Even by the standards of a dizzying presidential campaign, the past two weeks of Donald J. Trump’s campaign have been chaotic.
What began as Trump pushing the baseless claim on the debate stage that immigrants in Ohio were stealing and eating family pets ended with him coming under fire for his support of a Republican gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina who had called himself a “black Nazi” on a pornography message board.
Meanwhile, Trump invited Laura Loomer, a right-wing influencer known for spreading conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks, to an event marking the anniversary of those attacks. He called for a government shutdown, attacked key aspects of his tax policy, and declared on social media that he hated Taylor Swift for endorsing her rival. And at an event aimed at Jewish voters, he said “Jews” would be to blame if he lost the election, raising fears of anti-Semitic retaliation.
While Vice President Kamala Harris crisscrosses battleground states, driving home the message that Trump is a danger to abortion rights, democracy and the future of the country, the Republican Party is once again immersed in the kind of drama that defined the former president’s political brand for more than a decade.
In previous years, such fierce controversy in the final weeks of a campaign might have caused voters to hesitate or even sway the outcome of the race, but this year, the public has barely responded to the wave of unrest and, some strategists say, is turning away from the race altogether.
“Every news cycle, there’s a flood of crazy stories,” said David Kochel, a longtime Republican strategist and former presidential campaign manager. “People’s ability to follow politics is completely stretched. It’s impossible to keep up with it all, so a lot of people just ignore it.”
On top of all this, there was another moment that was completely out of Trump’s control: he faced a second assassination attempt. Afterwards, instead of calling for the nation to come together and condemn political violence, he used the threat to attack, blaming it on the “communist left wing rhetoric” of President Biden and Ms Harris.
It’s unclear what, or if anything, could realign the race in such a deeply polarized country. Polls conducted since this month’s presidential debate have shown the race to be tight, with the candidates separated by less than two percentage points in all seven battleground states. Trump’s approval rating is actually better than when he led Biden earlier this year, and more voters view him more favorably than they did a few months ago.
The lukewarm response to Trump’s latest string of provocations reflects both the country’s deep partisan divisions and a sense that voters have grown accustomed to his style after three election cycles in which his showmanship has dominated the news.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump brought women who claimed to have had affairs with Bill Clinton to a debate with Hillary Clinton after a tape was released in which he bragged about grabbing women’s genitals. Four years later, in the fall of 2020, Trump missed the debates after contracting COVID-19, portraying his return from the hospital to the White House as a conqueror’s hero’s journey.
For much of his 2024 campaign, Trump adopted a more streamlined campaign run by experienced Republican activists. Legal gag orders and weeks in a New York courtroom limited his campaign time and what he could say about the felony charges against him. And in the first presidential debate in June, Trump stood back as Biden struggled to come up with answers, allowing his opponent to self-destruct.
But since Ms. Harris rose to the top of the list of candidates and was freed from any looming legal liability, Mr. Trump has reverted to the attention-seeking habits honed during a career spent crafting his own image in the New York tabloids.
Trump promised to visit Springfield, Ohio, but local Republican officials have pleaded with him not to go as the city continues to be rocked by a political storm sparked by Trump’s false claims.
Then on Friday evening, he posted a capital letter call to women on his social media site, Truth Social, which also recalled his role in appointing the Supreme Court justice who played a crucial role in overturning Roe v. Wade.
“Abortion will no longer be something we have to think about because it is now something that should be controlled by state governments,” he wrote.
Polls consistently show that abortion rights, the cause that carried Democrats to election victories across the country, is one of Trump’s weakest issues.
At a campaign rally on Saturday in Wilmington, North Carolina, Trump repeated his appeal to the women who support Harris at the polls, and also launched into a laundry list of grievances about electric cars, transgender athletes, immigrants, the press and Harris herself, whom he called “useless.”
Some Republicans worry that this collective influence will alienate moderate Republicans, whose support could be crucial in such a close race, as Trump reminds them why he failed to win a second term.
The promotion of Loomer, who posted a racist joke about Harris, concerned even some of Trump’s closest allies as the Trump campaign seeks to win over voters of color whose support could make a difference in key battleground states. Amid the criticism, Trump sought to distance himself somewhat from Loomer on social media, calling her a “regular citizen.”
Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, seeking reelection in a battleground district where Trump lost the 2020 election and is trailing in public opinion polls this year, said he had pleaded with the former president’s campaign to keep him focused on issues like inflation, the danger of war in the Middle East and Harris’ record of supporting liberal policies and to avoid inflicting hurt on himself.
“If he stays on message, he’ll win easily,” Bacon said.
The senator said Trump’s lack of discipline makes it difficult for him to fend off Democratic challengers and warned that the former president’s rhetoric could have an impact in battleground districts that determine control of Congress.
“If Trump is down by seven points, winning is a burden to me,” Bacon said. “We have fewer and fewer divided voters. In 2020, we had a 12-point split, and I don’t want to carry that burden.”
Many Democrats agree, saying Trump’s recent comments are reminding voters of their concerns about his temperament and ability to lead the country.
“Trump has benefited disproportionately from people forgetting about the bad parts of his presidency and being optimistic about the good parts,” said Navin Nayak, a Democratic strategist and president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “Now people are remembering why they fired him in the first place.”
Trump aides have denied that the former president’s incendiary rhetoric has hurt his efforts to retake the White House, and many believe there is little he can do to dramatically change his behavior now that he has won his party’s nomination, despite being the first president to be impeached twice by Congress and the first to be convicted of a felony.
A series of polls released last week by The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College found that about 90% of voters say they don’t need to know more about Trump to decide their vote.
His campaign has focused on getting supporters to the polls, reflecting a belief that the path to victory is following the strategy of 2016, when Trump won the White House by expanding his base rather than courting swing votes.
“President Trump has built the strongest, most disciplined and professional team in political history, and under his leadership, he has overcome every obstacle,” Trump campaign communications director Steven Thune said, adding that “America’s enemies will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump from returning to the White House.”
Democrats have been fighting Trump’s divisive policies almost ever since he stepped off the gold elevator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president in 2015. Their strategy of turning the race into a referendum on Trump’s character failed in 2016 but succeeded four years later when Biden took the White House promising to restore order to American governance and heal the country’s divisions. Attacking Trump as unfit for the presidency has been a central pillar of Biden’s reelection strategy for much of this year.
Harris has taken a slightly different approach. Rather than holding up Trump as an existential threat to democracy, she has belittled him as a “nutcase” stuck in the past and more interested in lining his own pockets than fighting for American voters. She has focused her attacks on the points that a second Trump term would erode reproductive rights, hurt the middle class and plunge the country into chaos.
Campaigning in Madison, Wisconsin on Friday, she said the country is “tired of the division and hatred” emanating from Trump’s campaign and argued her own campaign is committed to uniting the country. She said Trump has no consistent beliefs beyond helping billionaires and hurting women.
“As I’ve said before, in many ways he’s a dishonest man,” Harris said, “but the consequences of putting him back in the White House are extremely serious.”