Trump conditions midterm acceptance on his own honesty test, FEC website goes dark after breach attempt days before vote, Iran war drags GOP polling as gasoline prices climb

President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he would accept the results of next week's midterm elections — if he deemed them honest. "I will, if they're honest elections, yeah," he said, before walking away before follow-up questions could be asked. The remark came days before Americans vote, with the Federal Election Commission — the agency that polices campaign finance — offline following an attempted breach.

The conditional acceptance is not a one-off. In February, Trump said he would respect the midterm results only if he considered them honest, and that if not, "something else has to happen," without elaborating. In 2024 he used nearly identical language before winning. He lost in 2020, refused the outcome, filed dozens of lawsuits, and summoned loyalists to Washington on the day Congress was set to certify the Electoral College vote — after his speech that morning, a mob attacked the Capitol while lawmakers were inside.

His administration has since published reports claiming tens of thousands of voters are registered illegally and has pressed states to purge them from the rolls, while calling for Republicans to "nationalize" elections — though the constitution leaves election administration to the states. Last week he ordered the Justice Department to preemptively sue Alaska to block certification of a Senate race if the incumbent Republican loyalist loses. A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll finds seven in ten voters do not believe he will respect the outcome. Some observers expect an attempt to have the House refuse to seat certified winners over claimed irregularities — a move election lawyers say courts would almost certainly block.

The timing is not incidental. Republican strategists privately concede the Iran war — which Trump calls a "little detour" — is damaging the party's congressional prospects as gasoline prices ripple through the economy, weeks after he promised to keep the country out of foreign wars. Democrats are favored to win one or both chambers.

On the same trip through Texas, Trump showed off an oil tanker of Venezuelan crude he described as spoils of an operation that captured Nicolás Maduro, and suggested Venezuela become "the 51st state."