President Trump took a victory lap Wednesday at his first rally since Republicans won a hotly contested special election in Georgia and a separate special election in South Carolina, arguing the success of GOP candidates in congressional races this year has proven the popularity of his agenda.
“They thought they were going to win last night in Atlanta,” Trump told a crowd of thousands in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, referring to Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff’s defeat Tuesday in the Georgia congressional contest. “They spent close to $30 million on this kid — who forgot to live in the community that he was [running] in.”
Ossoff, who lost the special election Tuesday by four points, did indeed live outside the district in which he ran for Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s former seat. Karen Handel, the Republican who beat him, used his residence to argue Ossoff was out of touch with the community.
“If Karen Handel had lost, they would have blamed it on me,” Trump said after congratulating Handel on her victory.
“And we can’t forget Ralph Norman in South Carolina. He called me, and I called him. He said: ‘You know, last night I felt like the forgotten man,'” Trump said of the Republican candidate who won Tuesday in South Carolina by a smaller-than-expected margin. “But he won, and he won really beautifully. Even though most people, a lot of people didn’t show up, because they thought he was going to win by so much. It’s always dangerous to have those big leads.”
Trump’s campaign-style rally marked a return to the forum that built his candidacy during the presidential race, one that has offered him a platform to sell his agenda during his young presidency. The president has held a handful of rallies since taking office, although most have involved more scripted remarks than the free-wheeling speeches that defined his early events.
Highlighting Republican victories in Georgia, South Carolina and beyond on Wednesday, Trump used the GOP’s recent electoral success to project optimism about his legislative agenda.
“I’ll tell you what, Karen is going to be really incredible. She is going to be joining some wonderful people and doing some wonderful work, including many, many tax cuts and healthcare and lots of things,” Trump said.
The president noted he hoped the Republican healthcare bill — which the Senate intends to make public this week — would include more “heart” amid criticism from Democrats that the Obamacare repeal plan would leave too many people uninsured. But he slammed Democratic lawmakers for refusing to reach across the aisle to salvage Obamacare or pass substantive legislation.
“Let me tell you, I came in and took over a very, very difficult hand, but we’re going to get it fixed,” Trump said. “That’s what you put me here for; we’re going to get it fixed.”
Trump mocked the “fake news” reporters who covered Democrats’ losses in Georgia and South Carolina on Tuesday, arguing they would have characterized the Georgia contest as a far more significant signal had Handel lost to Ossoff.
“I watched the faces on those newscasters, in many cases, and they were going: ‘Oh, this is going to be a big night; this will be great humiliation for President Trump if she doesn’t make it,” he said. “But this will be tremendous humiliation — they built these studios; they built everything. They were set. Believe me, had our wonderful candidate lost, this would have been one of the great, big stories in the history of American politics. Those studios would have been up for weeks. They would have been talking for weeks about this tremendous defeat.”
Trump mocked political pundits who had blamed Ossoff’s defeat on the weather in suburban Atlanta on Wednesday, as some analysts had questioned whether the rain persuaded some would-be voters to stay home on Election Day.
“One of them actually said: ‘Well, maybe it was the weather. You know, it was drizzling.’ A little bit like this, but a little bit less. It was drizzling,” Trump said. “Did you hear that one, Ambassador [Terry Branstad]? It was drizzling. Maybe that was the difference.”
Trump now has to hope the Republicans’ unbeaten streak in the competitive special congressional elections will make the difference for their shared legislative agenda.
