Donald Trump on Monday delivered his closing argument ahead of the midterm elections. He wasn’t in one of the critical swing states Republicans need no win in order to keep their majorities, or even one of the red states at risk of slipping into Democrats’ control. He chose a location that embodied his own self of self-obsession, corruption, and federal mismanagement: the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He might even rename it after himself.
“This is a massive piece of pool,” Trump said while delivering his closing message, one that focused on his vanity projects over the election. “It was treated with a lot of love. And then it was treated with a lot of hate, and we’ve got to stop the hate,” the president said. “I mean, they’ve had years here where you couldn’t see any water. It was just algae. And it had a bad aroma, to put it mildly. A lot of bad things happened.”
GOP candidates and lawmakers across the country are bracing for a schlacking that will very likely strip them of their majority in the House, and could cost them the Senate. Of top concern for voters is the cost of living strains that can be linked directly to Trump’s policies. High gas prices caused by the continued global disruption of Trump’s war against Iran. Economic downturns in border and industrial communities as a result of his tariff regime. Murders, beatings, and civil rights violations by ICE agents conducting mass arrests of migrants. Add to that the blatant self-enrichment of Trump, his family, and his allies.
The “renovations” the president has made to the White House and buildings in Washington, D.C., have become the physical representation of the corruption and narcissism of the administration. As Americans struggle to afford a home, groceries, and gas, the president is spending millions of taxpayer dollars building a ballroom for the White House, gilding everything he can get his hands on in gold leaf, and butchering the restorations and repairs of monuments like the Reflecting Pool and the Kennedy Center.
It’s no surprise that many Republican candidates have chosen to distance themselves from Trump this election cycle. Even so, the president has refused to get out of his own party’s way, insisting that voters frame the midterm elections as a direct referendum on his first two years back in office. Trump canceled planned rallies in Kansas in Iowa over the weekend, and instead retreated back to the capital, claiming he will do “tele-rallies” instead. On Monday, in the last best opportunity to address reluctant voters, the president spent almost 30 minutes rambling about the Reflecting Pool.
Trump reiterated his claims that his shoddy renovation of the Reflecting Pool — which was done without the competitive contractual bidding process required by Congress and instead given to Trump’s chosen pool guy — was botched due to vandalism. The $16.4 million polymer liner that was installed to stop leaks and water seepage from the pool peeled up almost immediately, and turned the landmark into a swampy, plasticy mess infested with overgrown algae. A federal review of the project and its aftermath concluded that the pool lining had not been damaged by vandals — as the president claimed — but was poorly installed by the contractor.
“I’m thrilled to announce the official opening of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that we are giving serious thought to changing the name to the Trump Reflecting Pool. We’ll announce that sometime tomorrow,” Trump said, before claiming he was just “kidding.”
The president went so far as to use a series of large poster boards on an easel as props for the event. These featured an aerial image of the pool with the caption: “Back, and more beautiful than ever!” At one point Trump demanded that an aid bring him a print out of “how it looked before.”
When he finally got around to talking about the midterms, the president seemed barely interested.
“As you know, this is the last day before the midterm elections,” he finally said, in a sharp pivot away from an ode to the beauty of Corinthian columns. “The Democratic Party has nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history.”
“There’s never been anything like what we’re seeing,” he claimed. “Jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood members and people that nobody can even believe what we’re looking at. And all committed to the same radical agenda: open borders, raising your taxes by trillions of dollars, taking away your guns, transgender mutilization of your children, abolishing oil and natural gas, sending energy caused skyrocketing and opening the floodgates to millions of migrants from all over the world — hoping to get them to be able to vote.”
Trump insisted that under his administration, Americans were living in the “golden age” of prosperity. “We’ve achieved more in less than two years than any administration in American history, and I’ve kept every single promise I made except far more. I’ve actually kept far more promises than I made. We’ve done much more than I promised,” he said.
It would be “foolish” to “let people that hate our country win an election,” Trump added. “Because if the people that voted for me and voted in the last election — where we had such a great victory — if they go out and vote, just a good portion of them, we will win in a landslide.”
Before he ended the event, Trump made sure to take a moment to list off the other major monuments and projects he planned to build in the capitol in order to commemorate his glorious reign. An Arc de Triomphe-inspired arch next to the Lincoln Memorial, a brand new golf course on the East Potomac Park, a statue-filled “Garden of American Heroes.”
It was a speech to reflect the moment. As the nation screams for lower prices, less wars, and a return to the principles that allowed past generations to achieve the prosperity of the American Dream, the leader of the Republican Party is focused on his own self-aggrandizement.
