Trump delivers his greatest hits, but also gets reflective at final campaign stop

'No matter what happens tomorrow, I'm proud of them all,' rarely sombre president says at final stop

Donald Trump’s last campaign stop sounded a lot like the 16 that came before it since Friday, but he notably thanked his closest lieutenants and thousands of supporters in Grand Rapids over and over – even acknowledging in his own way he might lose.

The city in western Michigan was a fitting bookend for his first term – though the Supreme Court chamber could end up being where his presidency ends or continues for, as his loyalists have chanted for most of the year, “four more years.”

He mostly recited what has become his rally greatest hits album, contending he has helped the United States “round the corner” on combating the coronavirus and touting his pre-virus economic stewardship. He called himself “an outsider.”

“A recent Gallup poll found 56 per cent of Americans feel they are better off than they were four years ago under [Barack] Obama and [Joe] Biden,” he said, clad in a dark overcoat and red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, referring to his Democratic predecessor and his current rival for the White House.

When he stepped on stage there around midnight eastern standard time, Mr Trump tossed some of those red caps to his supporters. But once behind the blue presidential lectern, for the first time in his late-cycle blitz, he sounded tired and his voice a bit hoarse.

He left few tricks or attack lines undeployed, as any self-described “counter-puncher” or showman would, especially in a state where an average of polls shows him trailing Mr Biden by 5 percentage points and which experts say he almost certainly must win to secure four more years.

Earlier Monday, he brought back “The Snake,” a short story that warns against taking in beings that are unlike oneself, which has been called xenophobic by Democrats.

At his final campaign stop 12 hours later, he dropped a “treason” allegation on those who have investigated his presidency and business dealings. He derided what he called the “fake impeachment” that saw him become only the third sitting president to ever receive the House’s stiffest rebuke, and declared himself “the most innocent man anywhere in the history of the United States,” ignoring more than a dozen state and federal probes that appear to include him and his business organisation.

His final rally was vintage The Donald, warning Democrats want to “confiscate your guns” and appearing to purposely mispronounce Ms Harris’s first name and touting the throng of supporters at outside an airport hangar: “This is not the size of a crowd that’s going to lose the state of Michigan.”

Though he is trailing in most swing states, he kept his defiant bravado through his battleground state barnstorming, saying: “I think we’re going to win everything. I think tomorrow is going to be one of the greatest wins in the history of politics.”

He singled out two other battlegrounds after predicting a rather easy win in Michigan, claiming, according to his campaign’s polls, North Carolina and Florida are “looking phenomenal.”

But there was something different. All the thank yous, not the norm for a president who typically tells his backers all that he has done for them.

"No matter what happens tomorrow, I'm proud of them all,” he quipped about Vice President Mike Pence and other top aides. “But if we lose, I'm never speaking to them again."

The populist president who has bragged about being the disruptor in chief even seemed a bit reflective as he started wrapping up what might be his final rally as a non-lame-duck chief executive: “I’ve never enjoyed anything as much in my life. … It’s been an honour.”