Vance lances Trump as MAGA enters week of the long knives

TOI correspondent from Washington: There were no hidden Trump voters, just angry Trump voters, standing in plain sight, carrying their grievances to the ballot box and voting for Democrats because they were upset about the Iran war.

In essence, that was US vice president JD Vance's explosive explanation for the Republican Party's electoral debacle in a post in which he appeared to throw his boss under the bus while positioning himself to run for the White House in 2028.In what was a quick 614-word post-mortem of the Republican rout even as final tallies are still being tabulated, Vance argued that strategists had been looking in the wrong place, obsessing over turnout when the real problem was that Trump-Vance voters from 2024 were switching sides.

His data analysts had been reassured by turnout figures, but one particularly astute pollster had warned that many former Republican voters were angry and planning to vote Democrat.