Republican losses show Trump is 'not necessarily the best person to latch on to'

The Democrats’ takeover of the United States Congress sets the stage for a showdown with President Donald Trump, but is unlikely to change his approach to foreign affairs, including the war with Iran, says political scientist Eduardo Gamarra. Speaking to RFI, the Florida International University professor says the party now faces a choice: whether to spend their time investigating the president, or seek compromises on the country’s most pressing problems.

Issued on: 05/11/2026 - 13:05

RFI: This week's midterm elections saw a blue wave hit US politics, with the Democrat takeover of both houses of Congress. What comes next?

Eduardo Gamarra: It is a divided government. You have a president who's been governing anyway without Congress, who has been ruling by presidential directive. There is really no real incentive right now for him to work with a Congress that is going to be driven by an agenda of investigating his past activities.

The burden is on the Democrats and how they're going to exercise their majority control of both houses. Are they going to spend their time with investigations, or are they going to spend their time trying to construct some kind of a bipartisan on responding to immediate things that need to be addressed: the economic crisis, the foreign policy fiascos and, especially, the war with Iran.

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RFI: On 4 November, Trump published a picture of a red baseball cap emblazoned with the word “VETO” on his social media platform Truth Social, indicating that he intends to reject any proposal he dislikes. Does he actually have this power?

EG:  He does, but the president will need some legislative victories. Congressmen develop these huge bills where they line up their favorite project in their particular district, hoping that it gets funded. So, the question is whether the president wants to negotiate and whether Democrat members of Congress will put forth some kind of compromise where they'll be able to overcome the vetoes.

There is a mechanism through which they can actually override a veto, but they need a two-thirds vote, and they're not going to get that without Republican support.

RFI: How do you explain that Florida remained Republican while states such as Texas and Kansas turned Democrat?

EG: For the last 30 years, the Republicans have run this state. They control every institution, and they have spent a lot of time registering Republicans. And so the surprise to me was that they didn't win by more. What's surprising is how close the Democrats came. And that is a very important lesson for where Democrats will go over the next couple of years.

Because this is a very flimsy majority now. The governor won within the margin of error of any survey. A senator won. For the other senators the race was so close that there is a recount. And there are a lot of Democrats who got elected to Congress in this state. So from the perspective of the Democrats of Florida, this is not a loss.

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RFI: What lessons has the election result served for each party?

EG: The big lesson for the Republicans is that Donald Trump is not necessarily the best person to latch on to. And knowing how unpredictable he is and given all of his personality traits, in these next two years he will not change.

Secondly, the Republicans are going to have to do some things to mitigate the cruelty with which they have governed, and on a number of issues that affect minority communities in this state.

But for the Democrats, the big lesson is they have to organise. They have to campaign constantly. They have to fund their candidates. They have to be out there. They have to continue identifying new leadership.

RFI: How do you think the “blue wave” will affect the US relationship with Iran and the Middle East?

EG: There's a real risk to assuming that the democratic victory is going to change the way in which the United States is going to conduct itself abroad. It doesn't really mean anything to the war [in Iran].

It also doesn't mean that just because the Democrats won nationally that miraculously they're going to be nicer to the Iranians. Let's not forget that since 1979, the United States and Iran have not liked each other. And that's been Democrat and Republican administrations.

That's going to make it difficult to negotiate peace, and it's also going to be tough to control a president who believes that he can end the war without negotiating – and without Congress in particular.

And that's where I think it becomes extraordinarily complicated because he's unconstrained. Because over the last five decades, since the Vietnam War, Congress has abdicated its role in controlling foreign policy.

And that has accelerated over the years, with the strikes in Lebanon against American troops, in the early 80s, with the first war against Saddam Hussein. [The attacks of] 9/11 transformed everything.

The continuous definition of our greatest threat being terrorism [has] really made the United States into this actor that sees the rest of the world, but especially people from the Middle East, as a threat.

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RFI: Within Republican ranks, the blame game has begun. Vice-President JD Vance has already said that the war against Iran is to blame for the losses of the Republicans. What will this do to the coherence of the Republican party?

EG: They created this trap for themselves. This is an unnecessary conflict and the president and JD Vance and [Foreign Secretary] Marco Rubio and [Secretary of War] Pete Hegseth, the [ones] responsible for making this decision... now they have to back out of it.

And it doesn't help for the vice president to say that. He is part of the reason why the United States is in that war. So the blaming is going to go in multiple directions, but I think it's going to be very difficult to come out of it by blaming others.

The fact is that the US has to get out of that war. How to do that is open for debate. I imagine that the president would like to bomb the tar out of Iran. But that's not going to end the war. So then how do you negotiate your way out of a war that you started?

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