In a long, rambling speech in front of the Reflecting Pool, it took Trump twenty minutes to even mention the midterms.
Instead, he talked almost exclusively about renovations to the Reflecting Pool, and off on tangents about rusty pipes, grass, and paint colors. He even shared blown-up photos of the renovations, from rusted pipes to the construction process.
The puzzled audience stayed completely silent.
As Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, stated: “It starts just with the setting being bizarre and being very self-focused. 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.”
At one point, Trump veered off to talk about…grass.
“Did you know how Bermuda grass will last longer than regular grass? Did you know how hard regrassing is in general? (“Grass has a life of its own,” the president mused.)
Twenty-four minutes in, he finally got around to mentioning the election, but only to say that “our whole country is booming. We’re booming like we’ve never boomed before,” which does more to invoke the ‘OK, boomer’ meme — or perhaps the war in Iran — than it does an economy that’s working out great for everyone, but sure.”
