Trump lost Congress. 3 presidents before him did, too

CBC - World Video
6 followers
Nov 4, 2026
I want to put some historical context
on just how rare this midterm result is in the U.S.
Donald Trump has just become only the third
U.S. president to preside over his party losing
both the House and the Senate at a midterm election.
The last time it happened before this was 2006
in a scenario that has some significant
echoes of what just happened.
That was when the Republican President George W. Bush
Bill Clinton lost both the House and the Senate at the midterm.
When he was in the middle of pursuing
an incredibly unpopular war in the Middle East,
that one was against Iraq.
Before that was Bill Clinton in 1994,
and Clinton's Democrats lost both the House
and the Senate in that midterm,
in large part because Clinton's attempts at reforming
the health insurance system here in the US
were really, really unpopular.
Before that, you've got to go all the way back to 1946
and Harry S. Truman to find the previous time
when a sitting U.S. president presided over such a disastrous loss
of both the House and the Senate in the midterms.
