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DULUTH, Ga. (AP) — No scene has dominated U.S. politics since 2015 quite like Donald Trump on stage, waxing on for an hour-plus in front of a chorus of red “Make America Great Again” hats.
The stream-of-consciousness routine, the interrupting one of his thoughts with the next, is not a polemic Cicero or Lincoln would recognize. The former president and Republican nominee calls his style of speech “the weave,” whipsawing from dystopian warnings to light-hearted storytelling to policy pronouncements.
“You make a speech, and my speeches last a long time because of the weave, you know, I mean, I weave stories into it,” Trump explained last week to popular podcaster Joe Rogan. “If you don’t — if you just read a teleprompter, nobody’s going to be very excited. You’ve got to weave it out. So you — but you always have to — as you say, you always have to get right back to work. Otherwise, it’s no good. But the weave is very, very important. Very few weavers around. But it’s a big strain on your — you know, it’s a big — it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work.”
Over the closing weeks of his third presidential campaign, Trump’s presentation has grown as disjointed as ever and notably darker. But the crowds keep coming, cheering his nationalistic populism, laughing at the insults and chanting along, fists raised, with his benedictory pledges to make America strong, proud, healthy, wealthy and, of course, great again.
Trump’s speeches, while never the same, all employ consistent devices and themes. He wields humor, braggadocio, anecdotes, grievances and grand promises. There are non sequiturs, fantastical falsehoods and withering attacks on opponents. He sprinkles in vulgarities and superlatives. There are even the occasional stints read from the teleprompters he mocks when any other politician uses them — and then claims that he doesn’t use teleprompters or doesn’t need them.
Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent, encourages voters to see him in person, suggesting doing so only affirms that he is erratic and unfit for office. Other critics compare his extended showmanship to authoritarian leaders. Or they argue “the weave” is simply cover for the cognitive decline of a 78-year-old who would be the oldest newly sworn U.S. president in history.
Here is a study of “the weave,” deployed on one night last week in suburban Atlanta.
Perhaps the most important moment is Trump’s entrance. His walkout music, a device that evokes his brief turn as a professional wrestling promoter, is Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The U.S.A.” The former president stands on stage, silent and serious, as the crowd sings along.
At a recent Turning Point USA rally in Duluth, Georgia, pyrotechnics and large video screens flanking him at center stage added to the effect, as his on-screen likeness towered over the crowd. Trump looked out over thousands of cellphones recording the spectacle.
With the last notes of Greenwood’s opening hymn, Trump immediately relaxed and praised his audience as “thousands of proud, hardworking Americans and patriots, which is what you are.”
Then, in a more formal tone he seemed to shift to the prompters: “I’d like to begin by asking a very simple question. Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
It’s the famous question Republican Ronald Reagan used to defeat Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Trump uses it as a way to tie Harris to President Joe Biden. But as soon as the crowd in Duluth yelled “no,” Trump moved to sweeping promises, hyperbole and superlatives that doubled as indictments of Biden and Harris.
“I will end inflation. I will stop the invasion of criminals into our country,” he pledged, suggesting all migrants are criminals.
“We’re going to fix our nation fast,” he said. “America will be bigger, better, bolder, richer, safer and stronger than ever before. This election is a choice between whether we will have four more years of incompetence, failure and disaster, or whether we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country.”
Biden and Harris aren’t just bad, in Trump’s language. He called them “the worst president” and “the worst vice president” ever. Harris, he warned, would “destroy your family’s finances forever.” He blames Harris alone for “an open border,” taking liberties with immigration and crime statistics and suggesting, falsely, that the vice president singlehandedly controls U.S. immigration policy.
He slipped in that Harris “got no votes” — a reference to her becoming the Democratic nominee after Biden dropped out following party primaries. “Therefore,” Trump insisted, “she is a threat to democracy” — a Trumpian staple projecting onto his opponents their most aggressive attacks against him.
By the time he was done in Duluth, he had lampooned Harris as a “low-IQ individual” and “not a smart person.”
Thousands laughed at each broadside.
Trump does not speak in a linear pattern as he builds to a crescendo. From his first Harris takedowns, he moved to expressions of compassion for Hurricane Helene victims and then jarringly to one of his favorite subjects: his public standing.
“Our hearts are with you and we are praying for you — the polls, despite everything. The polls,” he said. “Do you see what’s happening here? Here, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee? And Georgia. The polls. The polls are through the roof.”
Minutes later, during an audible crowd lull, he dropped in his signature “MAGA” slogan to elicit cheers.
“What a nice crowd this is!” he answers with a chuckle. “What a nice crowd.”
He bounced back to the prompter for numbers framing inflation’s effects on U.S. households. He asked, “should I sue” CBS and “60 Minutes” for, in his words, manipulating Harris interview answers that were “from the loony bin.”
“It’s election interference and fraud,” he said, projecting charges that are part of felony criminal cases against him.
Trump mocked Harris for saying she will raise taxes, but misrepresented her proposals as applying universally. (She targets corporations and the wealthiest individual filers.) Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, meanwhile, were “the largest tax cuts in history,” he said. (A charitable interpretation, at best, that ignores inflation.)
Timothy and Amanda Browning reached different conclusions about Trump's style after driving from their Georgia mountain town of Lula to attend their first Trump rally.
“I liked it, because it shows how authentic he is,” said Timothy Browning. “There are lulls — but you’ve got to stick with him because there’s always a zinger coming.”
Amanda Browning laughed as she recalled leaning over to her husband to whisper that Trump “sure could use a speechwriter.”
Still, the co-owners of an event space and catering business in Lula reaffirmed their loyalties to the former president.
Timothy sported a T-shirt that had a sexist insult of Harris coined by some conservatives after Biden named her his running mate in 2020. Browning said, though, that he does not consider himself, Trump or the former president’s supporters angry.
Instead, the Brownings keyed on Trump's first-term economy and his pledges for an encore term. Talking about their business, they recounted specific price increases they’ve seen since pandemic-era inflation. They were not interested in pandemic supply chain interruptions or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine roiling world oil markets. Trump, they said, presided over a better situation for them than Biden and, by extension, Harris.
Timothy Browning summed up his takeaway in Trumpian terms.
“I hear him," Browning said, “putting America first.”