President Donald Trump has survived two impeachments, and he doubts the Democrats who just captured Congress will come after him for a third.
Trump made the prediction to CBS News “60 Minutes” correspondent Ross Douthat in his first sit-down interview since the midterm elections on Nov. 3, 2026, taped at the White House on Friday, Nov. 6, and broadcast Sunday, Nov. 8. Asked whether Democrats would try to impeach him once they run the House and Senate, he said, “I can’t imagine it, you know?”
“What have I done? I’ve had the best two years in the history of the presidency,” Trump said.
Democrats took both chambers on Nov. 3 and won statewide offices in reliably Republican states, among them Texas, Kansas and South Carolina, where the party had gone decades without such victories. The new majorities take control in January 2027.
Some Say the First Two Helped Him
Trump raised the earlier impeachments himself, noting that Democrats “impeached me twice.” Some people, he said, think it “worked out to my advantage.”
The House impeached him in December 2019, and the Senate acquitted him in February 2020. After the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, the House impeached him a second time, and the Senate acquitted him again in February 2021.
Deals With the Party Investigating Him
Douthat asked whether Trump could still work with Democrats while they investigate his administration. “Well, I did it for four years,” Trump said.
Cutting deals with the new majority would come “very easily,” he said. Douthat asked whether he could do it without insulting Democrats. Trump said he could.
Some Democrats have called for investigations and subpoenas of Trump administration officials. Kamala Harris, the former vice president, has urged the incoming Congress not to make impeachment its focus.
Immigration is one area where Trump said he wants to work with the Democratic majority. It is also the policy he said “both helped and hurt” Republicans at the polls.
Why He Says the Rallies Didn’t Transfer
Trump’s explanation for the defeat started with his own absence from the ballot. He said he campaigned hard anyway, with about 30 rallies in roughly 28 days, and that the outcome would have looked different had his name been on it. The voters who turn out for him, he said, did not transfer to candidates they didn’t like.
Douthat pointed out that Trump had picked many of those candidates, including Ken Paxton in Texas and Darline Graham in South Carolina, who lost a heavily Republican state to a liberal challenger. Trump said Graham fought hard, and pointed to Ohio Republican Jon Husted, who he said had been 15 points down and ended up losing by about a point.
Then came the price of gasoline. Trump said it had been $1.85 a gallon in Iowa before climbing to $3.50 or $4, and that voters blamed the Iran war for the increase. He said he has settled eight wars.
Vice President JD Vance wrote in a post-election social media assessment that the war was the reason Republicans lost. Trump said he does not disagree. He also said the economy is strong and blamed sour public sentiment on poor messaging, possibly his own, and he stood by the decision to strike Iran as one that will look good historically even if it did not look good at the polls.
The conversation ranged past the election to corruption, Ukraine, artificial intelligence and Trump’s own mortality. He argued that beating China in artificial intelligence justifies the risks, and said he sees no reason to escalate the war with Iran now that the country’s nuclear material is buried under thousands of tons of rock. Douthat, a conservative Catholic writer who wrote the book “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious,” also pressed him on forgiveness and the afterlife.
The Promotion That Followed the Taping
About an hour after the interview ended, Trump named Stephen Miller his White House chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles, the outgoing chief of staff.
Trump said he expects some turnover in his administration.
Seth McKee, a politics professor at Oklahoma State University, said the choice of Miller shows the president “doesn’t get it.”
