Ahead of Election Day, Trump sets the stage for potential Republican losses

In an election-eve speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, President Donald Trump said Republicans “gave this a very strong shot” while acknowledging that historically, the president’s party “doesn’t win the midterms.” “This is the last day before the midterm elections — the most important midterm, I believe, in our lifetime,” Trump said Monday in his final major speech before the midterm elections Tuesday. “The Democrat Party has nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history. These are the most dangerous candidates ever put up.” Although a White House official had said in advance that the speech would represent Trump’s “closing message” before voters make their final trips to the polls, Trump spent most of his remarks speaking about the Reflecting Pool. Trump announced the Reflecting Pool will reopen after months of repairs and talked about other renovation projects he has ordered around Washington, a key focus and fascination of his second term. Speaking about the election, he touted what he considered economic wins, saying that “personal incomes are the highest in history” and that “the poverty rate is at an all-time record low.” But, he said, “it all doesn’t matter if we’re going to be foolish and let people that hate our country win an election.” “If the people that voted for me and voted in the last election ... just a good portion of them, we will win in a landslide,” he continued. “Now, that doesn’t happen, because usually, whoever the sitting president is, Republican or Democrat, good or bad, good president, great president, bad — for some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms, but we gave this a very strong shot.” Trump derided Democratic candidates and falsely said some were jihadists or members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He said they are “all committed to the same radical agenda: open borders, raising your taxes by trillions of dollars, taking away your guns, transgender mutilation of your children, abolishing oil and natural gas, sending energy costs skyrocketing and opening the floodgates to millions of migrants from all over the world, hoping to get them to be able to vote.” Trump referred to Alaska’s Senate race and last week’s report by The New York Times that Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign and other Democrats recruited a candidate — Dan J. Sullivan — to run for the Senate with the same name as the incumbent. Peltola has denied having been aware of the reported scheme. “They got somebody named Dan Sullivan to run against Dan Sullivan,” Trump said. “It’s corrupt. It’s really a fraud, fraudulent election.” Asked by NBC News after his remarks whether he would consider resuming strikes on Iran after the election, Trump said, “No.” Trump closed out a 28-rally swing through the U.S. to campaign for Republican candidates Sunday. He traveled for 25 days in the final month of the campaign, visiting 19 states. He held his final rallies outside Washington on Sunday, with one in Kansas and the other in Iowa, both states with competitive Senate races. Trump is scheduled to participate in several tele-rallies for the midterms from Washington on Monday. On the final day of the 2018 midterm election cycle, by contrast, he held in-person rallies in three states. “We’ve got some big races tomorrow,” Trump said in his remarks. “I guess some of the voting has already gone on, but tomorrow’s Election Day, more traditional.” Asked Sunday why he chose to speak at the Reflecting Pool, Trump told reporters: “Just to show how beautiful it is. It’s been finished. It was vandalized badly. We have cameras all over the place now for the vandals.” On Monday, he stood next to a poster that said, “Back, and more beautiful than ever.” “We’re booming like we’ve never boomed before,” he said. “We’ve cleaned hundreds of sites of graffiti, fixed over 2,300 lighting fixtures in Washington, D.C., cleaned and renovated over 83 statues and fountains and monuments, removed hundreds of squalid homeless encampments.” In addition to the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial downtown, Trump highlighted other construction projects he launched, including the White House ballroom, a White House helipad, a new golf course in the city and a triumphal arch, among other projects. Trump appeared to joke at one point that the Reflecting Pool would be named after him. The Reflecting Pool has been closed since July after additional renovations had to be made when the bottom coating peeled and algae formed, tinting the water green. The National Park Service announced recently that it was extending the closure of the pool and the areas surrounding it until Nov. 20. After the initial renovation process began in June and it first reopened to the public, Trump accused multiple people of “destroying” the pool. The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington charged former Olympic canoeist David Hearn with destruction of property during a June 19 visit. In late July, the U.S. attorney’s office, led by Jeanine Pirro, dropped the case, citing information it had obtained that undermined “the evidentiary basis for the indictment.”