For a few days, Donald Trump appeared to be doing something unusual: accepting an election defeat without immediately claiming the vote was rigged.
That brief moment seems to be over.
On Monday, Trump returned to Truth Social to question the integrity of the midterm elections, floating familiar election conspiracy theories after Democrats scored sweeping victories across the country.
“Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong???” Trump wrote. “Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote.”
As usual, Trump offered no evidence to support his suggestion that the election was dishonest. Instead, he pointed to supposedly suspicious voting patterns and large batches of early votes — rhetoric that echoes the claims he has repeatedly used to cast doubt on election results.
Less than a week earlier, Trump told The New York Times he was “absolutely willing” to accept the midterm results, which handed Democrats major victories. He had also repeatedly talked about working with Democrats in Congress and acknowledged that issues such as the Iran war and his aggressive immigration crackdown contributed to the Republican Party’s losses.
Even his appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes suggested a president who had, at least temporarily, come to terms with the outcome.
After meeting with Trump at the White House on Friday, CBS News reporters described him as being in a “surprisingly reflective mood” and “seemingly accepting of defeat.”
But that posture didn’t last.
Just days after projecting a willingness to move forward, Trump is once again questioning the legitimacy of an election — without producing evidence of the widespread wrongdoing his post suggests.
