President Trump on Monday publicly questioned the legitimacy of this month's midterm election results, reviving unsubstantiated claims about voting machines six days after Republicans suffered sweeping losses that handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress.

"Does anybody really believe that this 'Election' was honest," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, according to CNBC. He questioned how pre-election polling could have been so far off from the final results and claimed, without offering evidence, that enormous early-voting "dumps" had made Republican victories "impossible." "It's all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!" he added.

The post marks a sharp reversal from the president's tone the day after the Nov. 3 election, when he told reporters he'd "get along probably with the Democrats unless they want to be destructive," signaling a willingness to work with the incoming majority.

A historic midterm reversal

Democrats flipped both the House and Senate in last week's midterms, with major upsets in longtime Republican strongholds including Texas, Kansas, South Carolina and Iowa, according to CP24/AP wire reporting. Neither that report nor other outlets covering the post identified any specific evidence of fraud or machine tampering behind Trump's claims.

The rhetoric echoes arguments Trump made after his 2020 loss, when he and his allies filed dozens of court challenges alleging ballot fraud — nearly all of which were dismissed for lack of evidence. Those claims preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Critics have also noted the apparent inconsistency of Trump accepting his 2024 win under the same election infrastructure he now distrusts.

"IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MACHINES, WHICH ARE FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE VOTER!"

Trump has pushed for months to move the country toward hand-counted paper ballots, telling allies as recently as this year that he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines after 2020, according to earlier reporting cited by The Jerusalem Post. Election officials and voting-security experts broadly agree hand counts are slower, costlier and more error-prone than machine tabulation.

The Constitution gives states and Congress — not the president — authority over election administration, meaning Trump has no direct mechanism to overturn or re-run results he disputes. No lawsuit, investigation or executive order had been announced as of Monday afternoon.

What happens next is unclear. Congressional Democrats, newly empowered with majorities in both chambers, are expected to resist any effort to relitigate the midterms as they turn to a crowded lame-duck agenda that includes government funding and a looming debt-limit deadline.