Trump Plans To Give Final Midterm Speech at the Reflecting Pool

President Trump will deliver his final rallying cry of the 2026 midterm elections at the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall on Monday night, capping off a campaign that has seen Republicans move from trying to play offense in states the president narrowly won to playing defense — and cutting off some incumbents in the process. Mr. Trump is headed into what has often been called the “six-year itch,” a post-Reconstruction phenomenon in which presidents suffer significant losses in their second-term midterm elections. In the last century, only one — President Clinton in 1998 — did not oversee the opposition party winning a net gain of seats in his second midterm election. This year, Mr. Trump’s Republican Party is almost certain to lose control of the House of Representatives, and maybe even the Senate. The president’s low approval rating in states like Kansas, Iowa, and Texas could also contribute to GOP losses on the state level in areas once considered safely Republican. Over the last several weeks, Mr. Trump has spent his time shoring up solidly Republican areas like Kansas, Mississippi, and South Carolina. The only competitive state to which Mr. Trump has traveled is Michigan, where the Republican nominee for Senate, Mike Rogers, is just a few points behind his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed. On Sunday, the president spoke to supporters in both Iowa and Kansas where he urged his supporters to pretend he is on the ballot, a call that echoes Republican concerns about Mr. Trump’s low-propensity voters not turning out in early voting. “I really want you to pretend I’m on the ballot,” Mr. Trump told his rally crowd in Kansas on Sunday. “Every time I was on the ballot, we won with Congress, we won the Senate. We won everything.” “When I’m not on the ballot, we don’t do so well,” the president said. “When I’m not on the ballot, much fewer people come out to vote. That’s just the way it is,” Mr. Trump told attendees at his Iowa rally earlier in the night. The Reflecting Pool is one of the staple obsessions Mr. Trump has had since returning to the White House, among other renovation projects at the White House and Washington, D.C.’s parks, as well as efforts to put his name on the Kennedy Center and a potential “Trump Promenade” leading from the Lincoln Memorial to the Potomac River. The renovations at the Reflecting Pool have cost somewhere around $15 million after a botched installation which caused a row between U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and the Interior Department. Mr. Trump’s decision to travel to states he won in the previous presidential election is not uncommon. In 2014 — when President Obama was facing his own “six-year itch” — seven of his nine public events and fundraisers in October and November of that year were in states he carried in the 2012 presidential election. Of the 13 campaign events President George W. Bush headlined in 2006, 11 of those events were in states he had won in the previous presidential race. The difference for Mr. Trump, however, is that he is choosing to deliver his closing message from the nation’s capital — not dissimilar to Vice President Kamala Harris’s decision to hold her final 2024 rally just off the White House grounds only days before she was defeated. Speaking to reporters as he landed in Iowa on Sunday, the president said that the location of the speech was not about Republicans and their chances to win the elections on Tuesday, but “just to show how beautiful it is,” referring to the Reflecting Pool.

Trump Plans To Give Final Midterm Speech at the Reflecting Pool

Trump Plans To Give Final Midterm Speech at the Reflecting Pool

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