Trump Parks Red ‘VETO’ Cap on Resolute Desk and Vows to Block ‘Insane’ Democratic Bills
President Donald Trump has turned a bright red baseball cap reading “VETO” into his post-midterm calling card, posting it to Truth Social and parking it on the Resolute Desk as Democrats prepare to take Congress.
Late Tuesday night, as results showed Democrats flipping the House and Senate, Trump shared an image of the red hat with a single word, The Independent and Fox News reported.
In a phone interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier just after midnight Wednesday, Trump said the veto is “one of the stronger powers that a president has.”
“They’ll send over things that are insane and I’ll veto them,” Trump said, according to Fox News. “And after a couple of months of vetoes, they’ll go out and they’ll say, ‘How do we get this stuff done?’ And we’ll work together.”
On Thursday the hat sat on the Resolute Desk while Trump signed a proclamation seeking to preserve the Oval Office and Cabinet Room as a national monument, accounts from The Tribune and Oval Office pool coverage described.
NBC News reported Trump focused his first public post-election appearances on White House renovations and the monument designation, saying major modifications would need congressional ratification.
“We’re going to be declaring it a national monument, and we’re going to send it over to Congress to have it ratified,” Trump told reporters, NBC News reported.
The political message of the cap is clearer than the decor talk. Democrats flipped at least seven Republican-held Senate seats and more than two dozen House districts, Fox News reported, positioning them to block nominees and investigate the administration.
Trump told Baier he was surprised by GOP losses and pinned part of the blame on gasoline prices tied to the Iran conflict rather than the war itself.
“I don’t think it’s the war, Bret, I think it’s the gasoline price,” he said, per Fox News.
He also claimed Democratic lawmakers had already reached out. “You know, I have a lot of friends that are Democrats, believe it or not. I’ve already spoken to some of them,” Trump said.
The Independent noted Trump has used the veto a dozen times across two terms and that Congress can override only with two-thirds majorities in both chambers — a high bar even with Democratic majorities.
Trump has also said he does not want two years of pure obstruction. “I don’t want to be just sitting there for two years vetoing everything,” he told Politico, according to secondary accounts of the remark.
For now the bright red “VETO” lid on the Resolute Desk is the visual shorthand for how Trump intends to govern with a hostile Congress: block what he calls insane bills and dare Democrats to find the votes to override him.
Constitutionally, a regular veto returns a bill to Congress, which can override only with two-thirds of both the House and Senate. That math favors Trump even after the Democratic sweep, unless enough Republicans defect on a given bill.
Trump rejected framing the midterms as a personal defeat because he was not on the ballot. “If you’re on the ballot, it’s different than if you’re not on the ballot,” he told Fox News, according to its Election Night coverage.
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