Trump Maintains Defiant Message In Kentucky Midterm Rally, Makes Dubious Claims About Republican Popularity

President Donald Trump held a midterm campaign rally in support of GOP candidates in Highland Heights, Kentucky on Saturday. In spite of record low approval ratings and polls showing that races for the House and Senate in traditionally Republican-leaning states will be close, the president projected a defiantly optimistic message throughout the event.

“I started the [campaign] rallies and all of a sudden the Republican party is starting to look very good. We’re winning,” the president told his supporters. “I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot because when I’m on the ballot … we always won,” Trump continued.

It is unclear whether this strategy of emphasizing his own supposed personal popularity will work for Trump. As of October 17, 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump, compared to just 37% who approve, a New York Times tracker shows. Polls also now show that the Democrats are currently increasing their chances of winning a majority in the Senate, which was seen as unlikely.

Most polls show that victory for the Democrats in the House is all but assured, with Harvard University forecasting that the Democrats have a 91% chance of winning the Lower House.

One of the reasons for Democrat optimism is the party’s apparent newfound competitiveness in traditionally conservative seats, such as Texas, where Trump beat Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris by over 13.5% in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump claimed that a poll that came out on Saturday morning showed that Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate for Senate in Texas who Trump called the “greatest attorney general in the history of Texas,” was ahead in the race against his Democrat challenger James Talarico, who Trump dubbed “Talafreako.”

It is unclear which poll Trump was referring to; according to RealClearPolling’s (RCP) Texas Senate poll tracker, a poll conducted by InsiderAdvantage on Tuesday and Wednesday gave Paxton a one point advantage over Talarico, but the tracker showed that the vast majority of polls conducted by other organizations put Talarico ahead.

The current RCP average for polls conducted between September 24 and October 14 gives Talarico a lead of just over two percentage points. A victory for Talarico would mark the first time a Texas Democrat has won election to the Senate in nearly four decades.

During his visit to Kentucky, Trump also reiterated many of the claimed triumphs that have become a key feature of his recent campaign rallies: he praised his own administration’s imposition of tariffs on Canada, its handling of ongoing hostilities with Iran – he claimed “we beat the s*** out of them” – and the government’s decision to rename both the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and Lake Ontario to Lake America.

The president also repeatedly attacked the previous Democrat administration of President Joe Biden for allegedly opening the border, presiding over the “worst inflation in American history, [and] the highest energy prices in American history.”

Under Biden, inflation hit a 40-year, as opposed to an all-time, high of 9.1% in June 2022. However, by the end of his term in January 2025, inflation had fallen to 3.0%, which is lower than the inflation rate recorded in September 2026, which was 3.7%. The national average monthly electricity bill hit its all-time high in mid-2026, under Trump

Gas prices indeed reached an all-time high of over $5 per gallon in mid-June 2022 – a phenomenon that was largely attributed to the Russian war with Ukraine – but are currently much higher than the average price across Biden’s full term, which was about $3.45 per gallon. As of October 17, daily gas prices are $4.31 a gallon.

Despite his apparent confidence about Republican victory, there were some possible indications in Trump’s speech of the potential for a Democrat win; the president told voters repeatedly to get out and vote in large numbers, called the election “the most important midterm in the history of our country” and warned the Kentucky crowd that if Democrats won, “they’re going to open your borders.”