It was the night when Donald Trump, for the first time since his return to office, realized that even a king in a golden palace can lose - especially when the people outside have long since shut the gates. Hardly had the final projection from New Jersey come in, hardly had it become clear that Republicans in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York had failed in succession, when the president grabbed his phone - and turned Truth Social into a digital madhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"TRUMP WAS NOT ON THE BALLOT, AND THE SHUTDOWN WAS THE REASON FOR THE DEFEAT!!!\" he typed in furious all-caps rage. Then he added: \"POLLSTERS SAID IT, NOT ME!\" - a sentence that was at once defense, command, and capitulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That same night, Trump summoned his party allies - those who depend on his moods like meteorologists on wind directions. He demanded \"a Republican response of biblical proportions.\" The president said they must \"not give an inch.\" What he meant by that remained unclear - probably everything. Meanwhile, chaos reigned in the West Wing. Advisers reported a president who alternately shouted, cursed, and issued orders as if he were still running a television show. One staffer later said Trump had demanded that the Republican Party carry out \"the greatest purges since Lincoln\" - a sentence that, in its historical ignorance, was almost poetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, people in New York City were laughing in the streets, dancing in Queens and Brooklyn. Zohran Mamdani, 34, the son of Ugandan-Indian immigrants, a socialist, a Muslim, and now mayor, spoke of \"a city that is waking up again.\" Trump called him a \"communist intruder\" on Truth Social, but the words sounded helpless. New York, once his stage, had finally slipped from his grasp. In the White House, the television wall ran with three channels in parallel: Fox News, OANN, and a muted CNN stream, so that \"no one secretly listens to the enemies,\" as Trump was said to have put it. In the corner of the room lay a note with the handwritten words: \"NEVER AGAIN.\" No one knew whether he meant the election night - or democracy itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president demanded that Republicans must now exercise \"immediate retribution.\" Against whom, he did not say. Perhaps against the right to vote. Perhaps against mathematics. Perhaps against God. At the party headquarters in Arlington, his instructions sounded like the last radio transmissions of a general fighting on a map long after the battlefield had been cleared. Lawmakers whispered anonymously that things could not go on like this. But no one dared say it out loud. The fear of the man with the capital letters ran deep. One wrote in an encrypted chat: \"He thinks he\u2019s the Messiah. In truth, he\u2019s just angry that no one is clapping anymore.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump, meanwhile, was preparing his grand revenge speech, which was to be recorded that evening in the East Wing. Working title: \"The People Still Love Me.\" In it, he intends to explain that it was not he who lost, but America. That the voters cheated, the media lied, the Democrats manipulated - in short: that the world does not understand him. A drama in three acts, without an audience, starring a man who never notices when the curtain falls. It is said that in the middle of the night, he drew up a list of the governors who had won. Next to their names, he supposedly wrote in red felt pen: \"ALL ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.\" A symbol that Trump no longer distinguishes between opposition and obsession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday morning, as the sun rose over Washington, the White House stood still. In the windows was reflected the light of a day that should never have come for Donald Trump: the day America turned its back on him. And somewhere in the distance, between the tall trees of Lafayette Park, a lonely loudspeaker was said to be playing - the theme song of his old TV show The Apprentice. \"You\u2019re fired.\" This time, directed at himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n