CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Even as he says Republicans should win the congressional midterm elections, President Donald Trump is bracing for the consequences if they lose.
Someone is bound to be blamed, and Trump said Saturday at a rally in Tennessee that he expects it to be him.
“If we don’t win the midterm elections, they’re going to blame me,” Trump said. “You know that. And if we win them, I won’t get any credit. That’s right. I won’t get any.”
“But I work like crazy,” he added. “You better go vote.”
Trump is in “hard work mode” ahead of the midterm elections, a person familiar with the matter said, and is bracing for the worst election outcome.
Midterm elections often punish the party of the sitting president, and Trump’s popularity doesn’t help the Republican Party’s cause. Only 38% approve of his performance in office, compared to 59% who disapprove, according to an NBC News polling average.
Trump is seeking to defy historical trends by motivating his core supporters who might be inclined to sit out the election and offering voters an unusual sweetener if they preserve Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
He closed his hour and a half speech by reminding us that “with your vote on November 3, you will get $5,000.”
That’s the amount of the check he promises to send to adults if the Republicans win the midterm elections. The total price tag is estimated at $1.3 trillion.
Trump is indeed making efforts in the run-up to the election, maintaining a frenetic schedule. Tennessee was the seventh different state he visited since early October. He had planned to travel to an eighth country, Alabama, later in the day to watch the Georgia-Alabama football game, but canceled his trip because of Hurricane Isaias.
Trump used part of the rally to debunk the notion that his popularity had plummeted. In a social media post Saturday, he wrote that the idea that he was in disgrace is a “false narrative.” On stage, he played a clip from CNN showing that his support among his MAGA supporters is near unanimous and has shown no slippage since the 2024 election. (CNN was one of three media outlets the Trump administration banned last month from the White House grounds).
“I’m very popular, I really am,” Trump told the crowd.
For Trump, going to a deep red congressional district in a deep red state like Tennessee might seem like a waste of time in the few weeks remaining before the midterm elections. Republicans are expected to win elections to the state House and Senate.
Trump’s rally took place in an indoor arena in a north Tennessee county that he won by 18 percentage points in the 2024 presidential race.
Trump himself has suggested that the state’s congressional candidates are already well on their way to victory, with or without him.
“These guys are all going to win,” he said. “These members of Congress are phenomenal. So I say, ‘What the hell am I doing in Tennessee?'”
Answering his own question, he said he wanted to “reward places that automatically treated you well.”
Trump won Tennessee in all three of his presidential campaigns.
Other Republicans said Trump was following a sensible strategy: mobilize his supporters and make sure they vote on Nov. 3 even if 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 need to see in a midterm election. That’s what you need to have: the base.”
Much of Trump’s speech was a recitation of what he considers his major accomplishments. He cited an increase in median household income during his first year in office and a decline in the country’s poverty rate.
Never hesitating to rename American monuments, he also considered renaming the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. so as to ensure that it is not forgotten.
Presumably as a joke, he said: “We call it ‘Trump Ocean.’ Or “Ocean of the Americas,” something like that. No, we have to do it. We should have had it before I left, I think we should have an ocean and we need a big river.
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