CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Someone is bound to get blamed, and Trump said at a rally in Tennessee on Saturday that he expects it will be him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t win the midterms, they\u2019re going to blame me,\u201d Trump said. \u201cYou know that. And if we do win them, I will get no credit whatsoever. It\u2019s true. I won\u2019t get any.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m working my ass off,\u201d he added. \u201cYou better get out there and vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump is in \u201cgrind it out mode\u201d ahead of the midterms, a person familiar with the matter said, and is prepared for the worst-case election outcome. <\/p>\n
Midterm elections often punish the sitting president\u2019s party, and Trump\u2019s popularity isn\u2019t helping the GOP\u2019s cause. Only 38% approve of his performance in office, compared with 59% who disapprove, according to an NBC News<\/a> average of polls. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n He closed his hour-and-a-half-long speech with a reminder that \u201cwith your vote on November 3rd, you\u2019ll get $5,000.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the size of the check he\u2019s promising to send adults if Republicans win the midterms. The total price tag is estimated at $1.3 trillion.<\/a><\/p>\n Trump is indeed pushing himself as the elections approach, keeping up a frenetic schedule. Tennessee was the seventh different 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s in disfavor is a \u201cfalse narrative.\u201d<\/a> On stage, 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<\/a> from White House grounds).<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very popular, I really am,\u201d Trump told the crowd.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s House and Senate races.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s rally took place in an indoor arena in a northern Tennessee county that he won by 18 percentage points in the 2024 presidential race.<\/p>\n Trump himself suggested the state\u2019s congressional candidates are already on a glide path to victory, with or without him.<\/p>\n \u201cThese guys are all going to win,\u201d he said. \u201cThese congressmen are phenomenal. So, I\u2019m saying, \u2018What the hell am I doing in Tennessee?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Answering his own question, he said he wanted to \u201creward the places that have automatically treated you well.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump won Tennessee in all three of his presidential campaigns.<\/p>\n Other Republicans said Trump is hewing to a sensible strategy: mobilizing up his supporters and making sure they vote on Nov. 3 even though he\u2019s not on the ballot. <\/p>\n \u201cIt rallies the base,\u201d Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said in an interview before Trump took the stage. \u201cAnd that\u2019s really what we\u2019ve got to see in a midterm election. That\u2019s what you\u2019ve got to have: the base.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of Trump\u2019s address was a recitation of what he considers his chief accomplishments. He cited a rise in the median household income<\/a> in his first year in office and a drop in the nation\u2019s poverty rate.<\/a><\/p>\n Never shy about rebranding American landmarks, he also mused about renaming the Atlantic or Pacific oceans in ways that would ensure he\u2019s not forgotten.<\/p>\n Presumably in jest, he said, \u201cWe call it, \u2018Trump Ocean.\u2019 Or, \u2018Ocean of the Americas,\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. \u2014 Even as he makes a case that Republicans should win the midterm congressional elections, President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-878168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}