Trump Takes His Closing Midterm Pitch to the Reflecting Pool on Monday
After more than two dozen rallies for other people's races, President Donald Trump closes his midterm campaign Monday at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool - a speech a White House official says will make the case for his administration's agenda, staged at the Washington restoration project he says he wants America to see.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump will deliver his closing message of the 2026 midterm campaign on Monday at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a White House official told The Washington Sun - one day after he held the final rallies of his monthslong blitz in Iowa and Kansas, and hours before voters decide control of Congress.
The remarks are expected to focus on the agenda advanced by his administration and Republicans in Congress since the start of his second term, according to a senior White House official cited by The Wall Street Journal. Across more than two dozen in-person rallies, Trump has stumped for Republicans in competitive statewide races - among them Senate nominees Ken Paxton in Texas and Mike Rogers in Michigan - and has encouraged crowds to vote as if he himself were on the ballot, the closing argument he repeated in Salina on Sunday night. All 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats are contested on Tuesday.
The venue is itself part of the message. Trump has made restoring Washington's landmarks a theme of his second term, and the Reflecting Pool is his signature project: his administration hired contractors to resurface it, and Trump maintains vandals cut the bottom of the pool. The restoration has had a troubled public start - shortly after its completion in late June, chunks of the surfacing material could be seen partially detached in the water and algae blooms turned the pool bright green, the Sun reported. Trump, deplaning from Air Force One in Iowa on Sunday, said he chose to speak at the site "to show how beautiful it is."
The pool has hosted some of the most famous speeches in American history, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" address from the Lincoln Memorial steps in 1963. Monday's remarks are the last scheduled word of the campaign from the president before polls open Tuesday morning - in Harris County, at more than 600 vote centers from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
