By sunrise this morning, the verdict was in, and it was the same verdict as yesterday, last year, and every year since 2015: Trump did this.
Democrats will control the House and Senate in January. That’s the result. What I won’t accept is the interpretation being handed out with it, because it comes from the same sources that have been wrong about this man for a decade.
A contrarian doesn’t deny what happened. He refuses to let the people who were wrong last time explain why it happened.
The Midterm Curse Is Older Than Trump
Start with history, which the networks skipped this morning.
The president’s party loses seats in the midterms. That’s one of the most consistent patterns in American politics. Brookings, hardly a MAGA outlet, said more than a year ago that barring a game-changing event, the probability of Republicans losing the House was very high. In 2018, Democrats gained 41 House seats. Obama lost 63 House seats in 2010. Clinton lost both chambers in 1994.
When something happens to nearly every president, it isn’t a referendum on this one. It’s how midterms work.
And Trump wasn’t on the ballot. He told voters to pretend he was, and said Republicans always do very well when he’s on the ticket. The record backs him up. His coalition shows up for him. It doesn’t automatically show up for every House candidate with an R next to their name. That’s a turnout problem for the party. It isn’t a rejection of the man.
Ten Years of the Same Script
Now consider what voters were hearing.
The Media Research Center found that ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news coverage of Trump was 92% negative in the first 100 days of his second term. In Biden’s first 100 days, the same networks gave him 59% positive coverage. This spring, MRC’s Tim Graham reported that broadcast coverage of Trump has run about 90% negative month after month.
Think about what that means. For ten years, most Americans who get their news from network TV have seen a version of this president that’s nine parts bad for every one part good. When people take in that ratio for a decade, it shapes what they believe is “common sense.”
So when a pundit says voters rejected Trump, ask what those voters were shown. You can’t say a jury reached a fair verdict when the jury only heard from the prosecution.
Who Actually Raised Your Gas Prices
The biggest reason voters were angry was cost of living, and the biggest driver of cost of living this year was oil.
Readers of this publication know where the oil spike came from. Iran was offered three rounds of negotiations, free nuclear fuel, and a long enrichment framework, and its delegation answered that it had an “inalienable right” to enrich. When the strikes came, Iran’s response was to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil moves. It’s still closed. Iran’s Houthi allies are attacking Saudi airports and tankers.
The price you pay at the pump is the price of a hostile regime holding the world’s most important shipping lane hostage. The networks call that “Trump’s war.” The honest description is Iran’s blockade.
The Defectors Followed the Narrative, Not the Facts
Then there are the former allies: Rogan, Carlson, Owens, and Alex Jones, who now claims Trump made a deal to sabotage the midterms.
These aren’t RINOs in the classic sense. They’re something newer: influencers who make their living off audience mood. When the networks spend a decade pushing one narrative and some of that narrative seeps into their audience, influencers follow the audience. That’s the business model.
Trump didn’t soften his response. He called Tucker Carlson low IQ and said Megyn Kelly, Candace, and a bankrupt Alex Jones were dumb or “fried.” You can dislike the tone. But notice which side is still saying the same thing it said in 2024.
The Bridge They Took Away
There’s one more factor the networks won’t talk about.
Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University. He was the movement’s bridge between the campus and the base, and between the influencers and each other. He kept the young voters and the factions talking.
A movement that loses its unifier to political violence doesn’t stay unified. Since he died, his movement has split into factions, each claiming his legacy while fighting the others. That fracture didn’t come from a policy failure. It came from a bullet.
The Economy Nobody Covered
Last, the record that rarely makes the evening news. GDP growth stayed solid, with Q3 around 3.4%. Business investment surged on the AI buildout and restored expensing. Unemployment stayed near 4.1–4.2%. Manufacturing added jobs after years of losses. MRC has documented the same pattern going back years: strong economic news gets a fraction of the airtime given to scandals.
Voters felt the prices because the prices were real, and Iran caused them. They didn’t hear about the growth, because nobody told them.
Why I Don’t Conform
Here’s my standard, and it’s the same one this publication applies to everything from the GENIUS Act to the Columbus record:
When the source that’s been wrong for ten years delivers a verdict, I don’t accept it just because it arrived first and loudest.
That isn’t denial. The votes are the votes. But the story about the votes, meaning who’s to blame and what it means, is still being written. Right now the people writing it are the same networks, the same consultants, and the same former allies whose take on this president hasn’t changed since 2015.
The sovereign individual reads primary sources, checks track records, and asks who benefits from each version of the story. When you apply that standard, “Trump did this” looks less like analysis and more like the oldest narrative in American media getting one more run.
They wrote the verdict before the votes were counted. I’m not signing it.
— The Brilliant Mr. Pedro
www.pedrojdeleon.com
#Midterms2026 #MediaBias #Trump #TheBrilliantMrPedro
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