WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's first public appearance after the Republicans' midterm shellacking? An activity he said relaxes him. He visited his White House ballroom and gave a detailed update on its construction.
He visited the site on Nov. 4 to mark the installation of the controversial project's final beam and speak to construction workers.
"I doubt there's a ballroom in the country with 50-foot ceilings," Trump said. “There’s never been anything built like this, and it’s for the country, and it’s free. When it’s completed, it’ll be the best anywhere in the world.”
Trump pushed back at detractors who have criticized him for talking too much about his White House renovations.
"I'm doing it because the White House is the ultimate symbol
of America," Trump said, though he also acknowledged his love for construction projects. "To me, it's relaxing. For somebody else, it's the opposite."
The event largely mirrored Trump's final pitch to voters ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, when he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to tout his Washington, DC, construction projects. The president spoke for 20 minutes before bringing up the looming midterms.
The following day, Democrats won control of the House and Senate in a seismic blue wave that saw them push deep into red territory. In a rebuke of Trump, who had urged Republicans to "pretend I'm on the ballot," Democrats flipped seven Senate seats including in South Carolina, Kansas and Texas.
In the final stretch of the campaign, Trump, who had a record-low approval rating, crisscrossed the country to hold more than two dozen rallies for Republicans. In doing so, he turned the election into a referendum on his presidency.
Still, Trump said Nov. 4 he had no regrets.
"You saw the people. They were packed. Thousands and thousands of people at every rally," Trump said. "And if I was on the ballot, we would have won. There was such love at those rallies, it was incredible. We weren't able to transfer the love to candidates."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump touts White House ballroom as Democrats celebrate midterm blue wave
