President Donald Trump delivered his first midterm election campaign speech of the new year Tuesday, urging a crowd in Iowa to defy historical trends and preserve his Republican majorities in Congress.
After he recited what he considers signature accomplishments over the past year, Trump said: “If we lose the midterms, you’ll lose so many of the things that we’re talking about. So many of the assets that we’re talking about, so many of the tax cuts that we’re talking about. And it would lead to very bad things. We’ve got to win the midterms.”
Trump spelled out a few of the “bad things” in an interview earlier in the day at a Des Moines-area restaurant. Asked about the consequences of a Democratic takeover of Congress, he told Fox News he would again face impeachment. The House impeached him twice during his first term. The Senate acquitted him both times.
“They’ll probably try to impeach me,” Trump told the interviewer, Will Cain. “They’ll find something. I made the wrong turn at an exit, and ‘let’s impeach him.’”
Trump’s foray onto the campaign trail is the first of what White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said will be repeated appearances as he tries to break a trend in which sitting presidents lose congressional seats in midterm elections. Wiles said in a podcast interview last year that Trump plans to mobilize his supporters by campaigning as if he’s once again up for re-election.
Whether Trump sticks to the script is anyone’s guess. “I don’t like to travel,” he told Republican House members in a speech this month.
Still, he appears to recognize the outsize stakes. A Democratic Congress, armed with subpoena power, could paralyze his agenda and open investigations into his controversial border, trade and spending policies, along with the officials who carry them out.
In Iowa, Trump plunged in as if he were, indeed, on the ballot.
Before his interview with Fox News, he went table to table at the Machine Shed restaurant, shaking hands with diners, posing for pictures and signing hats.
In his speech, he urged people to go out and vote and name-checked several candidates running for new terms.
“I’m here because I love Iowa, but I’m here because we’re starting to campaign to win the midterms,” he said. “You’ve got to win the midterms. That means Senate, and it means House.”
He singled out Iowa Republican House members Ashley Hinson, Randy Feenstra, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn.
“They’re all great and they’re all running and they should be in good shape, but you’ve got to get out and vote,” he said.
Trump stuck to familiar themes, touting economic wins and shifting blame for persistent problems to his predecessor, Joe Biden. Democrats contend that Trump is vulnerable because of widespread American frustration over high prices. They plan to make the prices of groceries and utilities a rallying cry in the November elections.
Trump said he inherited high inflation when he took office and has worked to drive down prices.
“It’s a word that they came up with: ‘affordability,’” he said of the Democrats. “Every time you hear the word, remember, they’re the ones that caused the problem.”
Inflation reached 9.1% midway through Biden’s presidency and stood at 2.7% in December.
Still, polling suggests that millions of people are feeling squeezed. Grocery prices, for example, rose broadly in December, and electricity prices were up 7% last year.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 35% of U.S. adults nationwide approved of Trump’s performance on the economy, compared with 59% who disapproved.
Other issues may also come to the fore as the midterm elections approach.
The White House is engulfed in a crisis over its aggressive immigration enforcement policies. Federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis this month as part of what the White House has described as a crackdown on illegal immigration and fraud.
Trump did not mention the killings during his speech, but in his interview with Fox News, he spoke about the personnel shakeup in his Minneapolis operation amid criticism after the shooting death of Alex Pretti. Attempting a reset, Trump has sidelined the public face of the city’s enforcement effort, Gregory Bovino. Trump sent his border “czar,” Tom Homan, to Minneapolis with an apparent mandate to ease tensions.
“You know, Bovino is very good,” Trump told Cain. “But he’s a pretty out-there kind of guy. And in some cases, that’s good. Maybe it wasn’t good here.”
In his speech, Trump portrayed himself as a boon to Iowa’s economy. He said he supports congressional passage of a bill to allow year-round sales of high-ethanol gasoline, called E-15. He appeared to make a verbal slip when he told the crowd: “China will be sending me a bill very shortly supporting year-round E-15 to my desk very quickly, and I will sign it without delay, OK? I hope you remember us for the midterms.”
(The White House did not immediately respond to a question about whether Trump misspoke.)
Trump also sought to remind voters about past Democratic administrations and what he described as their failings. He referred to “morons” who weakened the country’s borders, and he took a swipe at Barack Obama.
“Barack Hussein Obama. Wonderful president. Really brought people together, didn’t he?” Trump said, sarcastically.
Obama, Trump noted, won Iowa twice — the last Democratic presidential candidate to do so. Trump won the state in all three of the general election campaigns he waged.
“Should we do it a fourth time?” he said to applause. (The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment holds that no one shall be elected president more than twice.)