Trump says he ‘shouldn’t have left’ White House after election loss

Donald Trump, who said in Pennsylvania on Sunday that he regrets leaving the White House in 2021, is ending the 2024 marketing campaign the way in which he started it – dispensing a stew of violent, disparaging rhetoric and repeated warnings that he is not going to settle for defeat if it comes.

At a rally within the must-win battleground state, the previous president instructed supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” workplace after dropping the 2020 election, described Democrats as “demonic” and complained a couple of new ballot that no longer shows him leading in Iowa, which he twice carried.

Trump spent a lot of his speech ranting about alleged election interference this yr and lamenting his departure from workplace after dropping to Joe Biden 4 years in the past. The US had the “safest border in the history of our country” on the day he left workplace, Trump claimed.

“I shouldn’t have left, I mean, honestly,” he went on, harkening again to the aftermath of the final election.

Acknowledging he’d gone off-script, Trump – in a county he gained by greater than 15 factors in 2020 – claimed once more, with no proof, that this vote was mounted in opposition to him.

“Isn’t this better than my speech?” Trump mentioned. “Because honestly, somebody’s got to talk about it.”

His feedback marked a continuation of the more and more vengeful message that’s dominated the ultimate weeks of his marketing campaign: Guarantees to retaliate in opposition to his political rivals. Livid, threatening tirades in opposition to the press corps. More and more outlandish claims in regards to the 2020 election and his need for complete energy if restored to the presidency.

At one level, the previous president, who has been the goal of a minimum of two assassination makes an attempt, mentioned he “wouldn’t mind” if a gunman aiming at him additionally shot by the “the fake news.”

“I have this piece of glass here. But all we have really over here is the fake news, right? And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news,” Trump mentioned at a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania. “And I don’t mind that so much. I don’t mind.”

A Trump marketing campaign spokesman mentioned after the rally that the previous president was truly musing about how the press was defending him.

“President Trump was stating that the Media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!” Steven Cheung mentioned in an announcement.

The previous president’s latest spherical of threats and outrageous statements caps off a marketing campaign with one of many darkest, most menacing closing messages in trendy American historical past. In the previous few weeks alone, Trump has doubled down on a pledge to make use of the army to fight the civilian “enemy within,” mused – within the guise of arguing he was the pro-peace candidate – about how former Rep. Liz Cheney, one his loudest conservative Republican critics, would fare with weapons “trained on her face” in a warzone.

This weekend has introduced its personal slate of weird moments. On Sunday, Trump instructed NBC that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s current put up on X about eradicating fluoride from public water if Trump had been to win reelection “sounds OK to me.”

“Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds OK to me,” Trump instructed NBC. “You know, it’s possible.”

And an evening earlier in North Carolina, Trump chuckled approvingly at an viewers member’s suggestion that Vice President Kamala Harris labored as a prostitute. After Trump insisted but once more that Harris didn’t work in a McDonald’s when she was youthful, a supporter in Greensboro shouted, “She worked on a corner!”

Trump laughed, paused for a beat, then declared, “This place is amazing.”

As the gang laughed, he added: “Just remember it’s other people saying it, it’s not me.”

His response to the crude comment underscored how the rot in American political discourse, a long-running spiral, went into overdrive after Trump’s arrival on the presidential marketing campaign path in 2015. It’s a distinction from seven years earlier, when a supporter of John McCain mentioned throughout a marketing campaign occasion that Barack Obama was mendacity about his identification, claiming, “He’s an Arab,” and the then-GOP nominee took the microphone from her palms, insisting his rival was “a decent family man (and) citizen that just I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”

Even then, although, Trump was lurking. He would quickly emerge as one of many main proponents of the “birther” conspiracy principle, a racist narrative that mentioned Obama was not born within the US.

Within the run-up to this yr’s election, Trump has used the previous president’s full title – Barack Hussein Obama – in an try to demonize him. He often mispronounces Harris’ first title, although he has proven earlier than he is aware of the correct technique to say it, and referred to as her a “sh*t vice president.”

At different occasions, Trump has descended into farce. Throughout a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, final month, he spent a while recalling the late, nice golfer Arnold Palmer’s bare physique.

“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women, I love women,” Trump mentioned. “This man was strong and tough, and I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh, my God. That’s unbelievable.’”

Trump’s message to – and extra typically about – ladies has additionally change into more and more weird. At a rally in Inexperienced Bay, Wisconsin, final week, he instructed the gang that his aides had requested him to cease saying he could be the “protector” of American ladies, partially as a result of they acknowledged it as inappropriate.

“‘Sir, please don’t say that,’” Trump mentioned he was suggested. “Why? I’m president. I want to protect the women of our country. Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not.”

Current polls have proven the previous president trailing Harris with feminine voters by a big margin, throughout demographic strains. Neither Trump nor his allies have pushed again on the numbers, as a substitute imploring extra males to vote.

“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” mentioned Charlie Kirk, the chief of a right-wing group that Trump has entrusted with managing a lot of his floor recreation. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.”

Harris has largely countered Trump’s bleak choices with guarantees to carry an finish to the tribal clashes that have outlined many of the previous decade.

“Our democracy doesn’t require us to agree on everything. That’s not the American way,” Harris mentioned throughout a speech final week from the Ellipse in Washington, DC. “We like a good debate. And the fact that someone disagrees with us, does not make them ‘the enemy from within.’ They are family, neighbors, classmates, coworkers.”

“It can be easy to forget a simple truth,” she added. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

The vp has additionally zeroed-in on Trump’s assaults on rivals and detractors, together with a persistent insistence he desires to make use of the ability of the federal authorities to punish them. Against this, Harris likes to say, she is targeted on coverage, like a push to revive federal abortion rights following the Supreme Court docket’s 2022 resolution overturning Roe v. Wade.

“On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list,” Harris mentioned in Washington. “When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list full of priorities on what I will get done for the American people.”