Veteran news reporter Dan Rather said President Donald Trump was singularly responsible for American voters flipping seats and rejecting Republicans on Tuesday “in almost every state from South Carolina to Iowa, from Texas to Nevada.” Rather, who anchored the CBS Evening News for more than two decades before leaving the anchor chair in 2005, made the comments in an article published by Alternet. Midterm elections fall halfway through a president’s four-year term, and they have historically often gone against the party holding the White House; this year’s vote was the first nationwide test of Trump’s second term.

He said the rebuke was particularly “stinging” in the South. Since the 1960s, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Republican Party’s racist “Southern Strategy” had successfully shifted the region toward the GOP. Even so, Rather said he was surprised to see the once-reliably red area at the bottom of the U.S. map “turn decidedly blue” for the first time in decades.

“It is eye-popping to see Democrats elected in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. And, as of this writing, Mississippi, yes, Mississippi, is too close to call,” Rather said.

Rather attributed the outcome to Trump, but also to Republicans’ willingness to sacrifice their personal morals for his voters. As election night unfolded, he said, it recalled a 2016 warning from Senator Lindsey Graham: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”

“Just about everything Trump has done during his second term hurt Republicans’ chances in the midterms,” Rather wrote. He cited Trump’s decision to pardon every January 6 insurrectionist on his first day in office, his failure to release the Epstein files, and his decision to start a war with Iran. Rather also pointed to policies that he said pushed millions off health insurance and cut food assistance for millions more, as well as large tax cuts for Trump’s billionaire allies.

Rather further cited Trump’s renewed relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin while rebuffing NATO, tariffs that raised prices, and what he described as extensive corruption. “And he has engaged in so much head-spinning corruption it is hard to keep track,” Rather said.

Trump also assisted Democrats by directing Republican-led state legislatures to undertake unprecedented mid-decade redistricting, Rather said. The effort produced only one net positive seat for Republicans, while the gerrymandering push in Texas actually cost the party a seat. Because district lines help determine which party can realistically win each seat, map drawing has long been one of the most fiercely contested exercises in state politics.

Rather also criticized Trump-backed candidates who lost in states that had once been reliably Republican. He said Trump, “in a fit of pique,” endorsed Ken Paxton, Texas’s scandal-plagued attorney general, over Senator John Cornyn. “Not only did Talarico take Paxton to the cleaners, but Republicans also spent more than half a billion, yes, billion, dollars on the losing race — money that could have supported other races,” Rather wrote.

“Trump is unrepentant, pointing fingers everywhere but at himself,” Rather said, although the vice president has acknowledged that “Iran was a piece of it” in what Rather called a “rare moment of introspection.”

Rather said the damage to the Republican brand had been done and would take a long time to repair. He added that “Democrats have been handed a rare and decisive win,” and that how they use it would form the next chapter of a “stunning political turn of events.”

Americans voted on Tuesday, Rather said, but now must “do anything and everything you can to reunite the country.” He urged readers to “Hold your newly elected officials to account. Reach out through community service. Help your neighbors. Help your friends.”

“America as a whole needs to rededicate itself to the ideals found in the Pledge of Allegiance, ‘… one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’

“We have just given ourselves a chance for a fresh start,” Rather concluded. “Now is the hour to seize it.”