Donald Trump is not one to reflect much. But he looked equally doleful Friday afternoon as he told supporters that after nine years in office, he was holding some of his last campaign rallies ever.
“We’re winding down,” he told a crowd in Warren, just outside Detroit, Michigan.
“We’ve been working on this for nine years, right? And now we’re winding down.”
Aides have often described how Trump thrives on his rally crowds, emerging energized after entertaining arenas full of fans for more than 90 minutes.
He’s made the format his own since descending the golden escalator in 2015, even adapting it for outdoor airport events during the pandemic-hit 2020 campaign.
Donald Trump was in rare reflective mode Friday night as he told supporters that his campaign rallies were now winding down as Election Day approached.
It all ends Monday night, with the finale of his 2024 race in Grand Rapids. There, he ended his victorious 2016 campaign, an event his supporters speak of almost mystically.
Trump has said he will not run for re-election. That means that Monday, win or lose, will be his last campaign rally.
Instead, he said he was making plans for what comes after Monday.
“Hopefully we’re moving on to the next phase, which is going to change our country,” he said. “Because we still have a mess to clean up, don’t we?”
His mood brightened as he whipped his supporters into a frenzy.
As always, they turned the event into a pantomime, with Q&As (“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”), boos against villains (Harris and Biden, the “fake news,” various Cheneys) and jokes (“Kamala, you’re fired”).
There were costumes.
On Friday, dozens of people wore sanitary vests. Brave souls arrived in black garbage bags, wearing Biden’s stutter or insult (depending on your political persuasion) as a badge of honor.
And the “Front Row Joes” took their usual places, dressed in red, white and blue baseball jerseys.
While critics have compared Trump’s events to Nazi rallies, a more accurate comparison might be a sing-along screening of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” at a Midwestern megachurch.
Trump has shaped the campaign rally to his own taste, a celebration of MAGA
With four days to go until Election Day, Trump appeared at Macomb Community College, Michigan
Dozens of supporters showed up in the kind of fluorescent vests worn by janitors, after Trump donned one to troll Joe Biden after he called the MAGA world “garbage.”
It was all capped off by the Village People’s YMCA, one of the most beautiful songs in music history.
It all felt bittersweet on Friday.
“All I can say is that for many of us, it’s been the experience of a lifetime,” said Trump, the televangelist in the analogy. “Some of you have been to 300 meetings.
“You’re going to look back on this time in your 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, might hope for around 300 people in a crowd. “If they’re good.”
The latest DailyMail.com poll on the race gives Trump a three-point lead over Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Supporters showed up in black garbage bags, a nod to Joe Biden’s slip of the tongue
Trump routinely fills arenas and convention halls with thousands of supporters
JL Partners polled 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 he had fallen behind
But neither candidate is leaving anything to chance as they navigate the seven battleground states that will decide the election.
Trump officials are buoyed by early voting data and polls that they say show they are in a much better position than they were in 2016 or 2020.
At every rally, Trump characterizes the vote as the most important in history. And on Friday, there was a warning that this could be the last
“Because it’s now or never. If we don’t do it, it’s never going to happen again,” he said.
“You know, there are people who say if we don’t win this election, there may never be an election in this country again.
“That’s the positive thing about these radical leftists that we’re dealing with.”