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“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
That has been the question posed by Donald Trump to begin each of his campaign rallies over the past week.
Pieced together, those more than a half-dozen swing state rallies, coupled with major interviews with conservative media personalities, have served as his makeshift closing argument to an intensely divided electorate in this historic election.
For months, Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have outlined vastly different visions for the future of the country, but with Election Day a week away, both are using eerily similar messages to try and close the deal.
Harris has spent her closing weeks trying to convince a polarized nation that Trump is someone who is determined to upend political norms, believes the Jan. 6 attack was a good thing, wants to befriend authoritarian leaders across the globe and wants to use the power of the federal government to attack his political enemies.
Meanwhile, Trump has spent his closing weeks trying to convince a polarized nation that he is someone determined to upend political norms, believes the Jan. 6 attack was a good thing, wants to befriend authoritarian leaders across the globe and wants to use the power of the federal government to attack his political enemies.
The challenge for both sides is to convince the country that the way they view the world is the correct one. And for Trump, it's also about sticking to his message.
During his daily rallies over the past week in key states such as Arizona, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina — each of which remains winnable for either campaign — Trump has tried to outline what he would like to be the backbone of his policy pitch to American voters.
But each attempt at amplifying those positions in recent days has easily been overshadowed by the same oft-used zingers that prompt the huge audience applauses that Trump craves. Those include, among many others, talking about Harris’ intellect — he regularly says she is “stupid” — calling the United States the world’s “garbage can,” suggesting without evidence that Harris is drunk or on drugs, regularly comparing himself to the inventor of the paper clip, threatening to jail political opponents and talking about certain private body parts of legendary golfer Arnold Palmer.
Much of Trump's closing message is focused on illegal immigration, one of the centerpieces of his campaign. Trump wants the death penalty for any “migrant who kills a U.S. citizen,” to abolish sanctuary cities, sign an executive order to close the southern border, ban federal benefits for undocumented migrants and conduct mass deportations.
Trump has himself talked at length about illegal immigration, and his campaign has also directly spent more than $4 million in the past week alone on ads that tie Harris to the country's porous southern border, spending that emphasizes how important the message is to them down the homestretch of the campaign.
Beyond immigration, Trump has used his closing message to remind voters he wants to end taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits; has a goal of building a missile defense shield similar to Israel’s Iron Dome; plans to reduce energy prices by 50% in his first year in office — something most experts believe would be unlikely — and proposes boosting tariffs as a foreign policy tool to punish foreign adversaries.
On Friday, Trump sat down for a three-hour interview with Joe Rogan, who is among the world’s most popular podcasters and someone with a huge center-right fanbase.
The interview, which was widely hyped by Trump and his supporters, was a snapshot of his, at best, untraditional attempt at a campaign closing message and, at worst, his tendency to step on his own policy pushes.
Trump has a well-worn reputation for praising strongmen over the years, including North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He called both “tough and smart” during remarks just last week. During his conversation with Rogan, Trump again called Chinese President Xi Jinping “brilliant.”
“That does not mean he’s not evil or that does not mean he’s not dangerous,” Rogan responded, seemingly trying to steer Trump away from praising authoritarian leaders.
Trump responded by drawing an equivalency to unnamed leaders in the U.S.: “Actually, we have evil people in our country.”
Similarly, Trump's comments about Palmer came during an Oct. 22 rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the late golfer's hometown. The comments overshadowed any other point Trump was attempting to make during the rally in one of the nation’s most important swing states.
It's not necessarily to his detriment, however, advisers told NBC News last week. The Republican Party rebuilt in Trump's own image relishes personal attacks and aggressive politics over wonky policy discussions.
“Kamala has failed over the last four years and only President Donald J. Trump can fix the problems that are facing our nation,” Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said at the time when asked if the former president's closing message will include a pivot. “That includes inflation. That includes the border. That includes the chaos that we’re seeing at home and abroad.”
Trump has also regularly used lies and distortions as part of his final campaign pitch. Trump has said that 32,000 Haitian immigrants were “implanted” into the small town of Springfield, Ohio, as part of a lie that Haitians were eating residents' pets. Not only was the underlying claim debunked, but the number 32,000 that Trump continues to use is also not an accurate figure, according to CNN.
Trump has also, including in recent weeks, said that “325,000 migrant children” have disappeared since Biden took office, a number that is again false.
And he has said that countries like the Congo are emptying prisons to allow criminals to cross the southern border, something the country’s own top officials directly refute.
Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican message man who helped found the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, says a closing argument can be important and Trump's is not winning over nonpolitical base voters.
“In a presidential campaign, there is an argument you want to put your best foot forward at the end, not say stuff like people are eating the dogs and cats,” Wilson said of why a "closing argument" is important. “That works well with the Republican base, but it does not work as a closing argument.”
Trump’s approach in the final weeks stands in direct contrast to Harris, who has run much more of a traditional presidential campaign. Her campaign's final weeks have featured major celebrities at her rallies and much more consensus message-focused events. She is also planning an event Tuesday that her campaign is billing as a “closing argument” speech. She is holding it in Washington, D.C., at the same spot Trump spoke from shortly before his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Her closing will have a heavy focus on turning the page away from Trump and the sort of extremism that led to Jan. 6.
The discipline of the Harris campaign contrasts with that of Trump, whose late-cycle rallies have maintained the sort of rambling, unfocused structure he has long been known for.
Political advisers have at times tried to get Trump to focus on specific issues or policies before giving up and letting him take control of the message however he sees fit.
It has candidly been referred to over the years as letting “Trump be Trump,” and even those closest to the former president who wish he could stay more focused acknowledge that when Trump goes off-script, it has had a tendency to work. He is a former president, three-time nominee for the Republican Party and on the doorstep of the White House once again.
That dynamic can be seen even in his final speeches as Trump tries to close out his third presidential campaign.
There is no better example than his Sunday night rally at Madison Square Garden, the iconic Manhattan arena that Trump, who grew up in Queens, has long dreamed of filling to capacity.
Trump opponents widely blasted the event that featured several speakers who openly used crude and racist language.
Trump’s more than hourlong speech came after a nearly dozen warmup speakers, including comedian Tony Hinchcliff, who said Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage.” The comment was seen as so crude by Trump’s own campaign that it quickly distanced itself from the message.
“This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser, said in a statement shortly after the joke was made.
Despite the fact that reaction to the racist rhetoric and criticism got far more attention than any discussion of Trump's policy positions, one day later it was clear Trump viewed the event not just as a key part of a closing message months in the making, but also something he was proud of.
On Monday, Trump posted on social media a picture of the New York Post’s front page that included a play on MSG, an acronym for Madison Square Garden.
“MAGA Square Garden,” the Trump-posted front page read.
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