Trump Closes His Rally Run in Salina: 'This Is My 30th Rally, and I'm Closing It Down Tonight'
President Donald Trump told the Salina crowd Sunday night that the Kansas stop was the 30th and final rally of his midterm campaign — 'I had to come here to make sure that Roger got elected' — capping the months-long blitz for Sen. Roger Marshall two days before elections that decide control of Congress.
President Donald Trump ended his midterm campaign trail where he ended his Sunday: on a stage in Salina, Kansas. 'This is my 30th rally, and I'm closing it down tonight, this is it,' Trump told the audience, according to the USA Today midterm live file's 10:01 PM ET entry. 'I had to come here to make sure that Roger got elected.' Trump took the stage at about 8:22 p.m. local time to Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless the U.S.A.,' per the file's 09:45 PM ET entry, in the second stop of a Sunday doubleheader that began in Dubuque, Iowa.
The Kansas close was aimed at a race Republicans did not expect to defend. Sen. Roger Marshall faces Democrat Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor, in a state Kansas last sent a Democrat to the Senate from in 1932; a Washington Post poll released Friday put Hamilton ahead 52 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, and a CNN poll found a narrower four-point Hamilton lead, per the live file and this station's earlier Sunday reporting. The Salina rally itself had been cancelled on October 29 in favor of tele-rallies and then restored — USA Today reported on October 30 that the Kansas and Iowa rallies were back on.
What remains of Trump's closing argument is Monday's: the closing-remarks appearance at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the eve of the election, which this station filed earlier Sunday (SQ-20261101-060). Thirty-five Senate seats and all 435 House seats are on Tuesday's ballot; Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority, and more than 52 million Americans had already voted by Sunday, a midterm record, per Reuters' account of the University of Florida Election Lab figures.
