Trump says he ‘shouldn’t have left’ the White House as he ends the campaign with an increasingly dark message

CNN
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Donald Trump, who said in Pennsylvania on Sunday that he regrets leaving the White House in 2021, he is ending the 2024 campaign as he started it — with a stew of violent, disparaging rhetoric and repeated warnings that he will not accept defeat if it occurs.

At a rally in the must-win state, the former president told supporters he “shouldn’t have left office” after losing the 2020 election, described Democrats as “demonic” and complained about a new poll that stop showing him the lead in Iowa, which he carried twice.

Trump spent much of his speech ranting about alleged election interference this year and lamenting his departure from office following the defeat to Joe Biden four years ago. The US had the “most secure border in the history of our country” on the day he left office, Trump claimed.

“Honestly, I shouldn’t have left,” he continued, harkening back to the aftermath of the last election.

Trump acknowledged that he had gone off script — in a county he won by more than 15 points in 2020 — and again claimed, without evidence, that this vote was against him.

“Isn’t this better than my speech?” Trump said. “Because honestly, someone needs to talk about it.”

His comments marked a continuation of the increasingly vengeful message that dominated the final weeks of his campaign: promises to take revenge on his political rivals. Angry, menacing tirades against the press corps. Increasingly bizarre claims about the 2020 election and his desire for total power if he becomes president again.

At one point, the former president, who has been the target of at least two assassination attempts, said he “wouldn’t mind” if a gunman targeting him also shot through “the fake news.”

‘I have a piece of glass here. But all we have here is fake news, right? And to get me, someone would have to get through the fake news,” Trump said at a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania. “And I don’t mind that so much. I don’t care.”

The former president’s latest round of threats and outrageous statements caps off a campaign with one of the darkest, most threatening final messages in modern American history. In the past few weeks alone, Trump has doubled down on his pledge to use the military to fight the civilian “enemy within,” musing — under the guise of arguing that he was the pro-peace candidate — about how former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of his loudest conservative Republican critics, would do it in a war zone with guns “pointed at her face,” and on Saturday night in North Carolina, he chuckled approvingly at an audience member’s suggestion that Vice President Kamala Harris worked as a prostitute.

After Trump once again insisted that Harris did not work at a McDonald’s when she was younger, a supporter in Greensboro shouted, “She worked on a corner!”

Trump laughed, paused for a moment, then declared, “This place is great.”

As the crowd laughed, he added: “Remember, it’s other people saying it, it’s not me.”

His response to the rude comment underscored how the rot in American political discourse, a long-running spiral, accelerated after Trump entered the presidential campaign trail in 2015. It’s a contrast from seven years earlier, when a John McCain supporter said: At a campaign event, Barack Obama lied about his identity and claimed, “He’s an Arab,” and the then-Republican candidate took the microphone from her hands and insisted his rival was ‘a decent family’. man (and) citizen with whom I happen to have disagreements on fundamental issues.”

But even then, Trump was lurking. He would soon emerge as one of the leading proponents of the “birther” conspiracy theory, a racist narrative that posits that Obama was not born in the US.

Ahead of this year’s election, Trump has used the former president’s full name – Barack Hussein Obama – in an attempt to demonize him. He often mispronounces Harris’ first name, although he has previously shown he knows the correct way to say it, calling her a “sh*t vice president.”

At other times, Trump has descended into farce. At a meeting in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, last month, he recalled the naked body of the late great golfer Arnold Palmer.

“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say, with all due respect to women, I love women,” Trump said. “This guy was strong and tough, and I refused to say it, but when he was in the shower with the other pros, they came out and they said, ‘Oh, my God. That’s incredible. ”

Trump’s message to – and often about – women has also become increasingly bizarre. At a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, last week, he told the crowd that his aides had asked him to stop saying he would be the “protector” of American women, in part because they saw it as inappropriate.

“Sir, please don’t say that,” Trump said he was advised. “Why? I’m president. I want to protect the women of our country. Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.

Recent polls have shown the former president trailing Harris among female voters by a significant margin, across demographic lines. Neither Trump nor his allies have reversed the numbers, instead imploring more men to vote.

“Early voting was disproportionately female,” said Charlie Kirk, the leader of a right-wing group to whom Trump has entrusted the management of much of his ground game. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.”

Harris has largely met Trump’s gloomy offers with promises to end the tribal conflicts that have defined much of the past decade.

“Our democracy does not require us to agree on everything. That is not the American way,” Harris said last week during a speech from the Ellipse in Washington, DC. “We love a good debate. And the fact that someone disagrees with us does not make him “the enemy from within.” They are family, neighbors, classmates, colleagues.”

“It can be easy to forget a simple truth,” she added. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

The vice president has also taken aim at Trump’s attacks on rivals and opponents, including his continued insistence that he wants to use the power of the federal government to punish them. Harris, on the other hand, likes to say she is focused on policy, such as an effort to restore federal abortion rights after the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

“If he were elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office on day one with a list of enemies,” Harris said in Washington. “If elected, I will walk in with a to-do list full of priorities about what I am going to get done for the American people.”