Fox News’ biggest prime-time voice spent the night after the midterms telling his own party to put down its weapons and stop aiming them at each other.
Sean Hannity, 64, used his monologue on “Hannity” on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, to press Republicans not to turn on one another as they picked through the wreckage of the midterms, and he named a single cause for the party’s losses: the war with Iran. Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterms.
“My message tonight is all hands on deck, stay away from circular firing squads, finger-pointing, blame,” Hannity said in the monologue. “Allow Democrats to show their true colors as they are now doing; have real answers on the other side.”
“I Think 100 Percent,” He Told Baier
Hannity had reached that conclusion a night earlier, on Tuesday, Nov. 3, when Fox anchor Bret Baier asked him whether the results would have looked different if the war with Iran had not been on voters’ minds. Hannity didn’t hedge. “I think 100 percent, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,” he said.
The administration has left the economy’s foundations in good shape, Hannity argued, though he conceded that voters who don’t feel it won’t give the White House credit for it. People want the border secured, he said, and much of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement footage that Democrats played up during the campaign did not sit well with them. Unhappiness with the Iran war, and the damage it has done to the economy, proved the stronger force.
Hannity was among the outside advisers who quietly pushed President Donald Trump to take voters’ cost-of-living pain more seriously during the campaign. His audience includes the president, who sat for an exclusive interview with him on Monday, Nov. 2, the eve of the vote.
Truth Social absorbed much of Trump’s election night, where he complained about Fox’s midterm coverage. The network spotlights Democrats too much and his own accomplishments too little, he argued.
Gallows Humor on a Campaign Call
Leaked accounts of the campaign’s final stretch describe a video call less than a week before Election Day with more than two dozen advisers, a conversation that slid into gallows humor about funerals, prison and pardons. James Blair, the former White House deputy chief of staff steering the midterm effort, told the group, “I’m getting my affairs in order,” and suggested everyone else do the same. Tony Fabrizio, the Trump pollster, floated seeking asylum in Israel.
On an earlier call, Blair mocked some of the Republicans his team was trying to elect and told colleagues the problem was their own side.
Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC dismissed the leaks through its spokesman, Alex Pfeiffer, who called the quotes invented gossip and had harsh words for whoever was passing them around.
The Name That Wasn’t on the Ballot
Trump offered his own explanation well before the returns came in. Five weeks out, he posted on Truth Social telling his base to act as though his name appeared on the ballot. His last pre-election speech came at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and he later argued that any bad night belonged to his absence from the ballot rather than to him. Once the counting finished, his post claimed the party would have won with him on it.
Before the polls closed, Trump asked what the midterms would have looked like had the United States never gone into Iran, according to reports. The war had played a part, he acknowledged to The Wall Street Journal on election night. Reporters heard from him again the next day, Nov. 4, at the construction site of the East Wing ballroom at the White House, where the final steel beam was raised as he spoke.
Trump was not on the ballot, a White House official said, and Trump voters turn out when he is.
Reagan Lost, Then Won 49 States
Hannity made a longer historical case during Fox’s election coverage alongside Harris Faulkner and Larry Kudlow. Parties should expect midterm wipeouts, he argued, and a president with a more dominant personality takes the more brutal loss. Ronald Reagan won in 1980, took a battering in the 1982 midterms and then carried 49 states in 1984. A sitting president lost to Bill Clinton in 1992; Clinton then absorbed a major defeat in 1994 and won re-election anyway. The Tea Party met Barack Obama in 2010, two years after his 2008 victory, and he won re-election two years after that.
Elections shaped by the Sept. 11 attacks and World War II are the rare exceptions, he said. Republicans, he also allowed, have lessons to take from the night.
His radio show on Nov. 4 gave Hannity a chance to list the pressures that moved voters: rising fuel costs, the Iran conflict and impatience with the pace of the recovery. He reacted to the victory speech of Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed, then turned to whether his party can rebuild before 2028.
The blame is also reaching the Pentagon. Trump has been sounding out allies about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s performance, and a growing bloc of Republicans says the hawkish Hegseth steered the president into Iran with no way out.
