The day before the midterm elections, President Donald Trump stood at the Reflecting Pool and insisted that his remarks had nothing to do with the vote. The day after, he gave reporters a construction update from the site of his White House ballroom.

In between, his party suffered what one Republican called a near “extinction-level” event. Democrats won Senate races even in historically conservative Texas, South Carolina and Kansas. One White House official described the outcome as “the worst-case scenario.”

Trump remains convinced that the problem was bad candidates, even though he handpicked many of them. Inside the White House, some see the problem closer to home. Current and former officials, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told MS NOW that staffers were exasperated, though not surprised, that the president wouldn’t accept responsibility. They were also frustrated that even as his party headed into a rout, his attention was on his construction projects.

With two years left in Trump’s term, some are looking for the exits, and his allies worry about a White House that struggles to keep its people, recruit new ones and keep the president focused on his agenda.

“In this current trajectory, there’s no shot this is salvageable,” one former White House official, who remains in touch with current staff, said of Trump’s MAGA agenda. “What is the president’s focus these last two years? It’s probably renovations.”

The Reflecting Pool and ballroom projects, both costing more than $600 million, have been a particular source of frustration, and at times confusion, for staff across the White House.

“The president’s attention is all over the place,” said another former White House official who remains close to the administration. “How many people are preparing briefs on what marble to pick for X project?”

The same former official said morale was low and that the “glitz and glam of the White House is wearing off.”

“There is no holding back on the desire to leave now,” the former official said. “Some are making calls to try and jump ship.” Others, the official added, are being advised to seek legal counsel as a “precaution.”

One of the former Trump administration officials summed up the atmosphere in one word: “pain.”

“Everybody’s going to start infighting,” the former official said, their assessment based on their knowledge of the internal environment.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

When Trump returned to the White House last year, his MAGA allies had already crafted a blueprint in Project 2025. They filled the Cabinet and the administration with loyalists who had largely stuck by him through his political comeback after he left Washington in 2021.

But after a flurry of departures, several people close to Trump’s operation now question whether it’s worth serving in the administration for its final two years.

“It’s going to be hell,” another person close to the White House operation said.

“No one is going to work there — you have to be independently wealthy,” the person said, referring to the salaries of White House staffers relative to the private sector. That person pointed to the difficulty of persuading top recruits to leave lucrative jobs for volatile, short-term posts in the administration.

“A lot of people think he’s not going to be able to do anything. He’s a lame duck,” one of the former officials said.

That former official added, though, that the Democratic takeover of Congress had less to do with allies’ reluctance to join: “The president is using executive authority on most of these things, especially when it comes to foreign policy and all of these things he’s doing that has very little to do with Congress.”

Since launching his third presidential campaign in late 2022, Trump has relied on a strikingly small circle of trusted operatives to run his political and White House operations. The person close to the White House operation said no one on staff speaks frankly to Trump about staying focused on his policy goals, because they feel they won’t be heard.

At the ballroom site on Wednesday, Trump struck a subdued, almost indifferent tone. In almost 20 minutes of remarks, he never mentioned the losses Republicans had suffered the night before.

Asked about the optics of the president bookending Tuesday’s election with construction-project remarks rather than the issues voters cared about most, a current White House official suggested that he sees things differently.

“That’s not how he thinks; he doesn’t see that the same way the rest of us do,” the current White House official said. Trump isn’t thinking about polling and voter approval in the way he may previously had, the official said.

One longtime Trump adviser said the moment marked a return to “his happy place,” noting that construction is Trump’s “true interest.”

Trump is probably less angry about the midterms than people think, the adviser said. They pointed to the many losses and disappointments Trump has weathered before, personally and professionally.

“His skyscraper just got cut down by 30%, and he is going to find a way to rebuild,” the adviser said.

The post Trump aides question his focus after Republicans’ midterm losses appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.