Trump caps election week with algae talk, a space decree and a blame pass

Donald Trump closed out the midterm campaign with a landscaping lecture. Standing at the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on Monday, he touted his $14m renovation and pinned the algae that once turned the water green on the presidents before him. "Everything else for years" was "dirt and filth and paper," he said, according to the Guardian. The timing raised eyebrows: polls show Americans aren't thrilled with his fixation on renovation projects.

Trump isn't budging. The Wall Street Journal reported he considers the "beautification of Washington" one of his strongest legacies, even as aides pushed him to talk about other things. At the pool, he claimed he had accomplished more in two years than any administration in history, then went further: "I've actually kept far more promises than I made." The $14m project itself became an international punchline earlier this year when his promised "American flag blue" water instead bloomed green.

Election day brought new priorities. Trump published an "American declaration of freedom in space," asserting that the solar system and everything beyond Earth belongs to all humans, and declared the week "Anti-Communism Week" for the victims of socialism and communism. How the White House planned to mark it? Unclear, per the Guardian.

The bigger jolt came Tuesday morning on Fox News, where Trump phoned in to say he would end military aid to Israel at the end of the year. The US sends roughly $4bn a year, he said, and it "gets cut off at the end of the year." He also admitted why: Democrats had turned the number into a winning talking point, singling out Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. A September Quinnipiac poll found nearly half of Americans thought the US was too supportive of Israel.

By Tuesday evening, Trump had turned on his old ally. "The FoxNews Poll, always the worst, is so insulting," he posted on Truth Social at 6.36pm, calling every question a "hit job." Twenty minutes later he claimed Fox ratings had dropped 27% because the network covers "the Trump Deranged Dumocrats." He signed off: "It's them, not me."

Then the results landed. Democrats notched major wins in Georgia, New Hampshire and North Carolina — a rebuke that arrived fast. Trump's response was a short statement placing himself firmly outside the blast radius: "I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!" He added, "Thank you for your attention to this matter."