WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump spent the weekend using Air Force One to buzz the tower at major sporting events after last week’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and as the Senate takes a final vote on a college athletics bill the chamber has spent weeks on.

He is slated to emphasize domestic issues as the midterm elections approach and prognosticators continue to downgrade GOP candidates. Meanwhile, Trump and administration officials used descriptors like “historic” to describe last week’s Xi summit — but the White House has not pointed to any significant developments coming out of it.

Administration officials mostly have emphasized the summit extending a Washington-Beijing truce on trade and a delay in China’s plans to restrict its rare earth minerals exports. Even some Republican lawmakers had hoped Trump would send Xi off after an agreement on how to regulate artificial intelligence, but so far there are no announcements.

Sports and oil

Trump was all smiles on Sunday in suburban Chicago after the U.S. team rallied to win the Presidents Cup international golf event at Medinah Country Club. A day earlier, Trump had the pilot of Air Force One conduct a low flyover of Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tenn., before the top-ranked Longhorns from the University of Texas defeated the No. 14 Volunteers of the University of Tennessee. Trump did not mention the “Protect College Sports Act” during his Saturday trip. That bipartisan measure, which Trump has backed, is on track to pass the Senate Monday evening.

As new polls continued to show voters increasingly dissatisfied with his job performance and angsty about economic issues, Trump flew roughly 2,000 miles to attend a pair of high-profile sporting events rather than stump for Republican candidates or raise campaign cash.

Voters head to the polls in 36 days, and some states already have put midterm ballots in the mail. The president is slated to hit the fundraising trail out West on Wednesday, before headlining campaign events in Oklahoma and Alabama for GOP congressional and gubernatorial candidates on Thursday and Friday.

Trump did address some issues that are on voters’ minds during his sporting weekend, but he mostly repeated claims that, for example, prices would come down and that things were worse under his predecessor.

“Oil will come dropping down as soon as demand gives up, as soon as the war ... is over,” he told reporters while returning to the White House Sunday night, referring to the conflict he chose to join with Israel against Iran.

“Remember one thing: oil is less expensive now than it was under the Biden administration,” he added.

While oil and gas prices did jump under Biden, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was around $3.10 when the 46th president left office on Jan. 20, 2025, according to the American Automobile Association. The average price per gallon on Monday was $4.4768, according to AAA. The average diesel price by the gallon was $6.4531 on Monday, up from $3.6856 one year ago.

Last week, some GOP candidates called for a swift end to the conflict, saying voters have been telling them on the campaign trail that they are hurting from the high cost of fuel, groceries and most everyday items.

“Michigan families are struggling with the price of everyday life. Groceries cost too much. We have to bring prices down. The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” former Rep. Mike Rogers, the GOP nominee for a Michigan Senate seat, said in a video published on social media on Sept. 21. “Michigan families can’t afford to wait.”

‘Stay focused’

Sen. John Kennedy on Sunday warned during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the midterms would be “close” and Trump should focus on high prices and what he’s doing about them.

“It would help if the president would stay focused on cost of living,” the Louisiana Republican said. “And I would like to see him give a nationwide address.”

A reporter asked Trump on Saturday as he left for the college football clash what he made of Tehran’s latest offer to end the conflict. He responded, “I reject their proposal.”

Trump has repeatedly calling the term “affordability” a hoax meant to damage him. On Sunday night, he again painted a questionable picture about oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s coast.

“With all of that being said, we’re taking tremendous amounts of oil out,” he said. “Last night, we took a record amount of oil out of the Hormuz Strait, more than we took out before the war.”

Some energy analysts and Democratic lawmakers question Trump’s oil-flow claims. His statements have done little to calm energy markets or lower prices.

Trump at one point Sunday night bragged about a planned late-night dinner at the White House with the wealthy head of a leading AI firm and indirectly took on critics’ observations about his own health.

“And tonight, I’m having dinner with the head of Anthropic,” he said, referring to the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Dario Amodei. “So these are long days, but I seem to be able to have them, right? These are long days. People said, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘I’m having dinner at 10 o’clock tonight.’ So we travel all over the world, and we have dinner, but that’s all right.”

That came after golfer Brandt Snedeker, the U.S. Presidents Cup captain, gave Trump credit for his team’s come-from-behind victory.

“It’s really special because I got to meet President Trump today on the first tee,” Snedeker said during the trophy ceremony. “As he told me this morning, he brought some juice for us today and I told him if it turned out our way, I was going to give him credit. He definitely brought the juice. He deserves a lot of the credit for what happened today.”

Standing a few feet away, Trump beamed.

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