Daniel Wolfram
His closing remarks before Americans vote ahead of today’s midterm vote was strange, unusual, and filled with falsehoods.
On a chilly Monday afternoon in Washington, President Donald Trump wrapped up a punishing campaign blitz in which he held 30 rallies across 20 states in just three weeks.
Control of Congress is hanging in the balance with the Democratic Party threatening to take control of both houses.
Yet instead of addressing the pocketbook worries dominating voter polls, the 80-year-old leader chose an unlikely topic for his final pitch: the reflecting pool that has been closed since the administration botched the repairs back in June.
A different closing message
Standing before the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Trump complained about water leaks, green algae, and granite pavers. Broadcasters were baffled.
A reporter for Sky described the performance as “one of the most bizarre midterm-eve presidential appearances ever.”
According to Gallup polling, voters care most about healthcare, fuel costs, and jobs. But not the president—Trump had other priorities. He spent minutes insisting that earlier administrations had left the basin hopelessly broken, claiming his own crew had finally fixed the mess.
Trump’s speech gets fact-checked
The facts tell a different story. Trump asserted that recent damage to the fresh pool lining was caused by unprecedented vandalism. In July, however, federal prosecutors dropped charges against the prime suspect, former Olympian David Hearn, after the contractor admitted the tears stemmed from a hasty, flawed installation.
He also claimed that former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden spent over $144 million on the site. Independent monitors at FactCheck.org found no record of any major overhaul under Biden. The Obama-era project cost roughly $35 million.
From there, Trump jumped from topic to topic. He told the crowd that local crime in Washington, D.C., had fallen by almost 100 percent. Public records tell a different, much worse reality, with violent crime in the capital climbing 12 percent this year while WalletHub ranked Washington among the nation’s least safe cities.
Turning to the economy, Trump made equally bold claims. He insisted that his import tariffs had generated $25 trillion in fresh wealth. Even the White House’s own website tells a far more modest story, putting foreign and domestic investment closer to $11.3 trillion.
