Trump's Closing Argument Was About a Reflecting Pool: Pipes, Paint and a 32 Percent Approval Rating on Election Eve
Reuters reports the president spent his last major speech before the midterms — 54 minutes billed as his closing argument — on the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, while analysts favor Democrats for the House and his own poll numbers sit near a career low.
Facing elections that could cost his party control of Congress, President Donald Trump spent his last major speech before the midterms talking about pipes and paint. Reuters reports that Trump ruminated on his Washington renovations — new sod, the White House helipad, a grand new arch and the recently reopened Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — during a 54-minute televised speech the White House billed as part of the president's closing argument before voters cast their ballots. Facing the statue of Abraham Lincoln, he joked that he would soon rename the pool in his own honor rather than after the 16th president.
The pool itself has a record, and Reuters lays it out. The opening of the more-than-$16 million renovation of the 2,000-foot pool 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. On Monday the president held up pictures of the landmark as he discussed its new bubblers and pipework and its fight against algae, saying a new paint job "gives you great reflectivity, especially when the sun's out."
The politics underneath the paint are harder. Tuesday's elections will determine whether Trump's Republicans retain control of Congress; nonpartisan analysts generally favor the Democrats' chances of winning the House and see the Senate as competitive. The president's public approval rating is now 32 percent, near a career low, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, and voters say their main concern is the cost of living — energy prices have risen sharply since the US and Israeli war with Iran began, leaping 20 percent over the year prior, according to the US Consumer Price Index. Many Republican strategists privately told Reuters they wanted the president to focus squarely on kitchen-table economics; across 28 rallies in 19 states since October 1, he has instead delivered lengthy asides on projects from a Potomac River golf course to the Kennedy Center.
"For some reason, the sitting president doesn't win the midterms," Trump said, in the quote Reuters carries from the speech. "But we gave this a very strong shot." After the pool, he made brief diversions into campaign substance, attacking Democrats as unfit to serve and saying the US had won the war with Iran. For New Jersey voters heading to the polls at 6 a.m., the speech is the national frame around a local act: the president whose party holds Congress by a handful of seats closed his case not on prices or the war, but on the reflectivity of a pool — and by Tuesday night, the country's answer starts arriving, county by county.
