In his closing speech before the midterm elections, U.S. President Donald Trump took credit for revitalizing the District of Columbia and warned of “communist jihadists” and “Muslim Brotherhood members” among the Democrats vying for seats in Congress.
Speaking in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of what he characterized as the most important midterm election of his lifetime, Trump devoted the first 20 minutes of his nearly hour-long remarks to the physical properties of granite, pool re-caulking, the lifespan of grass and the other challenges of refurbishing monuments in the nation’s capital.
“We’ve fixed all the piping and it’s in great shape and that is the thing that not only gives you water input, it also is drainage and it’s also something very important in terms of the algae,” Trump said. “It creates the bubbles and creates what’s necessary that the algae doesn’t form.
“They’ve had years here where you couldn’t see any water,” he said. “It was just algae and it had a bad aroma.”
Trump pivoted from his efforts to beautify Washington to attacking Democrats ahead of Tuesday’s elections.
“The Democrats want to blow all of this up by electing communist jihadists,” he said. “There’s never been anything like what we’re seeing—jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood members and people that nobody can even believe what we’re looking at.”
Trump will phone in to nine pre-election rallies across the country on Monday, according to the White House schedule, after weeks of traveling to election events focused largely on Republican states.
Polls suggest that the GOP faces difficult races across much of the country, including in longtime Republican strongholds like Texas and Kansas, where Democrats may win Senate seats for the first time in decades.
One potential bright spot for the GOP is Michigan, where former congressman Mike Rogers, a Republican, is in a tight race against Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee, over the vacant seat left by the retirement of Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.).
Trump hammered El-Sayed on Monday, accusing him of associating with Muslim preachers who have called the United States the “House of Satan.”
“When you vote, remember a party that hates America cannot be allowed to rule over the people who built our country,” he said. “We’re not looking to have a jihadist be in our Senate.”
Trump also took credit for the nearly $10 drop in oil prices on Monday, which followed reports that Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has granted the country’s diplomats additional powers to reach a settlement in negotiations with the United States.
“It’s going to go down a lot further,” Trump said of oil prices. “We’re winning with Iran, easily winning.”
“We had a war with Iran. We won,” he said. “I don’t know if you even call it a war because we haven’t been doing any fighting for months.”
Trump has previously said that he would not renew military strikes against Iran ahead of the midterms.
After concluding his speech on Monday, a White House pool reporter shouted a question about whether he would launch strikes against Iran after the elections.
“No,” Trump replied, according to the press pool.
