President Donald Trump shot his party in the foot with a move to punish New Jersey, analyst Jonathan Lemire told a panel of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday — mere weeks before an election in which his chosen candidate in the governor race, Jack Ciattarelli, took a severe drubbing to Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill.

Trump continues to lick his wounds and publicly proclaim the Democrats' massive wins around the country were not his fault. But, Lemire said, there is one clear thing he did to make New Jersey voters angry, and GOP strategists were seeing it with their own eyes.

"Some of this was a response to Trump overreaction," said Lemire. "On the New Jersey race. I heard from two different operatives last night, one Republican, one Democrat, who more or less said the same thing. One word: Gateway. The tunnel that Trump killed, the project that would have helped—"

"He was bragging about it," cut in anchor Joe Scarborough. "Bragging about it two weeks before the election, bragging about having a Darth Vader hand. He basically said, I killed that project."

"A tunnel that would have really helped New Jersey residents commuting into New York City," said Lemire. "He killed it out of spite because he's angry at Charles Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries because of the shutdown. And they, Democrats, were who were very nervous about this race and were frankly, surprised by the margin of victory last night, said the Gateway Tunnel was sort of the turning point."

"And then, of course, on the other side of that tunnel ... we have New York City and we have Zohran Mamdani, with his stunning victory here, defeating Andrew Cuomo handily by nine or so points," he added. "And look, it's very clear that President Trump is going to use Mamdani as an excuse. I've been told and reported and wrote about it last night. They've kind of held off going after New York City tunnel aside because they wanted to win. They're going to go after him now. We'll see if that's popular, though it has not been another when he's gone after other cities."

- YouTube youtu.be