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It’s been a little while since conservative commentators and influencers have had to deal with this much losing, and they are out of practice. They may have known a potential blue wave was possible—even likely—but they seemed not to know how to process the thrashing.

On Fox News, the mood was somber. Host Dana Perino floated that perhaps Democrats would “defund the troops.” Jesse Watters said, “I don’t think we’re going to get our $5,000 checks,” referring to President Donald Trump’s most outlandish campaign promise. Sean Hannity blamed the war in Iran.

In the MAGA online swamp, influencers and conservative media figures processed the remarkably poor performance in several ways, some of which have contradicted one another.

A few, particularly during the early part of the night, still tried to gloat where they could. In particular when Republicans won races they were expected to win, as in the Florida governor’s race, some influencers bragged about fending off the worst scenarios. But soon, the mood turned to doom and disbelief.

“Tonight is a harsh reality check,” one prominent right-wing X account, @ClownWorld, wrote. “It’s incredibly sad to see so many Americans buying into this radical agenda. We are in serious trouble.” The influencer Tim Pool felt similarly: “This isn’t a blue tsunami. This is a blue great mud flood. Shit.”

Fairly quickly, these accounts moved to looking for a villain. Few directly blamed Donald Trump. More felt confident that it was the faction of their party that they didn’t like.

In many cases, that faction was the foreign-policy hawks, who they blame for the war in Iran. “Great work, neocons,” the personality Jack Posobiec wrote. “Take a big bow.”

Mike Cernovich, who declared it “the dark night of the soul for our country,” also pointed blame at Republicans who called young men “welfare cheats,” referring to an insular outrage cycle on right-wing social media involving a Sarah Huckabee Sanders ad. The ad had portrayed a young man playing video games as a lazy welfare recipient; influencers saw this as an insult to white men.

More politically astute observers understood the losses were about more than just the culture wars. “Wow it turns out that ‘actually affordability isn’t a big deal’ wasn’t a winning message,” the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh wrote.

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The president, for his part, seemed to process the evening through those awkward Fox News segments, and it is fair to say he didn’t like what he saw. In just a couple hours, he posted about the network three times. “FoxNews Ratings are way down (27%!) because they’re spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats!” he wrote on Truth Social at 7 p.m. “It’s them, not me—My numbers are better than they have ever been.”

This was despite an appearance from newly minted Fox commentator Karoline Leavitt, his former press secretary, who defended the president on air, arguing that the public had forgotten all the good things he’d done for them. But there seemed to be some frustration directed at the messenger.

At 10:40 p.m., after the nature of the night had become clear, Trump decided he had to defend himself. “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he wrote on Truth Social. “Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Read more of Slate’s election coverage.

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