President Trump delivers midterm closing argument speech; key races and candidates in midterms

And welcome in here at three o'clock. I'm Marina Rocco. Let's get you started here on a busy day ahead of those midterm elections. Just one day away and President Trump making one final push to help Republicans hold their control of Congress. Both parties racing to win over voters in key House and Senate battleground states with the results set to determine just how much of Trump's agenda can move forward during the final two years of his term. The $14 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a major focus of today's presentation as the president President, they're highlighting the project while Also making his final pitch to voters ahead of tomorrow's midterm elections. We did 29 stops and we had big rallies, the biggest rallies ever by far. Joining us now, former Republican congressman from Ohio and House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Bob McEwen and Democrat political strategist Deep Singh Bajeja with us here. Thank you both for being with us. Let's start with the former congressman here. And let's talk about where things stand at this hour, because what we heard, some would say, was a lackluster. Others would like to hear more of the Republican side and clearly a push there. But is it enough to get to the other side? Well, as you know, whoever's in the White House always loses an average of 28 to 32 votes in the House of Representatives. Bill Clinton lost 52. Barack Obama lost 63. And so it just went by tradition that Donald Trump would lose 25 to 30. But I don't think it's going to be anything close to that, maybe 10, maybe 12. But he only has a three-vote margin, the smallest in history, by the way. And yet, so that means if he loses four, he might as well lose 400 because he loses control of the House. But that's expected. What happens in the Senate remains to be seen. It's kind of on the dime. But either way, it's going to be a transition. The second half will be different from the first two years of his term. Well, indeed, but the president is already laying the groundwork for what could be a post midterm saying I will veto everything that comes to my desk. Well, yeah, I mean, go ahead. Yeah, no worries. Excited to talk about it. You know, he's going to be a super lamed up. Right. We're on. We've been talking about Donald Trump for the last 10 years. So we are on his second term. But it feels like we've had him for almost three terms at this point. So, whether... I think Democrats at this point are going to win Congress. The question is actually are we going to win the Senate and by what degree are we going to hold the Senate? And the key point is whether the House or the Senate are passing pieces of legislation that he vetoes does not matter. What the key power is going to be is investigation power, is handing the gavels to these committees and having oversight over what is happening. You know, during this speech, Donald Trump was... Sort of reminiscing about what he wants his legacy to be. And he was talking about how he wants the reflecting pool to be called the Trump reflecting pool. And I think that's sort of apt is the reflecting pool was mostly fine beforehand. He came in, kind of wasted a bunch of money on it. Didn't make it much better, and now he wants his name on it, which is sort of what he's done to the country. So I think it's going to be up to the Democrats in charge, if they take over Congress and the Senate, to start doing investigations, whether it's anywhere from what happened with this pool that he wants to rename, all the way to the corruption deals we see, all the way to reining back those powers that we saw with Iran war. Yeah, a little bit insignificant to talk about the pool, but he did say it was a joke. So we'll see how much he promises on that. But he did, you know, it didn't really land, but he did say he was joking. But, Bob, let's talk about Ohio. You've got a special election there. The executive has obviously been a very heated and at times a vile race that we've seen in recent time here. What's happening in your state and who do you think in the end takes the wins? Well, the same applies there, only in Ohio, we've been really successful. Whenever the Democrats have been in power, there's been a real Republican sweep. But this time, with the Republicans in power, there's expectation the Democrats will do better. And we don't expect to lose control of the legislature. But what happens in the governorship or in the Senate race remains to be seen because there are excellent candidates on both cases. Particularly in the Senate, you have a former senator who's been there, been elected first in 1974, so he spent a great deal of time in state office, but it remains, it will be a part of the tradition. Ohio often is kind of a bellwether state as to which way the country goes, and it's not expected the Democrats will do much better this time than they did two years ago. And deep in places like, for example, Michigan, which Trump carried, or Texas that has been, you could say, reliably red in recent time, now completely up for grabs. In general, I think this... Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, Bob. Well, if I could say that, particularly, I think there's a real question for our country, and the Democrat Party is on the front line of this, is this anti-Semitism that never existed throughout our history. Certainly, something we've never seen before. But now, as we see the Jewish students in Columbia and at Harvard and at the University of Michigan, particularly, when we see the anti-Semitism in Michigan, which caused the... Because the... The very successful Democrat member of Congress to endorse the Republican candidate yesterday, that's something that I think this nation needs to confront directly and abruptly, and we'll know better come Wednesday morning. Do you think that moment deep is going to be what switches potentially Michigan or keeps it red? No, absolutely not. You know, I'm a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and we've seen flips all over across this nation from coast to coast for those things happening. And honestly, I think the two things you should look at as Democrats is look at what's happening in Michigan and look what's happening in Maine. In those states, you have had Democrats in charge there for a long time. There's been a wave of anti-incumbency where folks are kind of fed up with who's in charge. And in some of those states, you've had more traditional Democrats, corporate Democrats in charge. So there's this idea that maybe if we hand power to a different party, they'll be there. So that's why you see Maine actually being one of the closest flips here. Susan Collins might actually end up holding onto that seat. Meanwhile, because Abdullah Sayegh has been able to distinguish himself as a new type of Democrat, As a Democrat who is willing to not just... Go with what the status quo was, but to change it. That is really leading them to increase the polls. The latest round from the New York Times-Siena poll actually had them at a plus 11. And then you saw someone like Tallarico at plus 7. Meanwhile, you saw Jackson in Maine, though, lagging behind, where we see a Democratic governor like Janet Mills, who's actually quite unpopular. So I think it's going to— You're going to see these tensions where Texas has been under Republican control for so long. It's been a trifecta of Republicans. So there's this idea of like, oh, maybe we want some change here. So Texas will have that. But Maine, because it's been under Democrat control. Can Troy Jackson, can Susan Collins, what's going to happen there? Who's going to distinguish themselves as the person who's going to be fighting for those people? Well, to your point, I'm looking at some of these pollings, right? The New York Times, CNN polling. And actually, one of these polls has Jackson up against Collins. But there's an oversampling of Democrats. And we've seen that before where the polls are completely dismissive of Republican voters. And they don't prove to be true post-mortem, after the election. Yeah, I mean, we've seen this in the past with 2020 and 2024 where Republicans were—I mean, 2016, 2020, and 2024, those were all years where Republicans were under-sampled, and those ended up not being the blue waves that we expected, and they ended up being big Trump and MAGA wins. The key point, though, is Trump does have some sort of this effect on his base that turns them out, and he is not on the ballot. You saw that he's trying to go out these places and trying to do these rallies, but he's at an all-time low. Imagine in 2018 when Democrats had huge wins across the board, including the first wave of progressive candidates that we saw with folks like AOC or Rashida Tlaib. This time around, Donald Trump is even less popular than he was in 2018. So I don't think it's going to be apples to apples. Democrats right now in the early voting, when you look at somewhere like Texas, where hundreds of thousands of people have turned out to early vote more than ever before. So you're looking at a big blue surge here. Will Republicans show on Election Day? Will the weather in certain of those Midwestern states affect that? It sees... It seems like we're missing out. Again, Donald Trump and Republicans were able to hold on in 2020, 2024, and 2016. And in 2020, you know, they lost the presidency. But they did hold on to a lot of gains that they thought they were going to lose because of those low-propensity voters. Those low-propensity independent voters oftentimes are actually men under the age of 45. They've also soured on the president now because he's no longer talking about affordable issues. So this has— You know, we'll see how these polls go, but right now, unless there's a big polling error, it's going to be a good night for Democrats. However, Bob, you're in Ohio again. You've got two hugely contested races that could prove true to Deep's point, but there are people who may have soured on the president and the administration that would still prefer a Republican candidate over the alternative. That's a very, very good question, and you have to stop and think, and I encourage people to do this. Ask them, what do you think the Democrats will do? Notice they're very good at criticizing things, but they complain about the price of gasoline. But the price of gasoline is lower than it was under Biden. Biden shut down the pipeline. Biden shut down the drilling. Biden said he didn't want us driving gas cars. He wanted us to go to electricity. So they don't have any proposal. They can trash Trump on a daily basis. They can trash America as well, but you ask them, where, what are they going to do on the border? They won't tell you. What are you going to do on taxes? They won't tell you. What are you going to do on energy? They won't tell you. All they can do is attack, attack and The question is, how will Americans who have supported Donald Trump, will they show up because they know the Democrats have the capacity to attack, but not to lead, as we see in New York, as we see in California, as we see under Joe Biden? We talk about these polls, both the polling here that we were citing, the New York Times-Siena poll, Bob, has both of the Democrats in the races in the Senate race and the gubernatorial race in your state right now leading here. Do you trust these polls and earnestly? How do you feel? Is it going to be contested? Is it going to come down to the wire? Well, I think they oftentimes try to, at the end, they try to say, well, it's going to really be close. But they also oversample, or actually what they say is just simply not true. For example, the headlines in the weekend before the '24 election was that Kamala would carry Iowa by three to five points. And that was the main discussion all the Sunday shows on and on. Well, Trump carried it by 12. That means you're off by 15 percent. That isn't by accident. That has to be deliberate. So many of these polls, you're going to see a great deal of effort to discourage, but I think it would be appropriate for us to take a sober look come Wednesday or Thursday and look back at what the proposals were that you just proposed, you mentioned this last weekend, because invariably Republicans do much better than those who want to depress the vote and tell them that they're going to do. Both of them within the margin of error with those four points there. Deep, before we go, which race do you think is going to be the easiest or you are the most sure will be? You flipped in favor of the Democrats. Well, actually, North Carolina is no longer even rated as a toss-up race. Going into this, the idea that we would be just surefire that— That Governor Cooper over there is going to just lock it up is a pretty good sign for Democrats. The state that I worry about the most is actually Maine. So I think Michigan and North Carolina are going to be pretty safe Democratic pickups. And then we're going to have to look at, do we flip Iowa? Do we flip Ohio? Do we flip Texas? Do we flip Alaska? But early on the night, we're going to have some hopeful news from, you know, Georgia and North Carolina. And if we don't have hopeful news early for North Carolina and Georgia, it's going to be a long night for Democrats. And I think Republicans can breathe a sigh of relief. All right. We will see tomorrow. to talk to you both. We so appreciate it. Thank you. And remember, right here on Fox 5, we'll have election coverage all day tomorrow with our special coverage beginning at 7 p.m. and then on Fox 5 and Fox Local throughout the night, 7 p.m. to 2 a.m.