by Miranda Devine
As the president finished up the final rallies of his time in politics, he indulged in some rare introspection, admitting to feeling a little nostalgic and wishing he could run again.
Having flown all over the country to do 26 rallies in the last month, an absurdly energetic 80-year-old Donald Trump took time to sit with The Post at the White House to reflect on Tuesday’s midterms, where his party is the underdog.
He is optimistic, despite the polls, which hand both the House and the Senate to Democrats.
“I think they’re rigged. I think a lot of pollsters don’t even send pollsters out. I think they collect a big check [and] say they have 1,000 pollsters all over the country, and then they sit back behind the desk . . . I don’t know anybody that’s ever been polled.
“Maybe they don’t poll Republicans, but I think we’re gonna do pretty well. I do that based on the rallies. The rallies are as big as they’ve ever been.”
He believes his unorthodox decision to inject himself into the midterms by hosting rallies has made a difference to the popularity of the Senate candidates he’s promoting with every ounce of marketing magic he can muster.
Dems ‘destroy’
He doesn’t get tired, despite getting home at 4 a.m. some nights because, he says, “there’s such love in the room [or] the stadium . . . that it’s sort of easy to do. In a sense, it does energize. You see the kind of love and respect that you have, and the country’s doing so well. The real people know it.”
He’s proud of the fact that, after he went to Ohio and praised Senate candidate and former star college football player Jon Husted as handsome with a “very powerful ass,” the Republican’s name recognition soared and women started seeing him in a new light. Trump claimed Husted jumped 12 points in the polls, although the official figures don’t show that.
But no president has had such a talent for branding or eye for talent.
Asked to choose his handsomest Cabinet member, out of the vice president, secretary of State and Treasury secretary, he demurred — for a moment.
“You’re going to get me in big trouble . . .”
“In their own way, Marco [Rubio]’s really a great, hot politician in the sense that he’s done great. JD [Vance], the same thing, they’re doing great. Scott Bessent is central casting, right? If I was going to do a movie on the Treasury, [I’d] pick him for the lead. They’re all good.”
As for his successor, since he equally praises Vance and Rubio as an unbeatable joint ticket, he says: “I just want somebody that’s going to be fantastic, because if we lose to the Democrats this country is finished.”
Pointing to “Decoy Dan” in Alaska, the fake candidate with the same name as the incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump warns that Democrats have a penchant for cheating.
“If you had men in women’s sports, open borders for everyone, transgender everything, mutilization of your children and so many other things, high taxes . . . a bad economy, bad on the military . . . If you have all of these things, the only way you can get elected is to cheat,” he said.
If the Democrats were to win the House and the Senate this year and the presidency in 2028, Trump believes the country “may be forever destroyed.”
They would stack the Supreme Court. “They want to really have 23 people, and then they want to get rid of your Second Amendment, and have transgender for everyone.”
They would terminate the filibuster “in the first two minutes” of taking power and then create two new blue states in Puerto Rico and DC, “which would make it impossible for a Republican to become president.”
“They’ll let millions of [illegal aliens] come in. They let 25 million people come, and we’ve gotten a lot of them out. We’ve gotten most of the really bad ones . . . They want to raise taxes. They want do all these things that will destroy [America].
“If we lost the House, the Senate and the presidency, our country is finished. Because these are lunatics you’re dealing with.”
He is confident that the polls will be proven wrong on Tuesday, but even if Republicans lose both chambers, he says it won’t stop him from forging ahead with his agenda by using executive orders and his veto power.
“I think we’re going to do great. But if we didn’t win, I veto everything. I’ll be vetoing, vetoing. . . .
“I guess I’ll become Mr. Veto. . . . And then at some point, we’ll probably make deals.”
‘Keep it going’
He is sanguine about Democrat threats that they will come after him, his family, his Cabinet, Elon Musk and everyone around him with subpoenas and prosecutions.
“If they do, we’ll just have to protect those people.”
He said he is prepared to give everyone who has worked for him preemptive pardons, Biden-style.
“I would if I needed to, sure . . . I would not even think about it. I‘d do it. I did it for J6.”
He’s resigned to the impossibility of running for a third time to finish what he’s started.
“I’d love to run again if I had the chance, but the language [of the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit] is very exacting. I would love to. They had a poll the other day where I’d beat everybody by so much. I’d have loved to run, but it’s fine.”
He’s bullish about a booming economy the next two years, with sharply accelerating GDP growth now at 3.4%, consumer confidence leaping 7.5 points and private spending up, despite stubbornly expensive energy. But he promises gas prices will go below $2.
“We have more than two years left. That’s a long time. You can do a lot in that period of time, and you’ve seen the job we’ve done,” the president said.
“I had the best economy in my first term. This will blow it away. We have more car plants, more pharmaceutical plants [and] chip plants . . . More people are working right now than ever. Our military is the strongest . . . We manufacture. We’re building again . . .
“The most important thing is to keep it going. It’s going to get better and better and better unless people come in that hate our country. We’re not going to let that happen.”
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