No matter who wins Tuesday’s election, the Trump rallies, a key element that has shaped the American political landscape for nearly a decade, will disappear.
Donald Trump’s road show came to a close on Monday, with the former president scheduled to wrap up his campaign with a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Trump, who has said 2024 will be his last campaign, has held more than 900 rallies by his count since announcing his candidacy for the White House in 2015.
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The Trump campaign’s rallies, which are equal parts tent revival, carnival attraction, and political gridlock, have galvanized the sensibilities of his most ardent supporters, attacked the sensibilities of his critics, and shaped much of the country’s political discourse. stimulated. And they have consistently put President Trump where he wants to be: in the center of attention.
Now, after his third and final presidential bid, Trump is feeling nostalgic.
“The end is near,” President Trump said in a phone interview with NBC News on Sunday. “Nine years later, I understand now. … There has never been a gathering like that.”
“I enjoy this job,” the former president added. “There’s never been anything like that before.”
In recent weeks, that nostalgia has manifested itself in a change in the tone of Trump’s rallies, which feel more retro, more like the 2016 campaign, and more raw. At times, things take a dark turn, such as the former president detailing violent scenarios in which he is seen as an enemy, and Trump supporters shouting false and derogatory claims about Vice President Kamala Harris at a weekend rally. Sometimes it happened.
President Trump appeared to support violence against journalists on Sunday, saying that in order for the gunman to get to him, he would have to “shoot through the fake news, and I don’t really care about that.” (A campaign spokesperson claimed that Trump is actually “careful” to the media.)
But the basics of Trump’s rallies have remained the same throughout his three campaigns.
Supporters wait for hours as music blares at torture-level decibels, interrupted only by the chatter of warm-up speakers. Eventually, Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” will be played as the former president’s walk-up song. Trump spoke for more than an hour, rambling from topic to topic and back again, in a style he called “weaving.”
Mr. Trump’s 2016 rally was an early indicator of the enthusiasm behind his candidacy that propelled him to the White House, shocking the political world and even Mr. Trump himself.
“Someday I’m going to have to write a book and say, ‘Why?'” he said in an interview with NBC News on Sunday. “Because people ask why, and I don’t know if I can tell you why. Something just works.”
After Trump took office, rallies became one of the go-to solutions for boosting the spirits of his inner circle. Trump also held his 2020 campaign in the midst of a pandemic, ignoring guidance from his own government.
Mr. Trump, then and now, regularly makes statements at rallies that his aides would rather not say, and which his opponents exploit. For millions of Trump supporters, Trump rallies have become a gathering place for other like-minded Americans.
“I’ve been following him since 2015 and my first rally was in February of 2016, so I came to hear him speak. It’s history and he always makes new statements. I’m here to listen,” said Robin Cole, who appeared at a Trump rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Saturday.
“I brought my brother, who had never been to any rallies before,” said Trudy Deling, who has attended about 10 Trump rallies in the state. Her brother is a veteran and “has a disability and wanted to come to Greensboro’s last game,” she said.
Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt during a rally in Pennsylvania in July, uniting the Republican Party around the former president.
Attempts on his life have become part of Trump’s narrative at his rallies, especially when he details how he spends his time.
“We didn’t need this. We didn’t need to be with you tonight,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Virginia on Saturday. “I could be standing on the beach, my beautiful white skin beautifully tanned, getting hit by waves full of salt and brine, getting hit in the face. And I say, I could have lived the best life in the world. Instead, part of his ear was missing. ”
But the campaign also serves another purpose. The idea is that Trump will use political donations to help pay for massive legal costs. That will become even more difficult if Trump is no longer running for office. Even if he loses, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility for Trump to run again, so he has that as an option.
The former president’s voice has become a little hoarse ahead of Election Day, and he has been in court longer than usual at rallies. That sometimes led to an early exit from his supporters. At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, some of Trump’s supporters left before the president finished his speech, which began 90 minutes late.
“There has never been anything like this in history,” President Trump said. “And it’s a great tribute to the love that you all have for this country. And I’ll never forget that.”
At a rally in North Carolina on Saturday night, President Trump looked wistful again as he talked about how his rally would wrap up in the next few days.
“This is coming to an end. These gatherings are coming to an end. If you think about it, we’ve been doing this for like nine years,” he admitted in the audience, “when it’s tough, when it’s tough. Thank you for spending time with me,” he called out to his super fans.
Few people have watched Trump’s rallies more than Ashin Torabi, senior digital editor at the liberal website Meidas Touch News. Torabi is best known for his popular Twitter account, where videos of Trump rallies are frequently shared. He said there will still be a lot of work to do after Tuesday.
“I love taking long walks on the beach, but that won’t happen anytime soon,” he added. But I think I’ll still be busy whether President Trump is here or not. ”
Trump has never liked others to be better than him, and has already said that whoever the next Republican presidential nominee will not be able to carry the torch commensurate with the size of the crowd, a metric that he values very much. I’m warning you.
“In four years, somebody’s going to go down, and that person’s going to be hot as a pistol. And you know what? There’s going to be about 300 people,” President Trump said Friday. , while in Warren, Michigan.
He similarly told NBC News on Sunday that he expected the next candidate “will draw 400 people” to a rally.
But the size of President Trump’s own crowds has declined in recent days. In Macon, Georgia, on Sunday, the venue was not full and many people left during the lecture. In Greensboro, the team was far from filling the arena it had booked.
Mr. Trump’s political career has been a family affair — his daughter and son-in-law served in the White House, and in 2024, his sons and daughter-in-law took on leadership roles. And his nostalgia seems to permeate through his family. Too.
“I can’t believe this is coming to an end,” Eric Trump said over the weekend as he thanked his father’s supporters in Pennsylvania.
“We started in 2016 and knew nothing about politics,” he says. “And we went out there and fought every day.”
A Trump campaign aide told NBC News that some “OGs” — the old guard and staffers who have been with Trump since the beginning — have also accepted the situation and realize the end is near.
“There’s not much more to it, so you might as well enjoy it,” said the person. “You may think it will never end, but it actually does.”
A senior adviser to President Trump echoed the former president’s assertion that no other political leader would be able to capture the zeitgeist as well as he did, saying, “There will never be another like Donald Trump.” spoke.
At a North Carolina rally Saturday night, the former president once again marveled at how his rally had become an “amazing phenomenon” and said he doubted it would ever be repeated.
“So tomorrow we’re going to have three rallies. On Monday, we’re going to have four rallies in one day,” Trump said. “And we shut it down and made sure it never happened again.”
He said he was “sad” about the end of the Trump rally era and promised that if elected on Tuesday, “we’ll have a different kind of rally, a rally for our country.”
