Trump finishes as he began - with lies, insults and an utter obsession with himself

Analysis: The former president’s name is not on any ballot for Tuesday’s election, writes Andrew Buncombe, but that didn’t prevent this speech from being all about him

Trump’s rally in Ohio lasted two hours (Getty Images)

Sometimes it is hard to remember.

But when Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he hid himself away.

There was a speech to the faithful at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and another to the North Carolina GOP’s state convention.

But it was not until June 2021 in Wellington, Ohio, that Trump found the confidence to return to the fray in public, holding a rally to attack Anthony Gonzalez, one of 10 GOP members of Congress who had voted to impeach him.

“The 2020 presidential election was rigged, we won the election in a landslide,” Trump said in that first stop on a public “revenge” tour. “They used Covid in order to rig the election and in order to steal the election.”

If the former president was slow to get back on the election trail, he has more than made up for it since, appearing endlessly over the past 18 months, relentless with his false claims of vote rigging and victimhood.

On Monday night, he returned to Ohio for a final, eve-of-election rally that dragged on for two hours.

And just as at the event in the summer of 2021, the speech he delivered on Monday was filled with lies, insults, and an obsession with himself that appears to have no limit.

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There had been speculation Trump would use the event to formally announce his 2024 bid for the White House, an anticipation that grew given the large numbers of members of his family present.

Had he done so, there was a sense it could have helped Democrats rally their voters to the polls.

In the end – perhaps he was persuaded not to by someone with his ear – Trump delivered yet another teaser about his possible future, and said he would “making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida”.

The official reason Trump was at the event at Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, was to rally support for Republican candidates such as JD Vance and Mike Wine, who are competing in heartland contests for the Senate and governorship respectively.

There was also a slate of lower ticket races that the former president was putting his support behind.

But as is usually the case with such rallies, Trump kept the spotlight on himself, his lies about the election of 2020, and Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, whom he termed an “animal”, barely a week after her husband was seriously assaulted at the couple’s home in California.

“Nancy Pelosi said please don’t call them animals, they’re human beings,” Trump said, referring to alleged members of the MS-13 gang. “I said no, they’re animals. Of course, I think she’s an animal, too, if you want to know the truth.”

Trump told the assembled crowd that Pelosi impeached him twice for “no reason”.

Even the former president’s harshest critics would have to acknowledge that he buzzed with energy, as well as anger. He attacked the “fake news” media, denounced moderate Democrat Tim Ryan as a socialist and suggested Joe Biden was not mentally competent to be in the Oval Office.

He then finished the speech with a strange segment about America’s alleged decline, set to mournful music, that echoed the thoughts of the “American carnage” thesis he spoke about during his 2017 inauguration.

“We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has the highest inflation in 50 years, and where the stock market finished the worst first half of the year since 1872,” he said.

All in all, this Donald Trump was the same Donald Trump as of last year and of 2020 and of every year preceding, since he slid down the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 and launched an operation of slights and insults, and of racist innuendo that appears unchanging and unshifting. Back then, it was enough to win him the presidency.

It is also apparent that if, as is expected, Trump makes a formal announcement next week, this will be the person pitched to the American public, as he seeks a return to the White House.

Trump, as ever, vowed that he and his supporters were preparing to make a course correct.

“The silent majority is back and stronger than ever before,” he said, the music swirling behind him. “We will take our country back. My fellow citizens, this incredible journey we are on together has only just begun and it is time to start talking about greatness, greatness, greatness, greatness again, for our country.”