Let me offer an apology. When I wrote a month ago that “Plainly, Trump does not care about the mid-terms” I was wrong, at least in part.
In the end he campaigned quite hard during the final weeks of the elections, culminating on November 2nd in one of the most bizarre presidential speeches in history in front of the now notorious Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial. The pool is notorious because the debacle over its restoration exposed the three greatest sins of the Trump administration – lies, incompetence and corruption – even if this was hardly the most glaring evidence of any of those three.
What that speech showed was that Trump did care about the mid-terms but that he was and is utterly delusional about his own role in the elections and indeed in governing America since his January 2025 inauguration. He chose to change nothing of substance in his conduct or policies ahead of the elections because he presumably did not believe anything needed to be changed. Which is why the Republicans lost so badly. An impressive majority of voters clearly did not agree with the slogan emblazoned frequently on the White House website: Welcome to the Golden Age!
There is little point in speculating about what the direct consequences will be for the remaining two years of the Trump presidency. He may become a lame duck or an angry duck – or (forgive me) stay what he has always been, a duck a l’orange, seeking to enrich himself, his family and his cronies at every opportunity.
Much will depend on external events, on how the Democrats choose to conduct themselves and above all on his personal caprices. But I think we can say two big things with confidence.
The first is that after two years of impunity for him and all the people around him, this vote will mark the beginning of the restoration of accountability, especially for corruption and other law-breaking but also for the spending of public money.
Actual prosecutions will be impossible for as long as the Department of Justice is under Trump’s control, but congressional investigations and hearings are sure to start laying the groundwork for prosecutions in two years’ time – a process which will itself have a deterrent effect.
“Lawyer up” will be the right advice for any business that has bought access to Trump over the past two years in return for contracts or regulatory benefits, and even more so for anyone who has had their snouts in the extraordinarily open trough of domestic and foreign corruption. You know who you all are.
It is unlikely that such a tightening of the net will have any effect on Trump himself or his immediate family, protected as he is by the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling on presidential immunity and as his family is by the presidential power of pardon.
Moreover, lame duck or angry duck he will continue to enjoy a wide latitude in foreign policy. One constraint is, however, likely to start to affect him: it is that the change in control of Congress means that congressional control over the spending of public money will also tighten up.
There may well be plenty of fights ahead over budgets and spending, with plenty of chance of over-reach on both sides. But what is clear is that the Trump administration will no longer have a free rein to do whatever it pleases on issues that the law stipulates should require congressional approval before money is appropriated.
At times such as this, it can be more instructive to listen to the reactions on the losing side than to the triumphal claims made by the winners. The most eye-catching for me were contained in this post-mortem on the elections on the Fox News website. Note especially the remarks quoted from the conservative radio host, Erick Erickson, who according to Fox insisted that the issues went far beyond the Iran war and gas prices:
It was also the corruption. The incompetence. The tariffs. The playing nice with Russia. The impression of cruelty. The overly aggressive deportations. The accidental arrests of American citizens who were Hispanic. The arrogance. The ballroom. The reflecting pool. The golf courses. The arch. The Qatari 747. The aggressive redistricting push. The threats against enemies.
This leads nicely into the second big thing we can say with confidence about the likely impact of the midterms. It is that America will now begin a process of normalization of attitudes to policy and conduct, both in foreign affairs and domestically, one led by the Republican Party as much as by the Democrats.
This does not mean that Trump himself will “normalize”: he will still play nice with Russia, will still believe in his tariffs, will still seek to build his physical and policy legacy. Foreign governments, whether among the former American allies in Canada, Europe and north-east Asia, or in China, Russia and Iran, or anywhere else in the world, will still need to contend with an extremely personalized form of policy-making, one more akin to a Mafia boss than to a president.
But what the powerful message of this election will say to those outside the Trump administration, and even to some discontents within it, is that those policies and approaches listed by Erickson are now a rejected exception, not a new rule.
This leaves many harsh realities unchanged. European governments need urgently to step up their support for a Ukraine under daily assault by Russian missiles. They also need to find ways to counter Russian sabotage and other hybrid attacks, which may well include the spate of bomb threats targeting European airlines.
Japan and South Korea need to lobby hard and cleverly to try to stave off, or limit the damage from, the sort of personal deals Trump may well be inclined to strike with China and North Korea.
Everyone needs to find ways to regulate the activities and products of AI even against American insouciance and coercion over the issue, before disasters spread or social harms proliferate.
Yet, just as accountability will begin to be restored, so foreign governments will now have the chance to plan properly for the restoration of some form of normality in American policy. They will be able to do so immediately by establishing dialogue with the new chairs of Senate and House committees and the swath of new governors taking up their seats in state capitals.
Through that dialogue, the ground can be laid for stabler transatlantic, transpacific and, in Canada and Mexico’s case, stabler cross-border relations from 2029 onwards.
It is common to hear analysts say that there can be no returning to “the status quo ante” in transatlantic, transpacific and cross-border relations in 2029. Yet what does this really mean? Everyone knows that trust has been lost, that relationships will have to be somewhat warier and less dependent than in the past. But everyone also knows that true “decoupling” from the world’s largest economy and strongest military power would be too costly to contemplate, even if it were possible, which it isn’t.
Working with America is always likely to be the better option than working against or without it. This election promises to turn this into a real, practical course, rather than a hope or a dream. However much Americans, whether Republicans or Democrats, may debate about policies and priorities, as they always will, this election is likely to mean that they do so within a more historically normal set of parameters, rather than in a spirit of anything goes. Trump may not believe that, for he will remain both narcissistic and delusional. From this day forward, however, most others will do so.
You can see this and other articles by the same author on his Sustack Bill Emmott’s Global View, from which it is republished here with kind permission.
