President Donald Trump lashed out on Election Day at the backlash to his Monday speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
The White House had preemptively billed the event as a chance for the president to deliver his closing 2026 midterm election argument to voters, but Trump spent the first 20-plus minutes of the remarks detailing updates to the Reflecting Pool, one of his “beautification” pet projects in Washington.
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Just before the half-hour mark on Monday, Trump turned back into campaign mode, bashing the “extreme and dangerous slate of candidates” nominated by Democrats. Still, the president closed out by touching on the memorial arch he wants to build in Washington, additional updates to the Lincoln Memorial, and the “world-class” redesign of the city’s East Potomac Golf Course.
In a Truth Social post Tuesday afternoon, Trump accosted the Daily Mail and claimed the outlet mischaracterized a joke he made about renaming the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool the Trump Reflecting Pool.
“Their dishonest, false headline states: ‘Trump delivers final midterms speech to just 60 people at the renovated Reflecting Pool and threatens a major rename.’ It wasn’t a ‘Final Midterms Speech] that only had 60 people, it was a NEWS CONFERENCE, nobody was invited, it was closed to the Public — Just Reporters,” he wrote. “My Final Midterms Speech was the day before in Iowa and Kansas, where we had 50,000 people. This just shows you how FAKE the News is. I said, very clearly, ‘I’m joking.’ The Fake News is so corrupt!”
TRUMP SPENDS NEARLY HALF OF HIS MIDTERM CLOSING PITCH TALKING ABOUT REFLECTING POOL RENOVATIONS
The president additionally went after Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), claiming that the Democrat is “one of the least respected” congressmen who “made a knowingly malicious, false, and defamatory statement that I wanted to change the name of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to the Trump Reflecting Pool.”
“Ted Lieu knows that I said it in a jocular manner, and added, immediately after, ‘Don’t worry, I’m only joking.’ All of the gathered Reporters laughed. But ‘Lightweight’ Lieu, his new moniker, didn’t add the line that I’m only joking because he is a FRAUD,” Trump continued. “This was done at a News Conference, and even the Media was aghast that Lieu would have lied like that. He’s a Third Rate Congressman, and always will be!”