Megyn Kelly says Republicans got crushed in the midterms because Donald Trump’s name wasn’t on the ballot.
The Washington crowd now insists the party simply needs to move on without him.
And John Thune knows all about the one broken promise that kept Trump voters home.
Kelly Diagnosed the Problem and Missed the Cause
Democrats grabbed both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, flipping Republican Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina.
Kelly took to The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM to deliver the eulogy.
“This morning the Republican Party is in ruins, and maybe it needed to be,” Kelly said.
She told Republicans they need “to learn how to win without daddy on the ballot.” She described voters sending the party a crude message, and the core of it was hard to miss: “you have betrayed us.”
Kelly got one thing right. Voters do feel betrayed.
But she aimed her fire at the wrong target. Kelly wants Republicans to cut the cord with Trump and rebuild “in the image of no man.” The voters who sat out this election weren’t mad at Trump. They were mad at the Republicans in Washington who spent two years smiling for the cameras while sitting on his agenda.
President Trump put it plainly after the results came in. “President Trump was not on the ballot and it’s proven that Trump voters show up when he is on the ballot,” he said.
The Record Tells the Same Story Every Time
Look at the scoreboard.
In 2016, Trump topped the ticket and Republicans walked away with the White House, the House, and the Senate. In 2018, the party ran without him under a House leadership crew straight out of the pre-Trump playbook, and Republicans lost the House.
In 2020, with Trump on the ballot, House Republicans gained more than a dozen seats while most of the media predicted a bloodbath. In 2022, establishment-friendly candidates ran on vague promises and the red wave fizzled into a puddle.
Then came 2024. Trump returned to the top of the ticket, and Republicans took back the Senate and held the House.
And now 2026, with Trump off the ballot again, the bottom fell out.
That pattern isn’t a coincidence, and it isn’t a personality cult. Trump voters show up for a fighter who delivers. They don’t show up for a consultant’s checklist and a candidate who sounds like he’d rather be at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
The SAVE Act Fight Showed Voters Exactly Who Folded
Nothing captured the problem better than the SAVE America Act.
The bill does something most Americans consider basic common sense. It requires proof of citizenship to register and vote in federal elections, so only American citizens decide American elections. Gallup found 83 percent of Americans back proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
The House passed it. Trump pushed for it all year. Fifty Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader John Thune, signed on in support.
But support on paper didn’t mean much once the filibuster entered the room.
Trump asked Thune to keep the Senate in session or scrap the filibuster entirely. “Thune should not allow the United States Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in July.
Thune said no.
“We could stay here until Christmas,” Thune said. “The Democrats aren’t voting for this, I’m just telling you. And Republicans are not getting rid of the legislative filibuster.”
Conservatives begged for a talking filibuster that would force Democrats to hold the floor and defend their opposition hour after hour. Thune wouldn’t pull that trigger either. Instead, he scheduled a vote everyone knew would fail and treated the whole thing like a campaign prop.
“I can guarantee the debate, I can guarantee the vote, I just can’t guarantee an outcome,” Thune said.
So the Majority Leader offered Trump voters a messaging bill. One conservative critic reported that Thune even brushed off citizens calling his office to demand action as “paid influencers.”
A Rule That Protected the Wrong People
Thune defended the filibuster on Fox News back in March, claiming it had “protected Republicans through the years.”
It sure didn’t protect them this November.
Here’s the bitter irony. Republicans held onto a Senate rule that blocked their own voters’ top priorities, and now Democrats own the Senate. Democrats have never been shy about nuking the filibuster when it suits them. Once they decide the rule stands in the way of their agenda, it’ll be gone faster than a campaign promise from a RINO.
And their agenda isn’t small. Kelly herself warned that many of the new Democrats are “DSA types, who are more radical than the previous Democrats.” Socialists don’t want voter ID. They want amnesty for illegal aliens, a packed Supreme Court, and new states that would permanently tilt the electoral map in their favor.
The establishment kept the filibuster safe for a party that will throw it in the trash the first chance it gets. Unilateral disarmament rarely ends well.
Why the Base Stayed Home
Picture a retired farmer in South Carolina or a truck driver in Kansas.
He watched Trump fight for the SAVE Act. He watched Senate Republicans shrug and say the votes just weren’t there. He saw a leadership team more worried about Senate traditions than about whether noncitizens could slip onto the voter rolls.
Then those same Republicans asked for his vote.
Maybe he voted anyway. Plenty of loyal Republicans did. But a lot of folks decided they weren’t going to wait in line for a party that wouldn’t stand in line for them.
Establishment Republicans have a long history here. They pay lip service to Trump’s agenda in public, then let it die quietly in committee or on the Senate floor. They figure the base will always show up out of habit. This election proved them wrong.
Thune’s own postelection message reinforced the point. He bragged about the party’s “strong record of accomplishment,” and the SAVE America Act didn’t even make the list, according to Twitchy.
The Pre-Trump Party Wants Its Keys Back
Kelly told Republicans to forget about MAGA and start from scratch.
That advice sounds like music to the donor class. The old guard has wanted Trump out of the way since the day he came down the escalator. A blank slate gives them the chance to drag the party back to the days of amnesty deals, offshored jobs, and polite losses to Democrats.
The voters already rejected that party once. They rejected it again when it ran without Trump and without his agenda in 2018 and 2022.
What the base wants hasn’t changed. Secure elections. A sealed border. Leaders who fight instead of folding. Trump delivered that message at the top of the ticket, and voters responded.
So the question for the next two years isn’t whether Republicans can win without Trump’s name on the ballot. It’s whether Republicans in Washington will ever start acting like they believe in what he promised.
In March, John Thune said the filibuster had protected Republicans through the years. In November, Republicans lost control of the Senate while the SAVE America Act sat dead on the shelf.
Sources: Mediaite, “Megyn Kelly Warns GOP It’s Time to Learn How to ‘Win Without Daddy on the Ballot’”; TheWrap, “Megyn Kelly Warns GOP Needs to Learn to ‘Win Without Daddy on the Ballot’”; The National News Desk, “Trump urges Thune to keep Senate in session, possibly end filibuster for SAVE America Act”; Democracy Docket, “Thune rejects Trump’s calls to nix the filibuster and Senate recess”; Democracy Docket, “Thune schedules doomed SAVE America Act vote”; Fox News, coverage of the SAVE America Act Senate debate; The Daily Signal, “Talking, Nuking, or Voting on the Filibuster”; Gallup polling on proof of citizenship; Twitchy, coverage of John Thune’s postelection statement
