Trump casts midterm poll as a personal referendum
lewis center (ohio) — Embracing his breakneck return to campaign politics, President Donald Trump on Saturday argued that Republicans needed to control Congress by casting the midterms as a referendum on himself.
In a raucous rally north of Columbus, Ohio, Trump pitched for the GOP candidate up in a special election next week and defiantly questioned the idea that, historically, the party that controls the White House suffers in the midterms, declaring “but I say why?”
“Why would there be a blue wave? I think it could be a red wave,” Trump said of his party’s prospects in November.
“They want to take away what we’ve given. And we’re doing a lot of things people don’t even know about.”
Though boisterous and bellicose, Trump steered clear of the trouble he stirred up the night before when he blasted one of Ohio’s favourite sons, LeBron James.
In a late-night tweet, Trump derided the intelligence of one of the nation’s most prominent African-American men. The attack on James, who has been critical of Trump, came just as the NBA superstar opened up a school for underprivileged children.
But while he didn’t mention the Akron native, he did invoke similar rhetoric while training fire on one of his new favourite targets, Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters of California. He tore into Waters, who is also black, and derided her as “an extremely low IQ person”.
Flanked by signs that read “Promises Made” and “Promises Kept”, Trump dished up plenty of red meat to the sweaty crowd.
He blasted the media as “fake news” and said journalists “were terrible people”.
He went on a screed against illegal immigration and exaggerated the threat of violent gangs like MS-13. And he basked in cheers as the crowd chanted the campaign staple rallying cry, “Build the wall, build the wall”.