THE WASHINGTON POST: Donald Trump’s closing days feature chaotic moments reminiscent of his presidency

Former president Donald Trump headlined a rally a week ago featuring a comedian’s remark that Puerto Rico is an “island of garbage.”

On Thursday, Trump insisted he had previously won New Mexico, a state he lost twice by big margins.

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On Friday, he suggested a Republican adversary should have “guns trained on her face.” And the following day, he unleashed a profane speech saying women have to be protected “at home in suburbia.”

With Election Day looming, Trump’s near-daily pattern of making provocative or inflammatory remarks threatens to undermine his campaign’s message that a Trump presidency would restore an orderly, controlled leadership to the nation.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has sought to deploy the image of an unpredictable, volatile Trump to remind voters that his previous term was frequently marked by drama and conflict.

With a small but crucial group of voters still trying to make up their minds at the 11th hour, the drumbeat of incendiary moments could turn off those concerned about four more years of potential chaos, Democrats say.

Cabernae Likely, a 34-year-old sous chef in Grand Rapids, Michigan, voted for Trump twice, but she was upset four years ago when he antagonized America’s allies and tried to overturn the 2020 election. The Puerto Rico comment and other recent episodes have given her a sense of déjà vu, she said, making her wonder if Trump is really focused on the issues that matter to her.

“It almost seems like you’re going to be on the same bulls---, and we really want you not to be,” Likely said, addressing Trump on what he needs to do to get her vote. “We want you to help us make America great again.”

Likely is the kind of voter Trump may need to prevail in this remarkably close election. She voted for Barack Obama; then Trump won her over in 2016 and 2020 with his promises of global stability and economic growth. Republicans are now stressing the argument that Trump would again preside over a strong, low-inflation economy, while seeking to downplay the prospect that he would sow turmoil.

“People largely forget about the state of our country four years ago,” said Democratic strategist Joe Caiazzo. “But over the last 10 days, Donald Trump has done an excellent job of reminding voters of the chaos that comes with a Trump administration.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

But his allies say they want Trump to stay on message in the final stretch, deploying ads and speeches by supporters to declare that “Harris broke it. Trump will fix it.” One Trump ad, aired during Saturday’s college football game between Penn State and Ohio State, argued that “his strength kept us safe … prices were lower, and the border secure.”

Democrats are pushing back against the notion that the Trump presidency was an era of calm and prosperity, citing the former aides who have repudiated him, the chaos of his travel ban, his spats with allies, his rocky handling of Hurricane Maria and his downplaying of covid-19, among other things.

Harris, talking to reporters Friday, appealed to voters who were still deciding, suggesting a second Trump presidency would be like the first, if not worse. “I ask folks to, among the many issues before you, just consider who’s going to be sitting in the Oval Office on January 20th,” she said. “Either you’re going to have Donald Trump there, who will be stewing over his enemies list, or I will be there, working hard on your behalf on my to-do list.”

Harris supporters are seizing especially on the Trump rally in Madison Square Garden last weekend, which featured a number of sexist and racist comments by speakers addressing the crowd before the former president took the stage.

The Harris campaign quickly launched a new ad aimed at Puerto Ricans and other Latinos. They also sought to remind voters of the Trump administration’s much-criticized response to Hurricane Maria, distributing a 2017 video of Trump tossing paper towel rolls to people when he visited to deliver aid supplies on the island - a moment that many Puerto Ricans criticized at the time as demeaning and tone-deaf.

Trump has defended the rally, telling Fox News it was a night of “love.” But Harris aides contend that Trump’s late-stage volley of incendiary comments is having an impact.

The Harris campaign’s review of early voting numbers and focus groups show her winning by double digits among battleground-state voters who made up their minds in the last week, according to a campaign official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal data. Specifically, the focus groups show Trump is paying a price for the Madison Square Garden rally.

“It really broke through,” the official said on Friday. “It’s helped gel their feeling about this race.”

Days after the New York rally, Trump suggested at an event with television host Tucker Carlson that former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), who has campaigned with Harris, should see what it’s like to face weaponry aimed at her. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay?” Trump said. “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

The Trump camp said the former president was simply criticizing Cheney as a hawk who would send others into combat but would not go herself. Democrats, however, said the graphic language was an incitement to violence, and that the reference to nine guns suggested a firing squad.

More broadly, Trump’s allies argue that Trump’s vivid rhetoric is not as important to voters as his promise to return jobs that have moved overseas, close the U.S.-Mexico border and restore peace abroad. The media’s focus on Trump’s sometimes-colorful words misses the point, they say.

That argument was summed up by a sticker, in the style of Trump’s campaign logo, that was affixed recently to a gas pump in Grand Rapids: “Mean tweets & cheap gas.”

Rob Collins, former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said GOP candidates can succeed by emphasizing the economic argument, which he said is what voters really care about. “The (Republican) campaigns just need to close on ‘Are you going to be better off in four years?’” he said.

Trump presided over enormous job losses as the coronavirus pandemic engulfed the final stretch of his presidency. But Caiazzo, the Democratic strategist, said many voters have lost track of what happened back then, either forgetting or blaming Biden for the supply shortages, closed businesses and mass layoffs.

Many Republicans agree, publicly or privately, that Trump does best when the spotlight is on Harris.

“If I was Vice President Harris, I would give President Trump as much room to speak as possible in the closing days, because he might do her more favours than not,” said Pennsylvania Republican strategist Vince Galko. But he added that President Joe Biden’s comments in the aftermath of last weekend’s Trump rally, which Harris distanced herself from, could offset its negative impact.

Biden, responding to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s description of Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage,” said on a call to rally Latino voters that Puerto Ricans are “good, decent, honourable people.” According to an audio recording from a Washington Post reporter who listened in on the call, he added, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His - his - his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

Still, Trump’s critics note that Biden is not running for president, and they say Trump’s recent conduct could be a tipping point for people on the fence. Republican strategists warn that Trump needs to attract potential supporters to the polls, not drive them away.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump aide who is now a vocal critic, posted on X that the Cheney comment could have an effect.

“There are plenty of normie Americans who remember the political world pre-Trump who are simply exhausted by his divisive rhetoric,” she wrote. “Don’t sleep on the ‘exhaustion’ factor swaying late-breakers against Trump.”

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Matt Viser contributed to this report.

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