Trump Tells Tennessee Rally He Expects Blame if GOP Loses Midterms, Promises $5,000 Checks for a Win

President Donald Trump went to a deep-red corner of Tennessee on Saturday, Oct. 10, and spent part of his speech working out who takes the fall if November goes badly.

"If we don't win the midterms, they're going to blame me," Trump told the crowd at F&M Bank Arena in Clarksville. "You know that. And if we do win them, I will get no credit whatsoever. It's true. I won't get any."

"But I'm working my ass off," he added. "You better get out there and vote."

The $5,000 pitch

Trump ended the speech with a specific offer: "with your vote on November 3rd, you'll get $5,000." That is the size of the check he is promising adults if Republicans keep the House and Senate. The total cost is estimated at $1.3 trillion.

Trump tied the payments to tariff revenue. He also pointed to manufacturing investment in the state and credited his tariffs. Korea Zinc's planned investment of more than $6 billion in Clarksville and Gordonsville, expected to create 740 jobs, was announced by state officials in December. General Motors' $275 million Spring Hill investment for Cadillac engine production was also announced before the rally.

The arithmetic is the story here. $1.3 trillion is the price of a campaign promise that depends on which party controls Congress.

The numbers he is up against

An NBC News average of polls has Trump's approval at 38%, with 59% disapproving. The RealClearPolitics generic ballot average has Democrats ahead of Republicans 51.2% to 42.7%, an 8.5-point margin.

The Senate stands at 53-47 Republican, so the GOP can lose no more than three seats and keep its majority. The House margin is 218-214.

Enthusiasm is a second problem. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Sept. 30 to Oct. 5 found 30% of Trump's 2024 voters described themselves as very enthusiastic about voting in the midterms. For Kamala Harris's 2024 voters the figure was 48%.

More than a million Americans have already voted, according to the Daily Wire's tally.

Trump's answer to the polls

Trump rejects the premise that his standing has slipped. In a social media post Saturday he called the idea that he is in disfavor a "false narrative." On stage he played a CNN clip showing his support among MAGA voters is nearly unanimous, with no slippage since the 2024 election.

"I'm very popular, I really am," he told the crowd. He also joked that he "could say the stupidest things" and the crowd would still clap.

The clip speaks to his base. The polling gap is about everyone else, and about whether the base turns out.

A person familiar with the matter described Trump as in "grind it out mode" and prepared for the worst-case outcome. Tennessee was the seventh state he has visited since the start of October. He canceled a planned eighth stop in Alabama, a trip to the Georgia-Alabama football game, because Hurricane Isaias was bearing down.

Why Tennessee

The rally took place in a county Trump won by 18 points in 2024. Republicans are expected to sweep the state's House and Senate races. A late-August Beacon Center poll had Sen. Marsha Blackburn leading Democrat Jerri Green 55% to 34% in the governor's race.

Trump acknowledged the oddity himself. "These guys are all going to win," he said of the Tennessee congressmen. "So, I'm saying, 'What the hell am I doing in Tennessee?'"

Sens. Bill Hagerty and Blackburn also spoke. Blackburn called Tennessee the "Great Red Wall" and said, "We need to make sure Tennessee never becomes California."

The races that decide it

The fight for control is elsewhere. In the RCP averages and polls cited by the Daily Wire:

• North Carolina: Former Gov. Roy Cooper leads former RNC chairman Michael Whatley by 9 points. GOP-aligned spending groups have shifted money away from the state toward Kansas, where Sen. Roger Marshall is in a single-digit race against Adam Hamilton.
• Texas: A New York Times/Siena poll has Democrat James Talarico ahead of Attorney General Ken Paxton 51% to 45%.
• Georgia: Sen. Jon Ossoff leads Rep. Mike Collins by an average of 8 points.
• Ohio: Former Sen. Sherrod Brown leads Sen. Jon Husted 47% to 44%.
• Maine: Democrat Troy Jackson leads Sen. Susan Collins 47.6% to 47.5%. Collins has a history of outperforming her polls.
• Michigan: Democrat Abdul El-Sayed leads Mike Rogers by 3.5 points. Former President Barack Obama is set to campaign with El-Sayed in Detroit later this month.

Republicans are counting on a flood of campaign cash and a sizable polling miss to hold their majorities, according to the Daily Wire. Trump's own pitch is that the polls understate his support.

The midterms are 23 days away. The tally that will settle the blame question is the one on Nov. 3.