Analysis: Will Trump’s unbridled rhetoric cost him the US election?

James Oliphant

GREENSBORO, North Carolina (Reuters) – As his third straight U.S. presidential campaign came to an end, Donald Trump mused at a rally about hydrogen-powered car explosions, lamented how difficult it is to remove spray paint from limestone and marveled at how the billionaire Sponsor Elon Musk’s rocket returned to Earth safe and sound.

He complained that Democratic challenger Kamala Harris doesn’t work as hard as he does, praised Chinese President Xi Jinping as “cruel” and called former President Barack Obama a “real asshole.”

His aides said the event in the North Carolina battleground was focused on the economy, but the issue was just a warm-up.

Ahead of the Nov. 5 election, the former president is campaigning in a way that some political observers say could see him lose precious votes against his Democratic rival Harris in what could be one of the tightest races for the White House in history. .

Polls show the race is so tight that the result could depend on several thousand votes in several competitive states.

The Harris campaign is ending its campaign by calling Trump “unstable” and “unhinged.” She increasingly accepts these terms and points to Trump’s incoherence as evidence he is unfit to be president.

Trump defends his piecemeal approach by saying he does what he calls “weaving” (he claims he always comes back to square one), and supporters say his off-the-cuff style is part of his appeal.

“His patented technology is a brilliant method for conveying important stories and explaining policies that will help everyday Americans turn the page on Kamala Harris’s failures over the past four years,” said Stephen Chung, a Trump campaign spokesman.

Trump rallies have always been marked by distractions and strange moments. But as time passes, the former president seems content to spend precious minutes telling stories about his days in the White House, pondering the size of a dead athlete’s penis and going where his mind takes him.

“They gave Obama the Nobel Prize,” he said Thursday in Las Vegas. “He didn’t even know how the hell he got it. He still doesn’t do it. He was elected and announced that he would receive the Nobel Prize. I was elected in a much bigger and crazier election, but he was given the Nobel Prize.”

While no rally is exactly the same, a recurring theme is Trump’s false claim that in four short years, Democrats have turned the country into a dystopian state.

He calls his political opponents “enemies within” and peppers his remarks with graphic descriptions of the murder and rape of young women, false tales of violent gangs taking over small towns and debunked claims of immigrants eating stolen pets.

“We’re like the world’s trash can,” he complained in Arizona.

Trump’s aides say he sets the pace and talks as much as he wants. They don’t try to contain him – and they put him on forums like podcasts where his rambling mannerisms can find a home and he won’t be asked a ton of questions.

During a lengthy interview with podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday, Trump said there could be life on Mars, although Rogan noted that research has found no evidence.

He also stated that windmills have a negative impact on whales. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there are no known links between the mass whale die-off and ongoing offshore wind activity.

“I want to be a whale psychiatrist,” Trump said.

CRAZY SCHEDULE, FLOWERING

Trump has embraced a busier, shorter campaign schedule. Last week he held events in six of the seven states that are likely to decide the election.

Talk of border security and crime dominated, but Trump always found time for indulgent luxuries.

On Wednesday in Duluth, Georgia, he continued his extended speech about how he averted a trade war with France over champagne. He spoke for so long that many in the arena began to disperse.

Lately, Trump has been making headlines for nothing to do with how he will run the country.

He turned one event into an impromptu dance party, swaying on stage to his favorite numbers for almost 40 minutes. He shared a locker room story about golfer Arnold Palmer’s supposed penis size.

John Geer, a public opinion expert at Vanderbilt University, said Trump’s road show is aimed at one audience: his base.

“Trump believes that what he says, even if it’s rambling, speaks to his base,” Geer said. “If he wanted to expand his coalition, he wouldn’t engage in random rhetoric.”

The event before a crowd of about 7,500 people in Greensboro last week best illustrated how Trump is approaching his final days as president.

After talking about the border and restoring U.S. manufacturing, Trump criticized Harris for not campaigning that day and called her weak. He praised foreign dictators such as Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin and ridiculed celebrities who attended Harris’ rallies: “To me, they’re not stars.”

Trump then launched into a long story about how he was on the phone with a “very important guy” earlier this month but got distracted by watching television footage of a SpaceX rocket returning to Earth.

“I see this 20-story huge chimney pouring down, you know, fires are pouring, and it used to be white, but the heat drops by thousands of degrees. They say thousands and thousands, which means it was broken during the trip. And I see this huge pipe falling and there’s fire and it’s… exploding all over the place,” Trump said, waving his hands. “I said, ‘Oh, this is terrible. It will collapse. What the hell is this? I wasn’t sure…maybe it was a movie.”

This led him to compare his plan to waive interest on car loans to inventing the paper clip.

“It’s very simple,” Trump said. “Someone came up with this 129 years ago or so. They came up with the paperclip. Then other people looked at it and said, “Why didn’t I think of that idea?”

At this point, Trump noticed how far he had deviated from the script. “I haven’t looked at the teleprompter in 15 minutes,” he boasted.

(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Daniel Wallis)