Trump's Last Major Speech Before the Midterms Was About Pipes and Paint: 54 Minutes at the Reflecting Pool With His Approval at 32%
The White House billed it as part of the closing argument. What the president delivered, on the last full day before voters decide control of Congress, was a tour of his Washington renovations — and one honest sentence about midterm history.
President Donald Trump spent his last major speech before the midterms talking about pipes and paint. Facing a towering statue of Abraham Lincoln at the recently reopened Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday, Trump spent 54 minutes on the renovation of the 2,000-foot pool — its new bubblers and pipework, its fight against algae, a paint job that, he said, "gives you great reflectivity, especially when the sun's out" — in remarks the White House billed as part of his closing argument before voters cast their ballots on Tuesday. He joked that he would soon rename the pool in his own honor, and ranged across his other Washington projects: a grand new arch, the White House helipad, new sod.
The setting carried its own history. The pool's reopening, part of a renovation costing more than $16 million, was delayed by peeling paint and algae growth that turned its waters green; the administration defended contractors hired without competitive bidding and blamed vandalism for the problems, but prosecutors backed off the claims against a person accused of vandalism and a judge dismissed the case. And the politics around the speech are the story's hard numbers: Trump's public approval rating stands at 32 percent, near a career low, in the Reuters/Ipsos poll; voters say their main concern is the cost of living, with energy prices up 20 percent over the year before, by the Consumer Price Index, since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began. Nonpartisan analysts generally favor Democrats to win a majority in the House, and see the Senate as competitive.
"For some reason, the sitting president doesn't win the midterms," Trump said. "But we gave this a very strong shot." Many Republican strategists privately wanted the opposite of Monday's speech — a closing pitch fixed squarely on kitchen-table economics — but the president's nationwide tour, 28 rallies in 19 states since October 1, has repeatedly wandered into his projects, from a Potomac River golf course to the Kennedy Center. After the pool, he turned briefly to campaign substance, attacking Democrats as unfit to serve and saying the United States had won the war with Iran, even as talks to end that war continue. The closing day is not over: the BBC's live coverage reports Trump intends to appear on Fox News's Hannity program tonight at 8 p.m. Central, with virtual rallies for Republican candidates also on his schedule. Tuesday, the voters give the actual closing argument.
