Trump’s closing message hits a topic close to his heart — but not voters’ minds

CNN

By Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — By the time President Donald Trump had concluded his hourlong closing argument speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday, the water in the basin behind him had become still, a perfect mirror of the Washington Monument and a grey November sky.

If the pool was finally operating as the administration always hoped it would, it’s not clear the president was.

His speech, billed as his final message to the electorate before a new Congress is chosen this week, was not the high-level contrast with Democrats some Republicans had hoped for. It was instead a subdued, very granular accounting of all the problems Trump said he fixed in the plumbing of the 2,000-foot-long pool, including rusty pipes, old joints, regraded rebar and “tremendous algae.”

Eight minutes in, before any mention of the midterm elections, Trump invited an aide named Greg to stand on stage holding large color photos as he recited in specific terms the fixes he’d ordered up. It took another 16 minutes before he made any mention of the elections he was ostensibly there to address.

While Trump was once relatively upbeat about Republicans’ prospects, his outlook has dimmed somewhat in the past several days, one White House official said, and his mood has soured.

The midterm talk only lasted 10 minutes or so on Monday. The rest of the time, Trump focused squarely on a topic that brings him more joy: the various repair jobs he claims to have carried out in the nation’s capital. He joked he would name the Reflecting Pool after himself. The crowd of invited guests numbered in the dozens.

As he was wrapping his remarks, the president frankly acknowledged his capacity for fixer-uppers didn’t extend much beyond the capital’s boundaries.

“We have a lot of great things planned for Washington,” he trumpeted. “I could get into the nation, but for that, you don’t have enough time.”

It was an odd way to end a campaign where voters have questioned again and again the president’s priorities. In interviews with voters across battleground states this midterm season, no one mentioned the Reflecting Pool or any other project in Washington on their list of most important issues.

But from another perspective, the speech was perhaps an apt way for the president to conclude a campaign that he orchestrated almost entirely around himself.

Many of the candidates running the tightest races now, including in Texas and South Carolina, are ones he hand-selected, often over the objections of other Republicans. An unusual midterm convention in Texas that Trump ordered up revolved around the president and his record. He has pleaded with voters to pretend he is on the ballot, making the election a referendum on his unpopular first two years back in office.

And he has insisted on amplifying the aspects of his agenda that many voters say have little or nothing to do with the things they care about most.

Many of the president’s allies have quietly worked to steer him toward more fertile ground, like his massive tax cuts or efforts to create manufacturing jobs.

But that has not worked. Trump mentions his construction projects virtually every time he speaks, often to somewhat muted reaction from the supporters he is addressing. Sometimes, like last week in Mississippi, the topic has drawn objection.

“Shove that ballroom up your fat ass!” a protester screamed, very clearly, midway through Trump’s speech in rural Corinth, 830 miles by car from the site of the new White House ballroom where the East Wing once stood.

Trump has said his focus on renovations relaxes him, and does not occupy a major portion of his time.

“I can do it naturally. It’s a natural thing,” he said in Mississippi, responding to a critique from former President Barack Obama that he was spending too much time and energy making the White House look like Saddam Hussein had gilded a Cheesecake Factory.

Aides have long said Trump is at his happiest when working on the renovation projects — which, aside from the ballroom and pool, also include a proposed triumphal arch, a new helipad, paved-over Rose Garden, driveway stone, guest bathroom, colonnade decor, portico plaster work, two 100-foot flagpoles and an ongoing attempt to inject as much gold as possible into the Oval Office.

The projects have not always gone to plan. Trump, in April, promised the Reflecting Pool repairs would be finished in two weeks, with a modest budget of $1.5 million. Weeks before a July 4 deadline, the blue liner he ordered began peeling off and blooms of algae materialized. It would take several more months, and millions more dollars, for the project to be finished.

Trump on Monday blamed the delays on vandals, but both the contractor he used and the US attorney’s office in Washington have said the fault was shoddy workmanship.

A frenetic campaign schedule had taken the president away from his projects for most of the last month. As recently as last week, GOP operatives expected Trump to spend the day before the midterms in a few battleground states, trying to rally Republicans to the polls.

But as his voice grew raspier last week and as he started complaining publicly about the pace — “I’ve been doing a little too many of these,” he said during his last rally in Kansas on Sunday — the plans were put aside.

And on Monday, he appeared to be over it.

Even in a speech about a topic he likes, Trump’s pessimism shone through.

“Usually whoever the sitting president is — Republican or Democrat, good or bad, good president, great president, bad — for some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms,” he said, glumly. “But we gave this a very strong shot.”

He wrapped up a few minutes later, standing alone on stage holding a photo of the algae-clogged pool as a trumpet fanfare played.

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