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| Tom Garrett, a former Republican congressman from Virginia, in his official congressional portrait. File photograph, 2017. United States Congress / Wikimedia Commons. PD image. |
Former United States congressman Tom Garrett has blamed unfulfilled campaign promises, weak communication and President Donald Trump’s resistance to criticism for worsening the Republican Party’s losses in the 2026 midterm elections.
Speaking with Steve Clemons on Al Jazeera English’s The Bottom Line, the Virginia Republican urged his party to examine why it failed to retain voters’ confidence, particularly over household expenses, immigration enforcement and the war with Iran.
The Associated Press has called control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives for the Democrats following the 3 November elections. The results leave Trump facing opposition majorities in Congress during the remaining two years of his presidency.
Garrett accepted the Republican defeat and argued that the party needed to confront its shortcomings. Although governing parties commonly lose support in midterm elections, he said decisions by Trump and other Republican leaders had intensified that disadvantage.
“He got beat. We got beat.”
He identified a recurring failure to fulfil promises as a source of frustration among Republican supporters. In his assessment, the party had mobilised voters to return Trump to the White House but subsequently struggled to deliver the changes those voters expected.
That disappointment, he argued, gave Democrats an opportunity to challenge the administration while weakening Republican enthusiasm. He attributed part of the defeat to insufficient mobilisation among the party’s own supporters, presenting that explanation as his assessment of the result.
Garrett also acknowledged that Trump’s polarising political style could have encouraged opponents to participate more actively.
He reserved some of his strongest criticism for the Republican approach to the cost of living. Rather than explaining how their policies would improve household finances, he said, party leaders had relied too heavily on confrontation, identity politics and appeals to fear.
“This party messages horribly.”
Garrett argued that Republicans should have contested Democratic arguments about affordability more directly, including through comparisons of energy and food costs across states. He said the party had failed to communicate the economic case it believed it could make.
His criticism extended to the gap between national economic claims and the expenses people encounter daily. He argued that voters repeatedly see petrol prices as they travel, making those costs an immediate political concern regardless of other economic indicators.
The Iran war, in his view, sharpened that problem.
Garrett said Trump had failed to explain the purpose of the military campaign sufficiently to sustain public support. He acknowledged that he understood aspects of the strategic objective the president believed he was pursuing, while questioning how effectively the administration had justified the costs to Americans.
He said politicians familiar with electoral pressures would ordinarily recognise the risks of allowing a costly conflict to continue through an election campaign. Trump, however, tended to pursue his preferred course without giving the same weight to the political consequences, Garrett argued.
The former congressman described the resulting difficulty as both a policy problem and a failure of persuasion. He said voters had grown tired of a conflict whose purpose the administration had not explained convincingly.
Discussion of the war also brought the United States’ relationship with Israel into focus.
Trump said on election day that Washington would end approximately $4 billion in annual funding for Israel after 2026, claiming that he had reached an agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. However, Reuters reported that the scope and implementation of the announcement remained unclear. An existing agreement provides $3.8 billion in annual military assistance through 2028, while Congress passes the appropriations needed to release funding.
Garrett said American politicians needed to reconsider the assumptions underpinning their support for Israeli government policy. He questioned the position of some evangelical Republicans who, in his assessment, felt obliged to support Israel regardless of the circumstances.
He argued that neither support for Israel nor criticism of people in Gaza should operate without scrutiny.
“If you think that the folks in Gaza are always wrong, you should think again.”
Garrett described the debate over Israel as a reassessment that had been developing for some time. He also questioned the political value of provocative presidential remarks about the relationship, saying such rhetoric could fail to benefit either the Republican Party or the United States.
On immigration, he criticised both major parties for retaining laws that political leaders had shown little willingness to enforce consistently or revise.
Asked about the administration’s enforcement practices and its appeal to younger and Latino voters, Garrett said lawmakers should change provisions they were unwilling to apply. Maintaining laws while implementing them unevenly, he argued, undermined confidence in the legal system.
He also acknowledged that aspects of enforcement under Trump had been excessively harsh. At the same time, he accused politicians across party lines of contributing to the conditions that produced both increased migration and the subsequent backlash.
Garrett said Trump had missed an opportunity to make a broader argument for legislative reform. He believed voters from both parties could have responded to a proposal that addressed the difference between the laws Congress maintained and the way successive administrations applied them.
The interview also examined whether the White House’s response to defeat would encourage a change of direction.
The White House announced on 6 November that Stephen Miller would succeed Susie Wiles as chief of staff.
Garrett interpreted Miller’s appointment as a possible indication that Trump was drawing closer to advisers who reinforced his existing views. He stressed that he had not participated in the private discussions surrounding the decision.
Describing Miller as a particularly loyal supporter of the president, Garrett questioned whether the change would expose Trump to the disagreement necessary for an effective review of the election.
“Donald Trump is not terribly coachable.”
He argued that Trump’s certainty about his own judgement made it difficult for advisers to challenge him. That tendency, Garrett said, had encouraged the president to repeat approaches he believed had previously worked, even when the political circumstances had changed.
Clemons also raised Vice President JD Vance’s post-election call to end the Iran war, address living costs and inflation, prioritise American interests and reconsider the relationship with Israel.
Garrett interpreted Vance’s intervention partly as an effort to preserve his political future ahead of the 2028 presidential contest. He said the vice president faced the difficulty of expressing disagreement while remaining within Trump’s political circle.
He nevertheless argued that both major parties needed honest assessments of electoral failure. Looking backwards, he said, served a purpose when it helped politicians identify what they should change.
Garrett’s criticism of Trump did not amount to support for the president’s Republican opponents.
When Clemons cited former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s criticism of the administration, Garrett said he would still choose Trump in a contest between the two men. He questioned Romney’s standing as an authority on winning elections, while maintaining that Trump’s conduct and political habits deserved scrutiny.
Beyond national leadership, Garrett pointed to disputes over technology infrastructure as another source of political pressure.
Speaking from rural Virginia, he described resentment over the contrast between the tax income generated by data centres and the infrastructure demands placed on surrounding communities.
He said residents could object when rural land accommodated electricity transmission lines or solar installations serving facilities elsewhere. In his account, those disagreements complicated established party loyalties because concerns about land use and local surroundings could unite voters with otherwise different political views.
Loudoun County’s published figures illustrate the industry’s financial importance. The county reported $1.2 billion in real and personal property tax revenue from data centres in the 2026 financial year, representing 39 per cent of its overall budget. Its account also acknowledges residents’ concerns about energy infrastructure, noise, water use and community surroundings.
Garrett argued that Republicans needed to understand the political consequences of those local disputes. He questioned whether communities carrying infrastructure burdens would continue to support arrangements they believed distributed the benefits unevenly.
Asked about Elon Musk and other technology executives, he predicted that commercial interests would guide their political relationships. He expected business leaders to support whichever arrangements best served their companies, rather than maintain permanent loyalty to a party.
On the Jeffrey Epstein files, Garrett expressed doubt that the controversy had substantially weakened Trump’s support among committed Republicans. He nonetheless said the administration’s changing approach to disclosure had caused some supporters to question its position.
He distinguished his assessment of the issue’s electoral effect from his broader willingness to criticise Trump. His argument concerned how Republican voters had responded to the controversy, rather than evidence establishing wrongdoing.
Garrett also warned against repeatedly explaining electoral losses through accusations of misconduct by opponents. Although he continued to emphasise election integrity, he said a party risked losing credibility if it refused to acknowledge its own failures.
For Republicans, he argued, the more useful response involved examining their performance and fulfilling commitments to supporters.
Looking towards the next Congress, Garrett anticipated a confrontational relationship between Trump and Democratic lawmakers. He criticised threatening language from both sides and questioned whether either would make sufficient effort to identify policies they could support together.
Trump retains the power to veto legislation. Under Article I of the United States Constitution, Congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds vote in each chamber.
Garrett said the constitutional separation of powers required competing institutions to negotiate and seek agreement. He argued that political leaders could use the changed balance in Washington to pursue shared objectives, although he doubted that Trump or his opponents would readily take that course.
As attention shifted towards the 2028 presidential race, he urged Republicans to focus on the commitments that had brought supporters to the party and the reasons those supporters had become dissatisfied.