Trump’s erratic endgame: Dark threats, personal insults and some dancing

Donald Trump went online after midnight Tuesday to brag about acing cognitive exams he never released and his cholesterol, then misleadingly called Vice President Kamala Harris’s allergies a “dangerous situation.” By midday he was meandering through an interview in which he would not directly say whether he would allow a peaceful transfer of power after the election and later complained about Fox News having a Harris aide on air. He had spent the previous evening hosting an unusual town hall (“It was amazing!”) that started with long-winded answers to friendly questions and ended with him swaying and bopping to music for 39 minutes.

With three weeks left until Election Day, Trump is running an unorthodox, freewheeling campaign, directing threats and insults at a wide mix of people and institutions, pushing his travels deeper into Democratic states where nonpartisan analysts do not regard him as competitive, and wielding darkening rhetoric about undocumented immigrants and personal attacks against Harris at campaign events where he often veers off-script and has mixed up words.

In recent days, the Republican presidential nominee held a rally in safely Democratic California, where he suggested that a heckler would later “get the hell knocked out of her”; he spoke at an event in Colorado, promoting falsehoods about Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment buildings; he labeled some Americans “the enemy from within” during a televised interview, suggesting the military be deployed against them; and he repeatedly insulted Harris’s intelligence.

Trump’s outbursts and hostilities are evidence that he should not be returned to the White House, Democrats and other critics say. Some Republicans say Trump should spend more time focusing on policy areas where polling shows he has an advantage and less time on his grievances, obsessions and antics.

“I think he can make an appeal that gets away from personality and appeals to people who may not like him but do like his policies,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. “Staying focused on the issues does that; if you’re commenting on other things, it I think can remind reluctant voters why they have concerns.”

At the same time, Trump has built a sizable and loyal base of supporters who have cheered his norm-breaking behavior, and while the cumulative electoral effect of his actions will not be known until next month, Trump is running neck-and-neck against Harris.

“I just think the elite need to take a stick out of their a–, they have zero sense of humor,” said David Carney, a longtime GOP strategist who helms a pro-Trump group.

The race is close, according to a review of public polls and interviews with strategists in both parties. Harris’s early momentum after replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee over the summer elated many in her party, though now some are more jittery with surveys showing tight races in key battleground states.

Harris’s team is spending the closing weeks of the campaign ramping up efforts to portray Trump as a perilous figure who would put Americans at risk as he threatens to jail opponents and use the military to target some of his critics.

Biden’s attempts to paint Trump as a threat to democracy earlier in the contest did little to erode the former president’s standing in the race. Harris is now trying to make a sharper argument that a second Trump term would be “dangerous” and “a huge risk for America” as Trump vows to use the powers of government to serve his own interests.

Harris campaign advisers, including David Plouffe, have noted that many Americans no longer see Trump unfiltered since the news networks stopped carrying his rallies live. So they are taking it upon themselves to bring those scenes directly to the public, including on giant video screens at a Monday rally in Erie, Pa.

Harris painted Trump at the event as “increasingly unstable and unhinged,” and she argued that the stakes are much higher in this election than when Trump was running in 2016 or 2020, because the Supreme Court has affirmed that presidents have broad immunity when they carry out “official acts.” Other prominent Democrats have amplified her pitch.

“There are people that like for their candidate to look strong and to look like they are in command,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). Speaking of Trump, he added: “This guy looks like he’s the last guy to leave the karaoke bar.”

“He’s gone from tough guy to elderly man saying random things,” Schatz said.

Trump campaign spokesperson Brian Hughes defended the candidate’s decisions and comments and pointed to Trump’s rallies, interviews and roundtables as evidence of his “health, wisdom and strength.” (Trump, 78, has not released his medical reports since entering the race; Harris, 59, recently released hers.)

“What you call ‘unorthodox’ is a man running for office who speaks unambiguously to the hopes and dreams of Americans,” Hughes said in a statement. “He also speaks bluntly and accurately about the terrible failures of Kamala Harris and her dangerously liberal policies that imperil the nation.”

Speaking at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, Trump did not directly say whether he would allow a peaceful transfer of power after the election and falsely claimed that there was a “peaceful transfer of power” in 2021. Pressed on the question about a peaceful transfer of power in 2025, Trump pivoted to suggest that his interviewer, Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait, may be biased against him, saying that he “has not been a big Trump fan” and that Trump had considered whether to do the interview.

He also falsely claimed that no one died as a result of the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, except Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, and that no one who went to the Capitol that day had a gun. Babbitt was one of five people who authorities said died as a consequence of the siege. Several people were charged with carrying guns and other weapons.

Trump has directed threats and insults at a range of targets over the past week, calling for the revocation of CBS’s broadcasting rights over a “60 Minutes” interview with Harris, and attacking Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin of ABC’s “The View.” Last week, Trump appeared to suggest that he has been to Gaza, though there is no public evidence of such a visit. When asked about his comment, a campaign official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss his thinking, said the former president has visited Israel. (Gaza is not in Israel.)

Trump has long keyed his actions to a loyal if limited base of enthusiastic supporters and media outlets aligned with him. His Gaza comments, for example, gained far less traction in media circles that have traditionally provided more favorable coverage of him.

Trump will travel to Michigan in coming days and return to Pennsylvania for a second time this week. When he campaigned in Detroit last week, he insulted the city. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s the president,” he said, referring to Harris. “You’re going to have a mess on your hands.” Trump’s campaign said his policies would bring more economic success to the city.

His campaign has also scheduled an Oct. 27 rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, traveling again to a state that does not appear to be in play.

While nonpartisan analysts say Trump has virtually no chance of winning New York, GOP strategists see his blue-state visits as a way to reach mass-media markets and help Republicans in New York and California congressional districts. Anna Kelly, a Republican National Committee spokesperson, described the trips as a way for Trump to show that “he will be a president for all Americans, including those in traditionally blue states that Kamala Harris and the Democrats have left behind.”

As both parties try to shape people’s opinions of Trump in the closing stretch, the vast majority of voters already have cemented views of him. Former senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a Republican who has not voted for Trump and plans to write in a candidate, said voters see Trump as an “unpredictable individual” who “says things that are sometimes disingenuous and often inaccurate.”

“It’s an accepted fact of his personality,” said Gregg. “And people that like him, for other reasons, are going to vote for him, and people who dislike him because of that aren’t going to vote for him.”

Laura Wagner contributed to this report.