Bracing for the midterms, Trump says he will be blamed if Republicans lose

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Even as he makes a case that Republicans should win the midterm congressional elections, President Donald Trump is bracing for the fallout should they lose.

Someone is bound to get blamed, and Trump said at a rally in Tennessee on Saturday that he expects it will be him.

"If we don't win the midterms, they're going to blame me," Trump said. "You know that. And if we do win them, I will get no credit whatsoever. It's true. I won't get any."

"But I'm working my ass off," he added. "You better get out there and vote."

Trump is in "grind it out mode" ahead of the midterms, a person familiar with the matter said, and is prepared for the worst-case election outcome.

Midterm elections often punish the sitting president's party, and Trump's popularity isn't helping the GOP's cause. Only 38% approve of his performance in office, compared with 59% who disapprove, according to an NBC News average of polls.

Trump is looking to defy historical trends by motivating core supporters who might be inclined to sit out the elections, and by offering voters an unusual sweetener if they preserve the Republican majority in the House and Senate.

He closed his hour-and-a-half-long speech with a reminder that "with your vote on Nov. 3, you'll get $5,000."

That's the size of the payment he's promising to send adults if Republicans win the midterms. The total price tag is estimated at $1.3 trillion.

Trump is indeed pushing himself as the elections approach, keeping up a frenetic schedule. Tennessee was the seventh state he has visited since the start of October. He had planned to fly to an eighth, Alabama, later in the day to attend the Georgia-Alabama football game, but canceled the trip with Hurricane Isaias bearing down.

Trump used part of the rally to debunk the idea that his popularity has dropped. In a social media post Saturday, he wrote that the notion that he's in disfavor is a "false narrative." Onstage, he played a CNN clip showing that his support among his MAGA supporters is nearly unanimous and has shown no slippage since the 2024 elections. (CNN was one of three news outlets that the Trump administration last month banned from White House grounds.)

"I'm very popular, I really am," Trump told the crowd.

For Trump, traveling to a deep-red congressional district in a deep-red state like Tennessee might seem like time wasted in the few weeks left before the midterms. Republicans are expected to sweep the state's House and Senate races.

Trump's rally took place in an indoor arena in a northern Tennessee county that he won by 18 percentage points in the 2024 presidential race.

Trump himself suggested the state's congressional candidates are already on a glide path to victory, with or without him.

"These guys are all going to win," he said. "These congressmen are phenomenal. So, I'm saying, 'What the hell am I doing in Tennessee?'"

Answering his own question, he said he wanted to "reward the places that have automatically treated you well."

Trump won Tennessee in all three of his presidential campaigns.

Other Republicans said Trump is hewing to a sensible strategy: mobilizing his supporters and making sure they vote on Nov. 3 even though he's not on the ballot.

"It rallies the base," Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said in an interview before Trump took the stage. "And that's really what we've got to see in a midterm election. That's what you've got to have: the base."

Much of Trump's address was a recitation of what he considers his chief accomplishments. He cited a rise in the median household income in his first year in office and a drop in the nation's poverty rate.

Never shy about rebranding American landmarks, he also mused about renaming the Atlantic or Pacific oceans in ways that would ensure he's not forgotten.

Presumably in jest, he said, "We call it, 'Trump Ocean.' Or, 'Ocean of the Americas,' something like that. No, we have to. We should have before I get out, I think we should have an ocean and we need a great river."