Michael Wolff, President Donald Trump's biographer and author of several best-selling books on Trump, joined Joanna Coles on the "Trump's Brain" podcast to walk through what is going on in Trump's mind as his party suffers a humiliating defeat at the polls.

Wolff said the defiant instincts that would normally dominate Trump's thinking are absent this time.

"So, the thing that would otherwise be in Trump's head: I'm gonna fight this. I'm gonna win. Those are all in the Trump mishegoss — is not there. So he woke up this morning thinking, 'OK, what's the storyline?' 'I don't have a storyline.' Which is really rare for Donald Trump," Wolff explained.

"He's gonna be on the phone all day, rationalizing this and heaping blame on Republicans, most of all at this point."

According to Wolff, chief of staff Susie Wiles is likely to remain in her post until January and then depart. A departure then would land just as the newly elected Congress is seated — the same calendar point that closes the lame-duck window Wolff goes on to describe.

Wolff added that Trump will also be weighing the fact that he still controls a lame-duck Congress for two months. "So, what will he do with that?" Wolff asked. A lame-duck session is the stretch between Election Day and the seating of the next Congress, when lawmakers who lost their races or are retiring still hold full voting power until the new body convenes in early January.

One topic of speculation is that Trump might push Justice Samuel Alito out of the U.S. Supreme Court to create a vacancy he could fill with a new appointee. Supreme Court appointments require Senate confirmation — in this case, the same lame-duck chamber Wolff described. Wolff dismissed the idea.

"I think that won't happen. I think even Donald Trump is going to be somewhat chastened by this. Which is a really interesting concept: Donald Trump chastened," Wolff said.

Coles remarked that such a scenario would be something never seen before.

"I think he's going to be somewhat careful about alienating — I mean, were he to force a Supreme Court opening at this point, it would be war with the Democrats," Wolff said. "And war with the Democrats going forward. So, if he wants to avoid impeachment, again ... An impeachment with a Senate in which there are starting to be numbers that you could imagine conviction. I think he will not force the Supreme Court. I think that would be the tripwire."

Wolff's "again" points to history: Trump has been impeached twice before and acquitted both times, and conviction in the Senate requires a two-thirds vote — a margin neither of his trials reached.

Meanwhile, The Huffington Post reported that early Tuesday night, Trump was already working the phones, complaining about Fox News and others.

His frustration with the network continued as he texted his friend Greg Gutfeld and blasted liberal Fox News commentator Jessica Tarlov. He then vented about her on Truth Social, saying he could not stand her voice. Less than an hour later, he was raging about Fox's polling, calling it BS and alleging that the network asks "insulting" questions that he views as "a hit job."

"I have the ultimate power — it's called 'veto,'" Trump reportedly told CBS News by phone as polls began to close. A veto lets a president reject legislation Congress has passed, and only two-thirds votes in both chambers can override one — a step Congress has managed for only a small fraction of presidential vetoes in U.S. history.

In a separate call to the Financial Times, Trump told reporter Edward Lucas that the United States has no immediate plans to strike Iran. That account diverged from what The Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday, after several U.S. military cargo planes left Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, for bases in Israel, according to FlightRadar24 tracking data.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier and its strike group were also tracked near the Strait of Malacca in Asia. The strait, which runs between the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia's Sumatra island, is one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The carrier is expected to reach the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility next week — the command oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East — which would bring the number of U.S. aircraft carriers in the Middle East to three.