CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Even as he argues that Republicans should win the midterm elections, President Donald Trump is bracing for the consequences if they lose. Someone will likely be blamed, and Trump said at a rally in Tennessee on Saturday that he hopes it will be him. “If we don’t win the midterm elections, they’re going to blame me,” Trump said. “You know that. And if we beat them, I won’t get any credit. It’s true. I won’t get any.” “But I’m working hard,” he added. “You better get out and vote.” Trump is in “hard work mode” ahead of the midterm elections, a person familiar with the matter said, and is prepared for the worst election outcome. Midterm elections often punish the incumbent president’s party, and Trump’s popularity does not help the GOP cause. Only 38% approve of his performance in office, compared to 59% who disapprove, according to an average of NBC News polls. Trump seeks to defy historical trends by motivating his core supporters who might be inclined not to participate in the election and by offering voters an unusual sweetener if they preserve the Republican majority in the House and Senate. He closed his hour-and-a-half speech with a reminder that “with your vote on November 3, you will get $5,000.” That’s the size of the check he promises to send to adults if Republicans win the midterms. The total price tag is estimated at $1.3 trillion. In fact, Trump is straining as the election approaches, maintaining a hectic schedule. Tennessee was the seventh different state he visited since early October. He had planned to fly to an eighth location, Alabama, later that day to attend the Georgia-Alabama football game, but canceled the trip as Hurricane Isaias approached. Trump used part of the rally to debunk the idea that his popularity has fallen. In a social media post on Saturday, he wrote that the idea that he is in disapproval is a “false narrative.” On stage, he played a clip from CNN showing that his support among his MAGA supporters is nearly unanimous and has shown no retreat since the 2024 election. (CNN was one of three media outlets that the Trump administration banned from the White House grounds last month.) “I’m very popular, I really am,” Trump told the crowd. For Trump, traveling to a deeply red congressional district in a deeply red state like Tennessee might seem like a waste of time in the few weeks left before the midterm elections. Republicans are expected to sweep the state House and Senate races. Trump’s rally took place in an indoor stadium in a northern Tennessee county that he won by 18 percentage points in the 2024 presidential race. Trump himself suggested that the state’s congressional candidates are already on the right path to victory, with or without him. “All these guys are going to win,” he said. “These congressmen are phenomenal. So I’m saying, ‘What the hell am I doing in Tennessee?'” Answering his own question, he said he wanted to “reward places that have automatically treated you well.” “It rallies the base,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said in an interview before Trump took the stage. “And that’s really what we have to look at in a midterm election. That’s what you have to have: the base.” Much of Trump’s speech was a recitation of what he considers his major accomplishments. He cited an increase in median household income in his first year in office and a drop in the country’s poverty rate. Having no qualms about renaming American landmarks, he also mulled the possibility of renaming the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in ways that ensure they are not forgotten. Presumably joking, he said: “We call it ‘Trump Ocean’. Or ‘Ocean of the Americas,’ something like that. No, we have to do it. We should have done it before it comes out, I think we should have an ocean and we need a big river.”
