Written by James Oliphant
GREENSBORO, North Carolina (Reuters) – As his third consecutive campaign for the presidency of the United States comes to a close, Donald Trump mused at a rally about the explosion of hydrogen-powered cars, lamented how hard it is to get spray paint off limestone and marveled at how he’s a millionaire. The rocket that powered Elon Musk had returned to Earth in one piece.
He complained that his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, is not working as hard as him, praised Chinese President Xi Jinping as “aggressive” and called former President Barack Obama a “real bully”.
His aides had billed the event at a battlefield in North Carolina as an economic focus, but that issue was lukewarm.
As we head to the Nov. 5 election, the former president is campaigning in a way that some political analysts say could cost him valuable votes against his Democratic rival, Harris, in what could be one of the tightest White House contests in history. .
Research shows the race is so tight that the outcome could hinge on a few thousand votes in a few contested states.
The Harris campaign is closing its campaign by calling Trump “unstable” and “inflexible”. He increasingly embraces those principles and points to Trump’s meddling as evidence that he is unfit to be president.
Trump defends his decluttering style by saying he does what he calls a “weave” – where he says he always goes back to his starting point – and supporters say his unscripted style is part of his appeal.
“Her trademark weaving is a smart way to communicate important issues and define policies that will help everyday Americans turn the page from the last four years of Kamala Harris’ failure,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign.
Trump’s rallies have been characterized by deviations and oddities. But as time goes on, the former president seems content to burn precious minutes telling stories about his White House days, pondering the size of the deceased athlete’s penis, going where 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 hasn’t. He was elected and they announced that he was getting the Nobel Prize. I was elected in the biggest, best election, but they gave him the Nobel Prize.”
While no circle is ever exactly the same, the unchanging theme is Trump’s false assertion that in four short years Democrats have transformed the nation into a common-sense nation.
He denounces his political opponents as “the enemy from within” and notes his comments detailing the murder and rape of young women, false stories of violent gangs taking over small towns and false claims about immigrants eating stolen pets.
“We are like the garbage can of the country,” cried Arizona.
Trump’s aides say he paces himself and speaks as long as he wants. They’re not trying to ban him — and put him in forums like podcasts where his rambling ways can find a home and he won’t face a barrage of questions.
In a long interview with radio host Joe Rogan on Friday, Trump said that there might be life on Mars even though, as Rogan pointed out, the investigation found no evidence.
He also said that windmills have a negative impact on whales. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there are no known links between the deaths of large whales and ongoing offshore wind activity.
“I want to be a whale psychiatrist,” Trump said.
FRENETIC SCHEDULE, INDULGENT FLOURISH
Trump has adopted a chaotic campaign plan as time grows short. Last week, he held events in six of the seven states likely to decide the election.
Talk of border security and crime reigns supreme, but Trump has always found time to indulge in flourishing.
On Wednesday in Duluth, Georgia, he continued to argue about how he avoided a trade war with France over champagne. He spoke for so long that many in the arena began to leave.
Lately Trump has been in the news for ways that have nothing to do with how he will run the country.
He turned one rally into an impromptu dance party, swaying on stage to his favorite numbers for nearly 40 minutes. He shares a locker room myth about the supposed size of Arnold Palmer’s penis.
John Geer, a public opinion expert at Vanderbilt University, said Trump’s road show is aimed at one audience: his base.
“Trump thinks what he’s saying, even if it doesn’t make sense, makes him happy,” Geer said. “If he wanted to expand his alliance, he wouldn’t talk randomly.”
The event in front of a crowd of about 7,500 people in Greensboro last week showed exactly how Trump is approaching his last days in office.
After talking about the border and restoring US manufacturing, Trump criticized Harris for not campaigning that day and called him weak. He praised foreign celebrities such as Xi and Vladimir Putin of Russia, and mocked the celebrities who attended Harris’ gatherings: “These are not stars to me.”
Trump then launched into a long story about how he was on the phone earlier this month with a “very important guy” but was distracted by TV footage of a SpaceX rocket returning to Earth.
“I see this big pipe with 20 floors pouring down, you know the fires are bubbling, and it used to be white, but the temperature drops thousands of degrees. They said thousands and thousands, so it was hit by that trip and went down. And I see this huge tube coming down and fires burning and … exploding everywhere,” Trump said, gesturing with his hands. “I said, ‘Oh, this is bad. It will crash. What the hell?’ I wasn’t sure … maybe it was a movie.”
That led him to compare his plan to free up interest on car loans to the invention of a piece of paper.
“It’s very simple,” Trump said. “Someone came up with it 129 years ago or something. They came up with a paper. And some people looked at it, and said, … ‘Why didn’t I think of this idea?’”
At that point, Trump realized how far he had strayed from the script. “I didn’t look at the teleprompter for 15 minutes,” he boasted.
