- Iran war hurt Trump’s public approval ratings.
- Rising fuel prices affected Republican prospects.
- Republicans risked losing House and Senate control.
President Donald Trump claimed he halted all refugee admissions and made English the official language of the United States in a long list of what he called his top achievements, as difficult midterm elections loom.
Trump is scrambling to boost his low approval ratings ahead of November’s vote, with polls showing the unpopular war in Iran and the fuel and other price rises it has caused are hurting his Republican Party.
Polls say the party could well lose control of the House and perhaps even the Senate, a setback which would pose a major challenge for Trump and his America-first agenda in the last two years of his second term.
Trump said Friday he “achieved the most secure border in history” in a lengthy social media post on Truth Social that focused on immigration, foreign policy and the economy.
“ZERO illegal aliens admitted to the United States in the past 16 months,” he wrote, adding that his administration had slashed refugee admissions from “dangerous places”.
Trump has presided over an often violent immigration crackdown which involves frequent deportations and shipping people that the United States cannot legally send home to third countries, which are sometimes compensated with money.
He also claimed the United States had “obliterated Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity” to ensure the Islamic republic “will NEVER have a nuclear weapon”. This was one of Trump’s often-changing justifications for going to war in February.
The US-Israeli strikes on Tehran have rocked the global economy and engulfed the Middle East in war, proving a quagmire for a president who promised not to get America involved in any more foreign wars.
Trump also flaunted hefty tariffs slapped on US trading partners, which he said were to “bring back American Manufacturing.”
