Trump sticking to familiar rhetoric with dark tones and shifting promises in campaign’s final hours

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Donald Trump no longer talks about draining the swamp. He spends less time professing love – for his country, for his companies, for his crowds. His musings about retribution are laced with more violence. He is done with promises that Mexico will pay for construction of a border wall.

But much of what Mr. Trump has to say in the concluding hours of this year’s presidential campaign remains remarkably unchanged from the speeches and promises that thrust him into the White House eight years ago. The constancy of his message is a testament to the former reality TV star’s dedication to a series of issues that have proven popular with Republican voters.

It is also a demonstration of how deeply he relies on a predictable formula that, he hopes, remains resonant today, nearly a decade after his first rallies stormed across the United States.

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Whether it still holds enough appeal to persuade voters to deliver him another presidential term is one of the key questions in this year’s election, which will conclude on Tuesday.

Not only has Mr. Trump stuck with Make America Great Again, and the red hats that bear the refrain, but entire segments of speeches from almost 10 years ago could be transposed into his final with no reason for anyone to notice. “We will stop illegal immigration. Deport all criminal aliens. And dismantle every last criminal gang and cartel threatening our great citizens,” he said – not this year, but on Nov. 5, 2016, to a crowd in Denver.

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Supporters of Mr. Trump say that is just the way they like it.

“I don’t want him to be different. He did a damn good job,” said Mike Tyner, a retired bus manufacturing worker in Georgia.

Mr. Trump’s approach, after all, once made him president. But it also held fast through his loss in 2020 and poor midterm showings in 2018 and 2022 for Republicans.

In a comparison of recent speeches made by Mr. Trump with those from the final days of his 2016 campaign, some differences are obvious. Mr. Trump has abandoned what were once central policies, perhaps most notably his promises to cancel Obamacare, which he subsequently claims to have saved. And he has added new promises, such as removing taxes on tips and overtime.

Yet what stands out are the similarities between what Mr. Trump has to say this year and what he was saying years ago.

In that 2016 Denver speech, for example, he twice assailed his then-rival, Hillary Clinton, as “Crooked Hillary.” Ms. Clinton has not appeared on any ballot since that election. Yet on Saturday, Mr. Trump again invoked “Crooked Hillary” at a rally in Greensboro, N.C. – three times.

His opponents, then and now, are “stupid people.” Immigration remains central to his diagnosis of American malaise, although the names of victims have changed.

In 2016, Mr. Trump spoke about Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old shot dead in San Francisco, saying she was “murdered by an illegal immigrant.” (The man who fired the shot was acquitted of murder and manslaughter.) A new set of tragic deaths has now entered Mr. Trump’s lexicon: Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley and others.

Changing circumstances have, of course, brought him additional material. In 2016, he could he not criticize COVID-19 policies. He could not boast about his survival of two assassination attempts. He did not have inflation as a punching bag.

The former president has also attacked his opponent for hewing too close to the status quo, after Kamala Harris said there is nothing she would change about the past four years under Democratic leadership, when she was Vice-President.

But on core economic plans, the Mr. Trump of today is difficult to distinguish from his first campaign.

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In 2016, he pledged to renegotiate the North American free-trade agreement and impose a 35-per-cent tariff on goods shipped to the U.S. by companies that moved jobs overseas.

On Friday, in Milwaukee, Wis., he described his plans in nearly identical terms: “If these companies don’t make their products here in the USA, then they will be forced to pay a very stiff tariff when they send their products into the United States,” he said. (In October, he also promised to renegotiate NAFTA’s successor, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA.)

The specifics of his rhetoric, too, remain largely the same, with his attacks on a “failed” nation and “open borders.”

Even this year’s prominent tag line – “Kamala broke it and I will fix it” – is not entirely new. “I’m going to fix it,” he promised a Tampa crowd on Nov. 5, 2016.

Supporters say they see Mr. Trump as simply determined to complete what he started in his first term.

“By not being able to finish the job that he set out to do, I think that made him even stronger – to make that happen,” said Robin Kennedy Love, a retired advertising worker who attended his rally in Macon, Ga., on Sunday.

Some say they see a swell of optimism, too, in his current campaign. Daniel Brayden, who restores furniture, gestured at the crowds clad in Trump hats and shirts at the Georgia rally. “All these people here, they look happy,” he said.

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But the former president’s tone has grown notably darker. He has repeatedly said his opponents cheat in elections – presaging, perhaps, challenges to the legitimacy of this week’s vote if he once again loses.

Mr. Trump now accuses foreign countries of actively “stealing” jobs, rather than, as he did before, merely lamenting U.S. losses. He has taken to blaming illegal migrants for seizing employment from Black and Latino communities, a departure from less pointed critiques of what he once called bad policies.

He has also winked at violence in more overt ways, “I don’t mind” if someone were to shoot through reporters in an assassination attempt, he said Sunday.

At the same time, his final rallies have brought something different – a turn toward a misty-eyed remembrance.

“Everything we’ve been fighting for so hard to achieve for the past nine years all comes down to the next two days,” he said in Lititz, Pa., on Sunday.

On Monday, he planned his final four rallies, including a late-night gathering in Grand Rapids, the Michigan city where he also closed out his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

“And then we shut it down, never to happen again,” Mr. Trump said in Greensboro, N.C., on Sunday.

“Which is sad.”