by Two years ago, I visited Wilmington, North Carolina, a few weeks before the midterm elections, ostensibly to cover the state Senate race, but also to hear from Donald Trump.
Much has changed since then.
Then, Trump endorsed Ted Budd, an unnamed backbench Congressman, to replace Richard Burr, one of the senators who voted to impeach Trump for his actions on January 6.
Of course, the rally at the Wilmington Aero Center was hardly focused on Budd, or any other Republicans for that matter. Instead, he made a dramatic appearance after landing before taking the stage and performing for over an hour and a half.
This came shortly after the FBI executed a search warrant on his Florida home in Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the classified documents and faced a new lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James, who he called him “Peekaboo James, at the rally,” an insensitive and likely racial nickname.
However, the crowd in Wilmington was mesmerized by Trump in 2022. Towards the end, he played ominous music while speaking in prayers that almost completely captivated the crowd.
Almost two years to the day, Trump returned to the Aero Center, this time as a candidate. However, Trump has looked much less so as he seeks to return to the White House.
For starters, Trump’s overtures seem far more desperate and are a sign that, as he struggles to beat Kamala Harris, he doesn’t stand on the same footing he once did.
Biden seems to have lost in contrast to the wind out of Trump’s launch. In 2022, and in truth, in most of Trump’s rallies since he left the White House, he focused mainly on Biden and would open his rallies with a supercut of Biden stuttering over his words and or looking weak.
No such montage took place Saturday, though early in his speech, he played a clip of Harris repeatedly saying the word “story,” as if to show he’s an over-rehearsed and scripted candidate. is Harris. But one could say that Trump is partially aware that he is showing up behind Harris, even in North Carolina, where the heat is dead right now.
In fact, just before the rally, Harris said she agreed to a second debate against Trump on CNN.
“The problem with another debate is that it’s just too late,” he told the crowd, curiously claiming he won the debate despite polls consistently showing Harris as the favorite.
Similarly, Trump did not mention Hannibal Lecter, the character i Silence of the Lambs he usually invokes, or mentions windmills causing cancer, which Harris pointed out to him during their debate in Philadelphia. He also didn’t go off on a lot of the dottering weaving tangents that he usually goes on.
During both rallies, Trump focused heavily on his bread and butter issues – immigration at the US-Mexico border and crime – but today, he offered many unrealistic policy proposals, such as capping credit card interest rates at 10 percent.
“Some people are paying 25, 30 percent, it’s crazy,” Trump said.
He also discussed eliminating taxes on tips and Social Security, which many in his own party do not support.
On Saturday, Trump also gave a shout out to his new friend, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
“We’re going to impress – and that’s my plan. I’ll talk to Elon, get those rocket ships going,” he said. “We want to reach Mars before the end of my term.”
Likewise, Trump seems to have not figured out how to talk to women in the past two years. Instead, he ripped off a weird rant he made earlier on Truth Social about women, where he talked about how women are poorer and less healthy than they were during his administration.
“Ultimately, this national nightmare we’re going through will end,” he said. “Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer think of abortion because it is now, as it always has been, with the states and the vote of the people.”
This is sure to upset many anti-abortion conservatives, who feel that Trump has turned his back on them by not supporting a national abortion ban.
Similarly, many women in North Carolina may not be happy since the Republican legislature signed a 12-week abortion ban.
Perhaps one of the biggest changes, however, is the absence of Trump’s biggest acolyte in North Carolina. Two years ago, Mark Robinson was preparing to run for governor and spoke ahead of Trump. When he indicated he might run, he received nearly as much applause as Trump.
Since then, Robinson has been a liability for Trump. Earlier this week, CNN reported that he made frequent comments on an internet pornography forum where he talked about being a “black NAZI” and said he would be a slave if he could.
Despite publicly denying transgender people, his alleged comments revealed an affinity for viewing pornography with transgender women.
Not only did Robinson not attend, he was nowhere to be seen at the rally in Wilmington. In fact, while Trump called out many elected officials, he didn’t even mention the governor’s race, indicating that he’s already lost.
This is not to say that all is lost for Trump. For one, he still packed the Aero Center and got plenty of applause breaks. Polling still shows him neck and neck in the state.
But the Trump show is not what it once was. For starters, unlike in 2022, he couldn’t even walk to Sam and Dave’s hit “Hold On, I’m Comin’” like he once did.
Trump has always been a complicated man, but now he is hard to understand because he will fail and make wild promises trying to stay relevant.
