How Trump Is Spending Election Day and Night - Time Magazine
After weeks of rallies across the country, President Trump is set to spend Election Day at the White House, as polls suggest his party may be in for a tough night.
Trump gave a final speech ahead of Election Day on Monday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the source of a recent troubled renovation, in which his Administration’s achievements while calling Democrats “extreme and dangerous.”
“For whatever reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms, and we gave this a very strong shot,” he said. The President’s schedule on Monday also had him attending at least nine virtual tele-rallies to stump for Republican candidates across the country. It was the capstone to weeks of campaigning by Trump. Just in October, he attended and spoke at 27 campaign rallies.
On Tuesday, the President is set to remain at the White House into the evenign as states from coast to coast tabulate the election results, according to a White House official. Election night is expected to to stretch into the early hours, with the first polls closing at 6 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday and the last in Alaska at 1 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday.
The president, along with First Lady Melania Trump, cast their ballots early in person in West Palm Beach, Florida, two weeks ago, before Trump spoke at a rally in Georgia that same day. Trump said he voted for all Republicans.
The President has been encouraging his supporters to vote as if his name is on the ballot, as Republicans fear a lower turnout from their supporters than those of Democrats. The latest New York Times/Siena poll on Monday showed Democrats leading in key Senate battlegrounds including Michigan, Texas, Ohio, and Kansas.
“Democrats are showing up, they're energized. They hate, hate, hate Donald Trump,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, said Friday on his podcast.
“If the election were over today, if just the early votes that have been cast so far were counted, Republicans would lose massively,” Cruz warned.
Key election results could be delayed by the Trump administration’s ongoing investigations into how states administer elections. The Department of Justice on Sunday asked a federal appeals Court to overturn a ruling that dismissed the department’s bid to potentially block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate election over the candidacy of Daniel J Sullivan, who is appearing on the same ballot as incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan.
The Department has also asked the Supreme Court on Monday to set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots that the administration claims have been provided to noncitizens. Federal judges in the lower courts have all rejected the DOJ’s request to do so.
For months, Trump has appeared to lay the groundwork to claim that voter fraud took place if Republicans perform poorly in the midterms, despite the fact that instances of voter fraud are exceedingly rare. Last week, he claimed in a Truth Social post that the federal government is closely watching for any sign of voter fraud in Minnesota, and that the only way that the Republican candidate for the Senate will lose is through “playing games with the [B]allots.”
Asked if he will respect the midterm election results, Trump told reporters last Tuesday that he will “if they are honest elections.”
