!” he wrote in a Truth Social post.
In another post after the election, he said, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
However, the numbers heading into the Nov. 3 elections haven’t been kind to the president.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Nov. 2 put Trump’s approval rating at 32 percent, according to Reuters. That is just one point above the record low he hit two weeks earlier.
The same survey showed Democrats leading Republicans 46 percent to 38 percent on the generic congressional ballot, and half of independents said they would vote against Trump.
Clinton is now likely saying, “I told you so,” but none of this back-and-forth is new for her or Trump.
She’s spent nearly a decade jabbing at the man who beat her in 2016. In June, she turned Trump’s cage match on the White House grounds into a merch moment built around the slogan “Not His House. Our House.”
Trump hasn’t moved on from the rivalry either. Last December, it was reported that nine years after their race, the president still can’t let her go.
Clinton’s warning about a Trump who lashes out when he feels backed into a corner isn’t just theory.
In the final stretch before the election, he was already firing back at Barack Obama.
Obama had a Cleveland crowd laughing at his expense with a Cheesecake Factory joke, and Trump answered with a three-minute on-camera defense of his decorating skills that critics say only made the punchline land harder.
