TOI Correspondent From Washington: The man who posts on social media at the drop of a hat, at all times and at odd hours, sometimes a dozen posts an hour, was rendered rather speechless after an electoral thrashing for the ages.Now a lame-duck President for all purposes but still armed with enormous executive powers, Donald Trump reacted to the Republican rout first with a mix of denial and defiance, and later with nonchalance and some conciliation. His initial reaction when the Democratic demolistion came into view early on Tuesday night was one of denial. “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he posted on his propaganda platform “Truth Social.”Then it was a couple of rage posts about Fox News — his favored propaganda network whose coverage became funereal as the night wore on — and blaming Republican candidates, including defeated Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a wheelchair-bound GOP stalwart who was thwarted in his bid for a third term.“If Greg Abbott hadn’t become a RINO (Republican in Name Only) in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost. He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!” he wrote, throwing the veteran under the bus and absolving himself of all blame. He told Fox News that some voters simply “didn’t like the candidates.”Shortly after midnight, he posted a photo of a red baseball cap with the word VETO on it – suggesting that he will simply block any Democrat-written bills, creating a deadlock since Dems do not have the 2/3rds majority in both chambers to override a presidential veto.Then he went silent for more than nine hours, but not before he also told a C-Span in a live phone call that he would work with Democrats and not veto everything they sent, even though he has the right to do so.“We’re going to work with the Democrats, to make sure things go well for our country… We have a lot of friends in the Democratic Party,” he said in a conciliatory tone at odds with his familiar combativeness.Democrats too have every reason to work with the President. The U.S Constitution (Article I, Section 7) requires a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives (290/435) and the Senate (67/100) to overcome the veto – although the qualifier is 2/3rds majority of those “present and voting.” Dems are well short of that double which last occurred in 1965 during the Lyndon Johnson Presidency.But a testing time is afoot even within the Republican ranks. The rout shocked and angered many conservatives, some of whom began to turn on Trump publicly. “Dems look like they might get 56 (Senate seats).. Rs will never get that back for a long time. You ignore primaries for years, anoint a charlatan as not just leader but God, and then mimic his retardation every day for a decade, at some point the chickens come home to roost,” raged Daniel Horowitz, a commentator at the right leaning outlet The Blaze. “It’s on him. It’s not on anybody else. It’s a total, complete rejection of President Trump,” Bill Miller, a top Republican lobbyist in Texas, told BBC, calling it “a disaster of the first magnitude” that nobody saw coming.Actually, every poll and survey other than MAGA affiliated ones saw it coming, although the scale was not foreseen by most. In fact, Democrats went to polling day wary of the “too good to be true” projections given past setbacks, particularly in 2016 when Trump himself did not appear to believe he would win. This time around, he tried to conjure up victory in the face of imminent defeat with bravado and bluster, but voters had other ideas. They trussed him up by giving Democrats a comfortable majority in both chambers of Congress.