WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump vowed on Sunday to bounce back stronger from a massive midterm election defeat, which he called a ‘giant step back in history’ for the United States.
Democrats captured both chambers of Congress in last Tuesday’s midterm elections, inflicting historic losses on Trump’s Republican Party in states it had dominated for decades.
‘America took a giant step back in History with the results of the last Election,’ Trump said in a post on Truth Social, adding that the stock market, which had grown during his tenure, had suffered a loss after the vote.
‘But have no fear, we will be back, BIGGER AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE! The US president has also ordered the Justice Department to investigate Democrats for ‘threatening a lot of people’ with impeachment and other forms of punishment, claiming in a social media post that their actions amounted to a ‘criminal act’, without providing evidence.
‘The Democrats are going around threatening a lot of people,’ he wrote, add-ing that he was ordering the Justice Department to ‘look into this criminal act’.
Denying that anyone in his administration had committed impeachable offences, Trump called for prison terms for ‘these EXTORTIONISTS’.
Press secretary post Earlier, Trump stirred controversy when he asked mixed martial arts promoter Dana White to serve as White House press secretary and urged him to bring along some fighters as assistants, ‘even though some are not from our country’.
Mr White, who is chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), was a ‘violent Fighter and Warrior’, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Trump also called for six current or former UFC titleholders to join White, including two athletes from Dagestan, Islam Makhachev and Khabib Nurmagomedov; Americans Justin Gaethje, Daniel Cormier and ‘Kayla Harris’, and Amanda Nunes, a Brazilianborn fighter who became a US citizen last year.
‘We need these people to defend usagainst the Lunatic Left,’ Trump wrote.
Speaking at a press conference in London on Saturday after a boxing event, White said he would meet Trump at the White House on Monday.
The White House press secretary’s position has been vacant since Katie Zacharia’s tenure ended last month after less than a week.
However, there has been speculation that another Dana White appeared on the president’s shortlist for the position, one whose experience was more closely aligned with the demanding role, The Daily Beast reported.
Critics raised the possibility that the president’s team had actually suggested Dana W. White, a former assistant to the secretary of defence for public affairs, for the job.
Ms White previously served as the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson and worked at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Trump’s Project 2025. She also has a background in conservative media, having worked as a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a commentator on Fox News.
-Agencies / Monitoring Desk