Mike Francesa WFAN
Asbury Park Press

Mike Francesa will also, from time to time, get you the politics anyway that he can.

The WFAN legend weighed in on the midterm elections during his latest BetRivers podcast:

Like everyone else, I was very surprised that the Republicans did not do better. I think there were a couple of things that were at work here.

In some states, the abortion issue was an issue. Maybe bigger than some people thought. I think clearly the Republicans are going to have the House. They obviously have lost the Senate. I think the feeling was that they were going to get the House by a bigger margin. And it doesn’t matter the margin, but they are going to get it. It does matter a little, but overall they’re still going to have the House. And that they would get probably 52, 53 Senate seats. And they didn’t. And I think a couple of things played into it.

I think the guys who ran still negating the presidential election were hurt by that. I don’t think people wanted to hear that. That plays against everything we believe in this country. I think that was a negative. I think the deniers were a negative and I think the abortion issue played into it a little bigger, and maybe that negated some of the very strong issues for the Republicans. Which were mainly the economy and crime. And so, they didn’t do well.

Let’s be honest. Historically, from a midterm standpoint, they did incredibly poor. So was it surprising? Absolutely. I think it was. But you’re still going to have a divide there. Which I think people like, more than anything else.

If you are surprised to hear Francesa offering political commentary, you should not be. He has expressed an interest in discussing current events ever since his second WFAN retirement. And he has made national headlines before with his broadsides against the Trump administration during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Francesa openly supported former President Donald Trump in 2016. But he did not offer much commentary on his presidency until the pandemic. Francesa was not on the air during/after the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol (Francesa did tweet it was a “national disgrace”). Francesa has since revealed he voted for current President Joe Biden in 2020, but he does not believe he has done a good job in office.

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James Kratch can be reached at [email protected]

James Kratch is the managing editor of ESNY. He previously worked as a Rutgers and Giants (and Mike Francesa) beat reporter for NJ Advance Media.