Trump yuks it up with House Republicans and predicts ‘epic midterm victory’ while also bragging about his Venezuela attack

Trump asked House GOP members to tell him ‘what the hell's going on with the mind of the public’ amid flagging poll numbers

Donald Trump used a Tuesday speech to brag to his fellow GOP lawmakers about his successes and his recent attack on Venezuela while sprinkling his lengthy address with jokes and wild facial movements as he mocked transgender weightlifters.

The president, who addressed the House GOP Conference’s annual retreat at The Kennedy Center, appeared completely unfazed by the razor-thin margin keeping his party atop the lower chamber, which was reduced to just 218 — the exact number needed to form a majority — after the resignation of Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene and the sudden death of California’s Doug LaMalfa.

But Trump used his speech to say everything was fine, despite polling that shows trouble for the GOP ahead of the midterms.

As he opened what would be a nearly 90-minute stemwinder full of off-teleprompter rants, vulgar asides and bizarre gestures, Trump claimed the House GOP has held together a “unified majority” that has helped bring “12 months of unprecedented success” during his tumultuous first year back in office.

“Now we're going to make history and break records with the epic midterm victory that we're going to pull off,” Trump said as he predicted that the GOP would defy longstanding trends of the president’s party losing control of the House halfway through his term — a fate avoided just once in recent history, by then-president George W. Bush in the 2002 midterms held a year after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington.

Trump expressed incredulity at the idea that voters, having elected him and Republican majorities in the House and Senate just over a year ago, could have the temerity to change their minds and vote Democrats into power a scant two years after that.

He suggested the reason for voters’ tendency to want a check on a president’s power was “something psychological.”

Trump’s bizarre gesticulations were part of a nearly 90-minute speech to House Republicans on Tuesday. He made several faces as he mocked a weightlifter. (Reuters)

Trump took aim at transgender competitors during his Tuesday address. (AFP/Getty)

While speaking for 90 minutes, Trump boasted about his successes while making many asides and jokes. (AFP/Getty)

“You can win by a lot. We won every swing state. We won the popular vote by millions. We won everything. But they say that when you win the presidency, you lose the midterm ... I wish you could explain to me what the hell's going on with the mind of the public,” he said.

After a brief moment of solemnity as Trump eulogized LaMalfa and praised his party-line voting record while also offering well-wishes to Indiana’s Jim Baird as he recovers from an automobile accident, the president turned to endorsing the current House Republican leaders, Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

Trump recalled how Scalise had been shot by a gunman who’d targeted the GOP Congressional baseball team practice in 2017 and repeated a joke he’s frequently told about how upset the Louisiana congressman’s wife was at the time.

“That's the only thing I learned about Steve, that he has a wife who loves him. Because I've gone to hospitals where guys are in bad shape, and the wife couldn't care less,” Trump said.

What was meant as a speech exhorting Republicans to enact policy priorities that could power the “epic” midterm victory Trump had predicted continued as a bizarre open mic, free association session before the 217 House members who were present.

The president appeared to conflate or confuse Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer with deposed Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as Trump boasted of the U.S. military’s prowess demonstrated while snatching Maduro from a Caracas safe house over the weekend, calling Schumer “such a bad guy” who he has “known ... for a long time” before talking about how Maduro had tempted fate by imitating the awkward dancing Trump engages in after most speeches.

“He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit, but he's a violent guy, and he's killed millions of people,” Trump said.

Trump claimed in his speech the House GOP has held together a ‘unified majority’ that has helped bring ‘12 months of unprecedented success’ during his tumultuous first year back in office. (AFP/Getty)

The president also found time during the hour-and-a-half he was on stage to engage in a vulgar — and oft-repeated — bit about an alleged transgender weightlifter who broke a longstanding record after transitioning from male to female and entering a women’s competition.

As Trump recounted how the alleged record had “stood for 18 years” he noted that the bit he was performing is disliked by his wife, First Lady Melania Trump.

“And my wife, by the way, my wife hates when I do this ... she’s a very classy person, right? She said it’s ‘so unpresidential,’” he said before noting that the First Lady dislikes his dancing as well.

He also suggested his wife, an immigrant from Slovenia, was unaware that former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been paralyzed below the waist from Polio.

“She actually said: ‘Could you imagine FDR dancing?’ She said that to me. And I said, there's a long history that perhaps she doesn't know, because he was an elegant fellow, even as a Democrat,” he said.

Despite his wife’s objections, the president continued with his transphobic bit by gesturing, gesticulating and grunting his way through his approximation of a weightlifting performance before alluding to other controversies with trans (or allegedly trans) athletes in boxing and swimming as well.

He urged Republicans to keep anti-transgender issues at the forefront of their midterm campaign, telling them: “The whole thing is ridiculous. You have policy on your side. They don't have policy on your side. You have policy.”

Trump also bragged about his attack on Venezuela during the address. (Reuters)

Trump summed up his lengthy remarks by warning the GOP that they needed to retain the House to protect him from any impeachment efforts if Democrats take the House. (Reuters)

Trump continued speaking for another 50 minutes after that moment, rattling off a series of grievances and boasts about the only major piece of legislation passed by Congress during his first year, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tax and spending package.

He also urged Republicans not to revive the Covid-era Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired at the end of last year, causing health insurance premiums to spike for millions, sometimes by as much as thousands of dollars per month.

While he counseled them to be “flexible” on health care, he also urged them to enact his proposal to replace the tax credits that let Americans purchase cheaper plans on the exchanges with direct cash payments to somehow permit consumers to negotiate directly with insurance companies and “buy their own health care.”

Trump then summed up his lengthy remarks by warning members that they needed to retain the House to protect him from any consequences for how he’s conducted himself over his first year back in power.

“You got to win the midterms, because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be, I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me. I'll get impeached,” he said.