Donald Trump licks his wounds as Republicans seek to distance themselves from his failures

Donald Trump licks his wounds as Republicans seek to distance themselves from his failures Senior Democrats, who will take control of both houses of Congress in January, are already hatching plots to target senior members of Trump's administration with impeachment - and potential Republican 2028 candidates are offering competing theories of what went wrong Donald Trump stayed bunkered down in the White House, licking his wounds in the wake of his humiliating midterms defeat - as the knives came out for him and his team. Senior Democrats, who will take control of both houses of Congress in January, are already hatching plots to target senior members of Trump's administration with impeachment. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, is likely to be the Democrats' first target. There are mounting calls for the new Democrat congress to impeach him in the new year, over his disastrous leadership in the Iran war, among other failures. If he does decide to jettison Hegseth as a scapegoat for the Iran war, he may decide to do so soon, before Democrats take over Congress and rush through a Senate confirmation for his replacement before Democrats take their seats. Meanwhile, senior Democrat Thomas Massie has vowed to push ahead with a second Epstein Files bill as soon as next week. "When we return next week, we'll get 218 signatures for Epstein Files Transparency Act II, which guarantees a vote," he wrote on X. "Survivors will be able to get their own records, State Attorneys General can prosecute crimes, and we can take the DOJ to court for keeping critical files hidden." A post-mortem is underway among Republicans keen to assign blame for the party's wipeout - while absolving themselves ahead of the 2028 Presidential election. JD Vance's brazen intervention on Wednesday morning has landed with a dull thump. Despite his bid to distinguish himself from Trump, many in Washington now consider him too tainted by his association with the administration. And Republican grandee Newt Gingrich said the midterms result takes "a good bit of the luster" off Vance as a candidate. "The scale of the Republican defeat is so great that it makes the race for the GOP presidential nomination wide open," Gingrich added. The other presumed frontrunner for 2028 is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been conspicuous by his absence and silence this week - after being a surprise hit with MAGA supporters on the campaign trail. The State Department flatly denied reports Rubio is preparing to quit in order to launch a presidential run. Asked about Vance's intervention on Wednesday, Trump said: "You don't know who's talking about running. You can have people running. You can have a lot of people, maybe a lot of people running, maybe nobody's gonna run." Texas Senator Ted Cruz compared the party's collapse to the American public's revulsion to the Watergate scandal - which prompted Richard Nixon to be the first and only President to resign from office. "2026 was not simply a blue wave," Cruz said on his podcast. "It was a blue tsunami. It was an asskicking. "It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election. It was a Watergate-level repudiation." And former Florida governor Ron Desantis said it was "close to an extinction-level event for Republicans." Both Desantis and Cruz are said to be eyeing up runs for President in 2028. In better news for Trump, construction on the giant triumphal arch he's ordered to be built in Washington was expected to start last night, as a body stuffed with his allies gave final approval for the vanity project. But a federal judge could still halt the project for circumventing congressional approval.