WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump stood silently Monday while triumphant music played as he held up a poster showing an image of the algae-clogged pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
It was the final moment of his last big speech before Election Day, far away from the campaign trail where Republicans were trying to make their case to voters to hang onto control of Congress.
The president's decision to spend the day before the pivotal midterms showing off his renovations in the nation's capital instead of barnstorming around the country was a puzzling way to pitch America on keeping his party in power.
“It starts just with the setting being bizarre and being very self-focused,” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist. “And then you had the pictures and the posters on the easels and all of that — none of which help a single undecided voter in the last day of the elections move to the Republican Party.”
Heye, a former communications director at the Republican National Committee, said Trump’s Reflecting Pool speech was the “last thing” Republican candidates needed and added, “Maybe it doesn’t register, but it sure doesn’t help.”
Trump, wearing a white “USA” hat and standing in front of the Reflecting Pool in Washington he renovated twice this year, appeared to be more focused on the cosmetic upgrades he undertook in the nation’s capital than other achievements in his second term or the issues voters have said they’re concerned about, like high prices.
“We have a lot of great things planned for Washington, and I could get into the nation, but for that, you don’t have enough time,” Trump said.
The president repeated his false statements that the work at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was bedeviled by vandals, even though the Justice Department has acknowledged in court that the new blue liner he had installed on the pool peeled and detached because of a rushed repair job.
With a poster next to him showing the pool from above and the words “Back, and more beautiful than ever!” Trump detailed the work on the site, along with his efforts to beautify the rest of Washington. He explained why “American flag blue” was the right shade of blue to get “great reflectivity.”
He mentioned the word grass about 20 times: Bermuda grass, new grass, old grass, beautiful grass, “inferior grass,” grass that was vandalized, grass that was growing in the cracks of the president’s helipad — also recently replaced — the fact that grass is “like the human being" and "has a life,” grass that was donated and installed “with love” near the White House and things that look like grass but are not grass.
“That’s not grass, that’s algae,” Trump said, holding up a photo of the reflecting pool when its water turned a sickly color of green.
He did a show-and-tell, holding up about half a dozen pictures from the renovations, hoisting images of rusted pipes from the pool’s plumbing system and the construction process.
The president didn’t explain his decision to make his public appearance Monday centered around his renovations, which only seemed to draw attention to an expensive, problem-plagued repair job. It followed a weekend in which he canceled his plans to hold rallies in Kansas and Iowa, suggesting he did not need to go in person to shore up candidates and could instead promote GOP contenders in brief telerallies. He then reversed course, rescheduling both for Sunday.
He was also scheduled Monday to hold nine telerallies, where he speaks for about 10 minutes on mass phone calls to supporters.
Jennifer Mercieca, a communications professor at Texas A&M University, said Trump’s speech seemed focused less on influencing voters in Tuesday’s midterm contest than on cementing, somewhat literally, his legacy long-term.
“I doubt that the parents who felt like they couldn’t afford to buy Halloween candy this year will be impressed with Trump’s DC renovation projects, but perhaps Trump is speaking to history more than he is to the current moment,” Mercieca, who watched clips of the speech, said in an email.
The Reflecting Pool, a long, narrow basin at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, is one of Washington’s most iconic sites. Martin Luther King Jr. famously gave his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the memorial in 1963, looking out over the pool.
But this summer it became a focus of Trump’s attention, with the president frequently speaking about his plans on social media, at the White House and beyond. He displayed posters about the project in the Oval Office and even had his motorcade drive him over the resurfaced pool before it was refilled.
After initial renovations, the pool was soon clogged with algae blooms, and its “American-flag blue” liner began peeling and floating up in chunks. The Justice Department charged former Olympian David Hearn with intentionally damaging the Reflecting Pool but then dropped the case this summer after determining he was not responsible.
Trump said he isn't stopping at the pool. He talked about his plans for building a massive triumphal arch, which he has started claiming will also become a “military complex.” He likened it to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, but said his version will have “tremendous drone capability” and “sniper or shooter capability.”
He also explained his renovations for a public golf course in Washington and his plans for a “ National Garden of American Heroes, ” which is supposed to include sculptures of 250 prominent Americans. Trump said he is looking at lists of names for statues of historic figures who would appear, and suggested it could double in size and feature 500 statues.
After he spent more than 20 minutes focused on his construction projects, Trump pivoted to the elections and said they could be the most important midterms “in our lifetime.”
The president tried to portray his political rivals as extremists, claiming that Democrats had “nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history.”
The Democrats have seen their chances of winning control of the House and Senate improve because of public frustration over Trump’s inability to bring down inflation and his decision to launch the Iran war — which he defended in his Monday remarks.
Trump said oil prices are going down and said, “I hope people realize that when they go into the voting booth, because we had to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon.”
He also cautioned that sitting presidents usually struggle in the midterm elections and said his administration has given the U.S. its most secure borders and the largest income tax cuts in the nation’s history.
“For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms,” Trump said. “But we gave this a very strong shot.”
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Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.
