“I think the blue wave is dead, frankly,” President Donald Trump said of the midterms in an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network. “And I think we’re doing very well. It looks like we’re going to win the Senate which is very important.” | Joe Raedle/Getty Images elections Trump declares 'the blue wave is dead'

President Donald Trump insisted on Wednesday that the Democratic Party does not have the midterm momentum that its leaders have claimed, proclaiming that “the blue wave is dead.”

In an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network’s David Brody and Jenna Browder, Trump expressed confidence that Republicans would win the Senate and “do very well in the House." His comments came one day after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared that Democrats "will win" control of the House and perform well in Senate and gubernatorial races across the country.


“I think the blue wave is dead, frankly,” Trump told CBN in an interview taped Wednesday aboard Air Force One. “And I think we’re doing very well. It looks like we’re going to win the Senate, which is very important.”

Trump stopped short of predicting that Republicans would maintain their majority in the House next Tuesday but slammed Pelosi, the longtime Democratic leader that GOP candidates have used as a foil in races nationwide.

Pelosi has “been losing for a long time, so you know, she would like to win,” Trump said, adding later that “she’s been saying she’s going to win for a long time. She hasn’t been doing too well. We’ll see what happens. I think we’re going to do very well in the House also.”

Most polling shows Democrats poised to make gains in the House, a forecast that tracks with the historical trend of the party that does not control the White House performing well in midterm elections. But the GOP also appears poised to maintain control of the Senate and potentially grow its majority there, with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence crisscrossing the country in the final days of the campaign with a particular focus on boosting Senate and gubernatorial candidates.

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Trump fired back at criticism that his dialing up of anti-immigration rhetoric in recent days amounts to a political ploy to rile up his base, arguing that the country needed to elect Republicans so that he can push his hard-line immigration policy through Congress along party lines.

“Well, if I am, I’ve been doing it for a long time because I’ve been on this issue for a long time, ever since you’ve known me and now we have a chance to do something about it,” he told CBN. “The problem is we have no Democrat votes. We need Democrat votes in order to pass bills. You know, because we have a very little, tiny majority.”