SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Trump notes today’s plunge in the price of oil. Brent crude futures are down about 8 per cent, and Trump pledges they will come down “a lot further” once the war against Iran ends.
The rising price of fuel has been a major issue in the campaign, although the president has generally not had a lot to say about it, other than to cast it as a necessary price to pay to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
At a recent rally, he boasted that American oil companies have been making billions of dollars in profit while motorists pay a little more at the pump – an observation he has avoided repeating since.
A lot of this speech has involved disparaging reflections on the Democrats, including Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and the party’s ballot hijinks in Alaska.
“The Democrat party has nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history,” Trump says.
“All committed to the same radical agenda – open borders, raising your taxes by millions of dollars, taking away your guns, transgender mutilisation of your children, abolishing oil and natural gas, sending energy costs skyrocketing and opening the floodgates to millions of migrants from all over the world, hoping to get them to be able to vote.”
The president has been holding up photographs of the Reflecting Pool before the renovation, including shots of the pipes and past algae infestations.
He went into great detail about the construction process, including the granite edging. Now he has moved on to talking about his renovations to the White House – the ballroom, the new helipad – and other beautification projects around Washington.
Is anyone watching? Fox News is showing the speech live, while CNN is not. MS-NOW (formerly MS-NBC) is showing live vision of Trump but with talking heads giving commentary over the top.}
The free-to-air channels (CBS, ABC, NBC) are not showing the speech.
Washington: Trump begins his speech by joking that he’s going to rename the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in his own name.
“We’re giving serious thought to changing the name to the Trump Reflecting Pool. We’ll announce that some time tomorrow,” he said.
“I’m only kidding. Please don’t report it. They’ll cut it off and they’ll say, ‘He’s changing the name’. No.”
I have to admit, he had me fooled for a moment there. Given his penchant for naming things in his own honour, it wasn’t beyond the realm of imagination.
Now the president is repeating discredited claims that the Reflecting Pool was vandalised.
His government’s own lawyers conceded in court that the damage to the pool renovation was the result of a botched job by the contractors.
Washington: US President Donald Trump will close the Republicans’ campaign for the midterm elections by touting his makeover of the US capital in a speech from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Trump’s decision to return to the site of the botched pool renovation the day before election day – while calling into a slew of telephone rallies in various states – adds to a frenetic closing message that critics say has lacked focus on bread-and-butter issues affecting Americans.
The president said he wanted to speak at the Reflecting Pool “to show how beautiful it is” now that works were completed. He insisted the water feature had been vandalised, even though the government’s own court submissions conceded the damage was caused by the contractors, not vandals.
On Sunday, Trump held what may be his final ever campaign rallies, in the Midwest states of Iowa and Kansas, where Republicans are battling to hold seats in the US Senate amid widespread concerns about affordability, particularly the rising cost of diesel.
To take control of the House, the Democrats need to pick up at least six more seats (218 seats in total); in the Senate, they need to win a net four seats (51).
Polling suggests Democrats are on track to win the House easily, and possibly the Senate.
That’s largely because the unpopular war on Iran and high inflation have pushed Trump’s popularity to the lowest point in his political career. Trump started his second term with an approval rating of 47 per cent, but the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll found his approval rating had slumped to 32 per cent. The same poll found 43 per cent of registered voters planned to vote for the Democrats in these midterms, and 35 per cent for the Republicans – the biggest lead for the Democrats this year.
The Democrats winning control of both houses would frustrate Trump’s agenda for the final two years of his presidency, plus revive the party ahead of the 2028 presidential campaign. “A win is now measured based on how many seats Democrats pick up rather than getting to a balance or status quo,” says Cory Alpert, who worked in the Biden-Harris administration.
The US midterms take place on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, as stipulated in a law passed 181 years ago.
They are held midway between presidential elections to determine the make-up of Congress, which comprises both the House of Representatives (which has two-year terms) and the Senate (six-year terms).
The Trump administration narrowly controls Congress. In the House of Representatives, the Republicans hold a five-seat majority, with 219 seats (including an independent who votes Republican) against the Democrats’ 214.
In the Senate, Republicans have 53 seats versus the Democrats’ 47 (including two independents who vote Democrat).
Welcome to our live coverage of the US midterm elections.
Americans head to the polls tonight (AEDT) in elections that could have big ramifications for the second half of Donald Trump’s presidency.
All seats in the US House of Representatives and a third of those in the Senate come up for grabs.
The results will determine whether the Democrats can neuter Trump’s agenda or if he will maintain his grip on America until the presidential election in November 2028.
The elections, which are on track to be America’s most expensive ever, are being fought on issues including the cost of living, the war on Iran, artificial intelligence and data centres, abortion rights, the immigration crackdown, and, of course, the president himself.
