Trump Renews $5,000 Promise in Final Midterm-Eve Speech at the Reflecting Pool

WASHINGTON - President Trump made his final appeal to midterm voters on Monday in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, defending his record and reviving his pledge to give voters $5,000 apiece if Republicans retain Congress, the New York Post reported. 'If we win the election, everybody is going to get $5,000. Every adult is going to get $5,000,' he said, in the proposal he first rolled out at September's midterm convention in Dallas.

The optics were the message as much as the words. Trump celebrated Monday's steep drop in oil prices, low unemployment, falling crime and scant illegal immigration, the Post reported, and framed the choice in the terms he has used all fall: 'The Democrats want to blow all of this up by electing communists and jihadists,' he said. 'We can't let that happen. We have to keep our Congress strong, free - a little bit of apple pie.' The quoted lines are the president's own characterizations, carried here as reported.

He was candid about the history working against him. 'For some reason, the sitting president doesn't win the midterms, but we gave this a very strong shot,' he said, noting his 29 rallies across the country, the Post reported. In a social media video the same day, he warned that 'if the Democrats win, you will have an economic depression; If the Republicans win, you will each have $5,000 in your pocket.'

For all the staging, most of the speech was not about the election at all. Trump discussed the midterms about 24 minutes into remarks that outlined his plans to renovate or build Washington landmarks, the Post reported, and his named attacks were narrow: Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola, over his allegation that she recruited a same-name candidate against Senator Dan Sullivan - an allegation carried here as his. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also spoke. Voters render the verdict on Tuesday.