President Donald Trump stood before the recently renovated Reflection Pool next to the Lincoln Memorial on Monday afternoon, held up a length of rusted pipe, and asked, “Does somebody have those pictures for me?”
That was the most bizarre closing argument in the history of closing arguments, given less than a day before the polls open in the morning.
For 23 minutes, the president talked about leaks, algae, granite, Bermuda grass, and the lawn where somebody burned 8647 into the sod. When he finally said, “as you know, this is the last day before the midterm,” the main thing he had to say was that sitting presidents don’t win them. I mean.
It was sort of the perfect ending for what’s been a very strange two weeks. During a Greenville, SC rally, he told supporters he was “studying” Jon Husted’s body, “his ass is like, it’s like a pile of muscle.” He opened his Sunday rally in Dubuque on Ashley Hinson’s weight, “a little bit heavier,” while she stood under a banner that read Trump Endorsed. And of course on Monday, the eve of election day, he closed on caulk, and he did it looking older and sounding slurrier than at any point in the campaign. It honestly felt more like an argument about the benefits of the 25th Amendment than a midterm vote.
The last speech of the midterms ran 38 minutes, and the first 23 were a renovation update. He opened by announcing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool might become “the Trump Reflecting Pool,” then said, “I’m only kidding,” to assembled reporters all too familiar with his failed effort to rename the Kennedy Center in the same way.
He went into excruciating detail about the Reflection Pool, talking about how “granite will have a million year life.” He held up photos of the adjacent lawn where someone had burned 8647 into the grass, explained that 8647 “was a Comey phrase” meaning “kill 47,” called it “a mob expression,” and called James Comey a “dirty cop.” He then said, “Like the human being, grass has a life,” that Bermuda grass in Florida gets replaced every 12 years, and that Scotts did the White House lawn for free. He gave the new helipad a “rave review.” He explained why red spray paint is worse on limestone than on granite.
It wasn’t a bit, and SNL can’t even satirize it because it’s already too bizarre.
This wasn't typical for a crowd of adoring rally-goers eager to see The Trump Show come to Salina. He was reading pipe specifications off photographs to a seated audience of park employees. His words came slowly, ran together, and he even seemed to forget Doug Burgum's name. Twice.
A president with any sense of how he looked, or a staff with the temerity to give him honest feedback, would never have scheduled this on election eve. How the hell does a 38-minute monologue about algae, given on the day before a midterm his own party is bracing to lose, read as anything but an advertisement for the 25th Amendment?
Twenty-three minutes in, he finally got to the election, and he played the hits from his recent rally tour. He promised "every adult" $5,000 if Republicans win, provided they spend it in America. He said Democrats had nominated "jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood members," said Abdul El-Sayed got on the Michigan ballot "at radical mosques," and said "we're not looking to have a jihadist be in our Senate." He called the Alaska Senate race "really a fraudulent election" a day before it was held.
And he conceded. "Usually whoever the sitting president is, Republican or Democrat, good or bad... for some reason, the sitting president doesn't win the midterms. We gave this a very strong shot." That's past tense, even though the polls haven’t even opened yet.
He then closed by returning to the memorial he was standing next to. “Reflecting pool is great. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing to watch... Pipes have just been changed.” I suspect somewhere there IS a faction of voters moved by the new pipe messaging, but I’m not sure it’s that significant. Trump then asked the Park Police to watch for box cutters, thanked everybody, and handed the microphone to Doug Burgum.
Republican candidates who kept him out of their campaign ads this fall got grief from his own people. On Monday, Trump showed precisely why they did it. He prattled on for nearly 40 in a voice that kept fading out. The one thing he said about Tuesday’s midterms was that he’d already lost.