WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s postelection statements about working with Democrats have presented the incoming majority with a kaleidoscope to decipher, but some Democratic lawmakers have their doubts.

On the one hand, the Republican president has contended that he can work with House and Senate Democrats after the new Congress is seated in January, even floating a bipartisan immigration bill. But on the other, he promoted his hard-line aide Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff, raising doubts about any cooling of the political environment.

At every stop along his October campaign rally blitz before Republicans suffered massive losses on Nov. 3, Trump railed against “Dumbocrats” and their “bad” policies. He mocked their candidates as too extreme, too corrupt and too beholden to the most progressive wing of their party. He even warned that, if voters handed them control of the House and Senate, it would set off “a 1929-style economic depression.”

Voters ignored him. They handed House Democrats over 250 seats at least come January, and the party will have at least 54 seats in the Senate.

Trump was asked during a “60 Minutes” interview taped Friday afternoon at the White House if he could resist insulting Democratic lawmakers for six months if that’s how long it took to reach a deal on major legislation. “Very easily,” he responded.

But several Democrats are so sure about getting to a “Kumbaya” moment with Trump during his final two years.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said it was hard to take the president at his word because he is “so unpredictable.”

“But I’m certainly telling my colleagues we should try to put as many bills as we can on his desk that do good things for the American public, and then see how he behaves,” he said Tuesday.

Kaine is not alone.

“We’re gonna put bills in front of the president on affordability starting Day One,” California Rep. Robert Garcia, the likely incoming House Oversight and Government Reform chair, said Tuesday. “We’ll have to see if he’s serious, but I don’t trust Donald Trump for a second.”

The White House on Monday sent Garcia a letter, obtained by CQ Roll Call, warning House Democrats that their anticipated spate of probes “may cross the line into blatant criminality.”

Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat who is in line to chair the Rules Committee in the new Congress, said on the floor Tuesday that he does not see a GOP that is ready to heed the election’s lessons and come to the bargaining table.

“Instead of taking the hint or listening to the overwhelming majority of Americans who told them to change course, Republicans are doubling down on the same tactics and messaging they’ve been jamming down our throats these last two years, and it’s a perfect example of why they lost in the first place,” he said. “They do not listen.

“Then to double down even further, the failed lame-duck president appointed Stephen Miller, the architect of all the cruel policies that most people hate, as his new White House chief of staff,” McGovern added, referring to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. “What planet are these people living on?”

Kaine said congressional Democrats might not notice that much of a change from the White House with Miller moving into the chief’s suite near the Oval Office.

“Stephen Miller was calling a lot of the shots, even if he wasn’t chief of staff,” the Virginia Democrat said. “So I view that as a kind of a change of the face, but not of the character of the administration.”

House Republicans’ Tuesday vote to make hard-line conservative Jim Jordan of Ohio their next leader is another red flag for Democrats.

“White House Chief of staff Stephen Miller and House Minority Leader Jim Jordan,” Brendan Duke, a former senior Democratic Senate aide now with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote on X. “Where is the pivot to the center after a historic election loss?”

‘Beating the other side’

Getting to the center is what retiring Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon says his fellow Republicans and Trump should be doing after the election massacre.

“I do wish we could get to the point where we could solve big problems, instead of just beating the other side,” said Bacon, who has floated a 2028 presidential bid. “We can’t do this Republican-only or Democrat-only. And I would say this to the president, too: We’ve got to start working across the aisle to solve these problems.”

Despite his postelection talk of working with Democrats, Trump has sought to blame them for an up-and-down U.S. stock market.

“Right after the election it went down $3 trillion,” he said Monday during an unplanned White House press briefing. “That was because of the result of the election, because the stock market does not want to see Democrats. And your 401(k)s have gone way down because of the ridiculous result.”

He’s also returned this week to questioning the midterm results: “It’s not even a result. It’s almost hard to believe. Now, I wasn’t on the ballot.”

Members of House Republicans’ new leadership team on Tuesday sounded dug in and ready for a partisan brawl over Democrats’ promised investigations into the president, many of his top aides and Trump family members. Jordan’s election as GOP leader shows that “we are ready to dig in for the fight,” outgoing Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday.

Michigan Rep. Lisa McClain, who was reelected House GOP conference chair, pointed to Garcia’s two-word statement on Election Day: “Lawyer up.”

“Tell me how ‘lawyering up’ helps anybody with affordability?” she said. “They’re going to be focused on going after President Trump. We are going to be focused on improving the quality of life for every American.”

To that end, retiring Maryland Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, a former No. 2 House Democrat, said Republicans should heed one big takeaway from the election: “Trump lost.”

©2026 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.