Donald Trump is not a man very given to reflection. But on Friday afternoon he briefly looked sad when he told supporters that after nine years he was holding some of his last campaign rallies.
“We’re relaxing,” he told a crowd in Warren, outside Detroit, Michigan.
‘We’ve been doing it for nine years, right? And now we’re relaxing.’
His advisers have frequently described how Trump draws on audiences at his rallies and emerges energized after entertaining stadiums full of fans for more than 90 minutes straight.
He’s made the format his own since coming down the golden escalator in 2015, even adapting it to outdoor events at airfields during the pandemic-affected 2020 campaign.
Donald Trump was in rare reflective mode Friday night, as he told supporters that his campaign rallies were coming to an end as Election Day approached.
It all ends Monday night, with the end of his 2024 run in Grand Rapids. That was where his victorious 2016 campaign ended, an event his supporters speak of in almost mystical terms.
Trump has said he will not run again. Which means, win or lose, Monday will herald his final campaign rally.
Instead, he said he was planning for what comes after Monday.
“Hopefully we will move on to the next phase, which is transforming our country,” he said. ‘Because we have a little mess to deal with, don’t we?’
His mood improved as he sent his followers into a frenzy.
As always, they turned the event into a pantomime, engaging in call-and-response (“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”), booing the villains (Harris and Biden, the ‘fake news,’ several Cheneys) and joining the punchlines (“Kamala, you’re fired”).
There were costumes.
On Friday, dozens of people donned health worker vests. The bravest souls arrived in black trash bags, as they wore Biden’s stutter or insult (depending on your political persuasion) as a badge of honor.
And the ‘Front Row Joes’ took their usual spots, wearing red, white and blue baseball-style jerseys.
While critics compare Trump’s events to Nazi rallies, a more accurate comparison may be the screening of ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ at a Midwestern megachurch.
Trump has remodeled the campaign rally in his own image, a celebration of MAGA
Four days before Election Day, Trump appeared at Macomb Community College, Michigan
Dozens of supporters showed up in the type of high-visibility vests worn by healthcare workers, after Trump donned one to troll Joe Biden after he appeared to call the MAGA world “trash.”
All topped off with Village People’s YMCA, one of the most country songs in music history.
Everything left a bittersweet air on Friday.
“I can only say that it has been the experience of a lifetime for many of us,” said Trump, the televangelist of the analogy. ‘Some of you have been to 300 rallies.
‘You’re going to look back on this time of life, you know… you’re going to say there was something very, very special about what we all did together.
“We all did it together.”
Other politicians, he added, could expect a crowd of about 300 people. “Yes they are good.”
The latest DailyMail.com poll on the race gives Trump a three-point lead over Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
His supporters showed up in black garbage bags in a nod to Joe Biden’s slip of the tongue.
Trump routinely fills stadiums and convention halls with thousands of supporters
JL Partners surveyed 1,000 likely voters Oct. 26-29. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 points, but put Donald Trump back in the lead after falling behind.
But neither candidate is leaving anything to chance as they tour the seven battleground states that will decide the election.
Trump officials are encouraged by early voting data and polls that they believe show they are in a much better position than in 2016 or 2020.
At each rally, Trump presents the vote as the most important in history. And Friday came with the warning that this could be the last
“Because it’s now or never. If we don’t do it, it won’t happen again,” he said.
‘You know, there are those who say that if we don’t win this election, there may never be another election in this country.
“That’s positive in the case of these radical left lunatics we’re dealing with.”