Heading into his third consecutive US presidential campaign, Donald Trump spoke at a rally about exploding hydrogen-powered cars, lamented how difficult it is to remove spray paint from limestone, and marveled at how billionaire supporter Elon Musk’s rocket returned to Earth. In one piece.
He complained that his Democratic rival Kamala Harris wasn’t working as hard as he was, praised Chinese President Xi Jinping as “ferocious” and called former President Barack Obama a “real idiot.”
His aides had described the event in North Carolina as focused on the economy, but the issue was merely a warm-up.
To see Trump as the November 5 election approaches and his race against Vice President Harris comes to a close is to see a candidate almost completely unconstrained.
At a time when most politicians are honing their closing arguments to voters, Trump often acts more like an entertainer on a farewell tour than someone aiming to lead the most powerful country in the world.
His unfocused demeanor and sombre rhetoric risk alienating some voters in a race that, despite everything he says, remains so close that any swing of a few thousand votes in several competitive states could determine the next president.
It gives Harris’ campaign enough ammunition to claim that he is more “unstable” and “unhinged” than ever before. The Democratic nominee is increasingly adopting these terms and pointing to Trump’s confusions as evidence of a tired old man unfit for the presidency.
“In many ways, Donald Trump is a non-serious man, but the consequences of being president of the United States are very serious,” Harris said last week.
Trump, 78, defends his scatterbrained approach by saying he does something he calls “weaving” in which he claims he always returns to his initial point, and supporters say his unscripted style is part of his appeal.
“His patented weaving is a great way to convey important stories and explain policies that will help ordinary Americans turn the page on the last four years of Kamala Harris’ failures,” said Stephen Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign.
Trump’s rallies have always included their share of weird diversions and tangents. But as time passes, the former president seems content to burn precious minutes telling stories about his days in the White House, musing about long-dead athletes, or simply going wherever his mind takes him.
“They gave Obama the Nobel Prize,” he said Thursday in Las Vegas. “He didn’t even know why he got it.” He still doesn’t do it. He was elected and they announced that he would receive the Nobel Prize. “I was elected in a bigger, better, crazier election, but they gave him the Nobel Prize.”
Although no rally is ever quite the same, a consistent theme is Trump’s false assertion that Democrats have in four short years turned the nation into a dystopian state.
He denounces his political opponents as “internal enemies” and peppers his statements with graphic accounts of murders and rapes of young women, false tales of violent gangs controlling small towns, and false claims about migrants eating stolen pets.
“We are like a garbage can for the world,” he lamented in Arizona.
Trump’s aides say he sets the pace of the talks as long as he wants. They’re not trying to contain him, and have put him on forums like podcasts where his wandering ways can find a home and he won’t be subjected to a series of questions.
During a lengthy interview with broadcaster Joe Rogan on Friday, Trump asserted that there may be life on Mars, although, as Rogan noted, investigations have found no evidence of this. He also claimed that windmills have a negative effect on whales.
“I want to be a whale psychiatrist,” Trump said.
Hectic schedule, tolerant flourishes
Trump has adopted a more colorful schedule for his campaign as time is tight. Last week, he held events in six of the seven states likely to decide the outcome of the election.
Border security and crime have dominated the conversation, but Trump has always found time for his more lenient style.
On Wednesday in Duluth, Georgia, he got into a lengthy debate over how to avoid a trade war with France over champagne. He spoke for so long that many in the arena began to leave.
Trump has lately been making headlines in ways that have little to do with how he will run the country.
He turned one gathering into an impromptu dance party, swaying on stage to his favorite songs for about 40 minutes.
John Geer, a public opinion expert at Vanderbilt University, said Trump’s campaign is targeting one audience: his base.
“Trump believes that what he is saying, even if it is incoherent, appeals to his base,” Geier said. He added, “If he wants to expand his coalition, he will not engage in random speeches.”
The event, held before a crowd of about 7,500 people in Greensboro last week, best demonstrated how Trump is approaching his final days on the road.
After talking about the border and restoring manufacturing in the United States, Trump criticized Harris for not campaigning that day and called her weak. He praised foreign strongmen such as Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin and mocked celebrities who attended Harris rallies: “These are not stars to me.”
Trump then launched into a long tale about how he was on the phone earlier this month with a “very important man” but was distracted watching TV footage of a SpaceX rocket returning to Earth.
This led to a tangent where he compared his plan to exempt interest on car loans to the invention of the paper clip.
“It’s very simple,” Trump said. “Someone came up with that 129 years ago or something. They came up with the paper clip. Then other people looked at it and said, ‘Why didn’t I think of that idea?’
At that point, Trump noticed how far he had deviated from the script. “I didn’t look at the autokio for 15 minutes,” he boasted.