Trump, who spoke in the city of Highland Heights to boost Republican candidates including Ed Gallrein for the U.S. House, was riffing on his decision to change how the U.S. government refers to the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
“I don’t think I could have done this in my first term. This is a much more powerful term,” Trump said. “Google wouldn’t have taken my call in the first. Now, they kiss my ass."
“Well, I also changed the name of a lake in Canada to the Lake America," he continued, referring to Lake Ontario.
Trump touched on gas prices, saying that the war with Iran was going to end soon — an assertion he's made many times over the course of the nearly eight-month conflict — and that gas prices will drop to lower than previously. The crowd cheered.
Facing the electoral headwinds, Trump is working to paint a portentous picture of Democrats in the final weeks before the midterms. That includes the claim that if his opposing party wins, the U.S. will “have a depression,” and that the Democratic platform includes abolishing the U.S. Senate and U.S. Supreme Court.
Those are not on the Democratic Party's platform. But Trump is trying to lump them in with the Democratic Socialists of America, which have had a few candidates win in this year's primary elections.
Trump also rehashed his dubious promise that if Republicans win the House and the Senate then every adult American would get $5,000. That would most likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, while exacerbating the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit.
Trump added a new, seemingly conditional promise for Kentucky. That if Republicans win, he said, the Department of Defense would invest in revitalizing a drug manufacturing facility in the state.
The president pulled Gallrein on stage, the Republican candidate for the U.S. House district who beat Rep. Thomas Massie in the GOP primary. Massie had aggravated Trump by pushing for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and opposing the Iran war, and the president responded by successfully backing Gallrein in the party's primary.
Massie, however, still has a following for standing on his staunchly conservative principles, even when it meant voting against his own party. When Trump lashed out at Massie as a “jerk” and “loser” and trumpeted Gallrein as a more loyal replacement, the crowd’s response was tepid, with about half the arena clapping at Trump’s barbs and other half silent.
