Trump Renews His $5,000 Payout Pledge in an Election-Eve Speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
The president closed his midterm campaign where he said he would: in front of the Reflecting Pool he renovated. He touted falling oil prices, low unemployment and low crime, renewed his promise of $5,000 for every adult if Republicans keep Congress, named one Democratic candidate - Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed - and conceded the history: 'the sitting president doesn't win the midterms.'
HOUSTON - President Donald Trump delivered his final appeal of the midterm campaign on Monday afternoon in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, defending his record, attacking Democratic Senate candidates in Alaska and Michigan, and reviving the pledge at the center of his closing argument, the New York Post reported. 'If we win the election, everybody is going to get $5,000. Every adult is going to get $5,000,' he said, renewing the proposal he first rolled out at the September midterm convention in Dallas.
The record he ran on, in his telling: Monday's steep drop in oil prices, the low unemployment rate, plummeting crime and scant illegal immigration - what he called the country's 'golden age,' against a Democratic Party he accused of wanting to 'blow all of this up by electing communists and jihadists.' He also conceded the structural problem out loud. 'For some reason, the sitting president doesn't win the midterms, but we gave this a very strong shot,' he said, noting the 29 rallies he held across the country. He doubled down on the payout in a social media video warning that a Democratic win would bring 'an economic depression.'
The closing appeal named names in only two races. The only Democratic candidate attacked by name was Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who would be the country's first Muslim senator. In Alaska, Trump charged that 'the Democrats conspired to get a fake Dan Sullivan on the ballot to confuse voters and run against the real Dan Sullivan,' referring to an alleged same-name recruiting scheme against the Republican incumbent. The Post reported Trump had planned a final in-person Michigan stop on Monday and cut it in favor of the Reflecting Pool speech and nine tele-rallies in close House contests - leaving Michigan's headlines to the fallout from Rep. Haley Stevens' weekend endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers over El-Sayed, a story this station covered Sunday.
And much of the speech was not about the election at all: Trump reached the midterms about 24 minutes in, the Post reported, after outlining his Washington building program - a triumphal arch on the Potomac, a promenade at the Lincoln Memorial, a redeveloped DC golf course, the new White House helipad and refreshed Lafayette Park - with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum alongside him at the pool he has made the signature of his capital renovation drive. The voters he was addressing decide on Tuesday.
