President Donald Trump’s first appearance after Republicans lost both chambers of Congress turned into a tour of granite, limestone and one last steel beam, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper did not want to watch the beam go up.
Trump took questions from reporters on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, outside the unfinished ballroom at a construction site on the White House grounds, his first on-camera remarks since Democrats swept the House and the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterms.
CNN carried the impromptu news conference on “Election Day in America Continued,” which aired from 1 to 1:30 p.m. ET, with Cooper anchoring and Dana Bash as co-anchor.
The Beam Nobody Needed to See
The president had summoned the cameras for the final piece of steel. “This will be something very special. And so we’re putting up the last piece of steel. I thought it would be appropriate to have the media here,” he told reporters.
Trump said the room would be “not only one of the biggest, but it’ll be the most beautiful ballroom, I think, anywhere in the world.” People had been trying to get one for 150 years, he said, and about 525 people built it.
Every worker on the job signed the beam — steel workers, plumbers, electricians, painters — and he would sign it last, Trump said.
“And it went on. He talked about the granite. He talked about really every aspect of the construction of the ballroom the day after this massive election loss,” Cooper said after the first clips played.
“Watch the beam go up,” Trump said. The anchor’s answer was immediate: “Wow. I don’t think we need to watch the beam go up,” Cooper said, before suggesting that CNN simply play the beam going up while the panel kept talking.
“Not Even a Little Bit”
Reporters repeatedly steered the president back to the election. Asked whether he worried about impeachment by the incoming Democratic majority, Trump said: “No. Not even a little bit.” Such a move would destroy Democrats and there was no reason for it, he said, and the country was more successful than at any time in its history.
CNN White House correspondent Alayna Treene said the appearance caught the press corps off guard. “We did not expect to hear from President Donald Trump publicly like this,” she said. By her count, Trump spent roughly 15 to 20 minutes on ballroom features before he touched the election at all, and many people in the building had woken up unhappy, disappointed and frustrated by the results.
“And there seems to be a bit of denial among the president that there was a rejection of his agenda,” said CNN political analyst Alex Thompson. A candidate quality problem ran through the race, Thompson added.
Bash, anchoring from Capitol Hill, said she did not know why she was gobsmacked at the president discussing Corinthian columns, limestone and steel that morning, since everyone had watched him care about exactly this. The repercussions on the Hill had already begun, she said.
Vance Points at the Iran War
Vice President JD Vance broke with the president in an online post that Cooper read on air. Vance blamed the Iran war for the party’s losses and wrote that Trump himself had said so the night before.
Anyone who wanted to argue that losing the Senate for six years was a price worth paying should make that argument honestly, Vance wrote. The main problem was not turnout, he added. Many people who backed the 2024 Trump-Vance ticket voted for Democrats in 2026.
Trump offered a different diagnosis to The Wall Street Journal ahead of the vote, saying the biggest issue facing Republicans was his own absence from the ballot. After the returns came in, he posted on Truth Social that the party would have won had he been on the ballot. He had personally backed candidates who lost.
Cooper had already answered the president’s theory of the defeat, saying Trump “couldn’t translate the love in the rallies he had to the candidates,” candidates the anchor said the president “largely forced down the throats of voters.”
The Seat Musk Spent Millions On
In Texas, James Talarico became the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate seat in 38 years, beating Republican Ken Paxton. Elon Musk had sunk more than $150 million into electing Paxton. The state had not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1988.
CNN anchor Erin Burnett asked Talarico whether Paxton had called him. No call came, Talarico said, though he saw the concession speech and appreciated the kind words. He was looking forward to representing all 31 million Texans, Paxton included.
Pastor Adam Hamilton won in Kansas, where no Democrat had won since 1932. Democrats also took seats in deep-red South Carolina and in Maine, where they unseated Susan Collins after five terms.
Democrats needed four flips to take the chamber and got seven, netting 54 seats. CNN projected at least 232 Democratic seats in the House, past the 218 needed, with 64 races still in play. As of Monday, Nov. 9, Democrats had won 254 House seats, with about 20 races still uncalled.
Two Senate races stayed too early to call during the broadcast. Dozens of votes separated the candidates in Mississippi. In Alaska, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan was locked in a close contest with Democrat Mary Peltola, with correspondent Kyung Lah reporting from Anchorage. Neither race had been called as of Nov. 9, when Democrat Scott Colom led Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by about 2,500 votes in Mississippi and Peltola led Sullivan by 637 votes in Alaska.
In New Hampshire, Democratic Congressman Chris Pappas defeated former Republican Sen. John Sununu on Nov. 3. Sununu had Trump’s endorsement.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins had compared Sununu’s ads distancing himself from Trump to Mariah Carey’s 2003 remark about Jennifer Lopez during the network’s Nov. 3 election-night coverage. CNN’s Jake Tapper appeared to miss the reference. Cooper came to the desk and joked: “I hope that is not the only Mariah Carey reference of the night.”
