Trump: ‘Mid-term elections? The president usually does badly.’ Protests at the ballroom
At the rally in Corinth, Mississippi, the White House occupant spoke less, but offered reassurance: ‘An unprecedented election campaign’
“We’ve been all over the place, we’ve travelled far and wide,” said Donald Trump as he opened his rally in Corinth, Mississippi, referring to his numerous trips across the country in support of the Republicans ahead of the Midterm elections on 3 November. The tycoon reiterated that, usually, the president’s party ‘doesn’t do well’ in mid-term elections, but added: ‘No one has ever campaigned like me for the mid-term elections,’ emphasised the US president in Mississippi, where he was supporting the Republican senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is facing a challenge from the Democrat Scott Colom.
‘No one has run a campaign like ours’
‘The Donald’ has expressed his determination to reverse the historical trend whereby mid-term elections almost always go against the party of the president elected two years earlier. In a hoarse voice, the tycoon claimed that his rallies ‘have completely changed the debate’ surrounding the election campaign. “For some reason, presidents don’t do well in mid-term elections, no matter how good they are; even if they’re exceptional, like us,” said Trump. “But I have to say that nobody has ever campaigned, nobody has ever campaigned the way I have in the run-up to the mid-term elections,” the tycoon reiterated.
The ballroom scene and the protest
Trump was then interrupted by a protester, whilst he was delivering a lengthy defence of the work on the ballroom and other renovation projects at the White House, in response to the harsh criticism levelled on the matter by former President Barack Obama over the weekend. The tycoon was responding to the former president, who claimed that Trump spends much of his time preoccupied with tacky refurbishments and the construction of the opulent ballroom: just as ‘The Donald’ was about to reel off the statistics on his handling of the economy, the protester interrupted him and, as he was being dragged away by security, was heard shouting that the president should ‘shove that ballroom right up his fat a**!’
The attack on Obama
Trump attacked Obama over a joke suggesting that, due to the refurbishment work Trump had commissioned – with ‘gold everywhere’ – the White House ‘looks like a Cheesecake Factory opened by Saddam Hussein’. He said: ‘I’ve taken care of the White House. I’ve refurbished it using the best craftsmen in the world. We’ve completely renovated it. It was in a terrible state,’ said Trump, adding that ‘we need to explain this to Obama, because he doesn’t understand it; he’s not a very intelligent person. The White House is a symbol of America. It must be clean. The columns cannot be broken. The bricks cannot fall off. And the fact that you say it’s a ‘Cheesecake Factory’ just goes to show why you were a terrible president,” he concluded, referring once again to Obama.
Bringing a rally lasting just under 90 minutes to a close, ‘The Donald’ opted for a different, shorter ending than usual. “Let’s make the next two years bigger, better and stronger than ever,” said the US president, addressing the crowd as part of his efforts to mobilise the Republican electorate ahead of the mid-term elections on 3 November. “Because we will make America powerful again, rich again, healthy again, strong again, proud again, safe again. And, most importantly, we will make America great again,” he added, to a crescendo of applause.
