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I am surprised at how different Trump's 2024 campaign has been, stylistically, from his previous campaigns. And I am also surprised at how little attention these changes have gotten.
It was often claimed by Democrats, and many establishment Republicans, that Trump was incapable of change. I think the 2024 campaign is basically proving that Trump can change quite a lot as a politician and as a person, actually.
-Especially in his 2016 campaign, it seemed like there was a major campaign leak every single day, of some wild thing Trump had supposedly said or done in private. Reporters were FEASTING on leaks from Trump campaign staffers. And perhaps even some of the leaks came from Trump himself!
This time around, I can't remember seeing a single wild story sourced from a leak from Trump's campaign. It's like night and day. Either Trump has completely stopped doing crazy things in private, or he is running a much tighter ship (which would also be a major change).
I think this is responsible for a lot of why this Trump campaign feels so different, and why the media environment seems so different. Trump's staffers aren't constantly giving the media high ratings with wild new storylines. It's a much tighter ship. The Trump campaign narratives are more tightly controlled, and have less of the energy which the old chaos and controversy from the leaks used to bring.
-In 2020, I pointed out that Trump's website literally didn't have a policy page. This time around, Trump's campaign has an extensive policy page. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/issues and https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/?_gl=17vvd3i_gcl_au*MjEwMzg1MDQ1MC4xNzIxODUxOTUz&_ga=2.104524672.1863252832.1725431494-503166579.1721851953)
In 2024, it's the Democrat nominee who doesn't have a policy page. Almost all of the emphasis on the Kamala website is on soliciting donations.
Although, Trump did have some self-declared policies in 2020, and Kamala's campaign has released a few policies so far this year. But it doesn't seem like Kamala '24 and Trump '20 wanted to focus on policy at all. Trump '24 seems to be more focused on new policies.
And perhaps some of this is just the challenge of being an incumbent, which Trump '20 and Kamala '24 are. If you propose any new policies, the obvious rejoinder is "why haven't you already done that?". Perhaps it seems smarter to just not have a policies page. But I think it's a lame thing to (not) do.
-Trump is, for the first time, competing in a political environment in which the Democrats have arguably flip-flopped to adopt some of his biggest positions, and some of his style. (This might be one of the most unusual political achievements of all time.)
Trump used to be considered outrageous for discussing major ways to secure the border. Now Democrats are campaigning on "Securing the Border", and issues with fentanyl and so on.
And Trump has been completely free to go even further, to discuss mass deportation, and this is somehow considered even less outrageous than the border wall was considered not that long ago.
Democrats used to campaign on "defund the police" and other stances hostile to cops. Now Democrats are campaigning on having put more cops on the streets- the old Trump stance!
Trump was also the first President to constantly rattle on about the stock market and gas prices and so on. Now Biden/Harris do that, too.
Trump even created controversy with his "America First" branding. But now Democrats are copying that in everything but name.
Democrats aren't anti-woke, per se. But they have abandoned almost all of their explicit pro-woke messaging, moving much more towards the Trump stance.
The only issue I can think of where Trump has moved closer to a major Democrat stance is abortion. Marijuana might also be an issue with Trump movement, but I don't remember Trump being memorably anti-pot in the past, anyhow.
-Trump wasn't posting on X/Twitter at all in recent years. And even now that his campaign is posting on X again, he doesn't feel as important to the discussion as he used to feel.
Obviously, some of this is due to Trump mainly being active on TruthSocial, his own social media site.
But the way I remember it, from 2015-2020 it always seemed like Trump was the key catalyst on Twitter, almost every single day. He would say something "outrageous", and then there would be a vast liberal response to his tweets, and then a large conservative response to the liberal response. And so on. Everything in politics started and ended with Trump.
His recent tweets seem to be getting a lot of "likes" and "reposts", but it feels like a lot of the liberal sphere and the conservative sphere are just doing a lot of their own thing, having the conversations they choose to have, instead of making everything about fighting against or defending Trump.
And the Trump tweets seem fundamentally less "outrageous". There are dozens of major conservative and liberal posters that routinely say things which are arguably more outrageous than what Trump's account posts.
-Aside from the fact that Trump was inactive on Twitter for a long time, I think this has something to do with Elon Musk paying X posters for engagement. A lot of people on X have figured out other ways to get engagement- and thereby make money- by talking about topics unrelated to Trump.
So even if Trump were to try very hard to be the main catalyst on X every day, a lot of people are going to choose, for business reasons, to ignore Trump and do their own profitable engagement schtick. Trump can try to make it as fun as ever to react to him, but if there's less money in it, then a lot of professional posters are going to ignore him.
Also, quite frankly, I feel like a lot of large accounts on X (of every political variety, and every non-political type) have developed a similar engagement-bait style, much like the style Trump seemed to be the original master of. Trump's old engagement bait schtick would have trouble standing out at this point.
(I suppose this goes to show that in some ways the world has become more like Trump, which creates the illusion of change on Trump's part. But even this is remarkable- how many politicians in the past century have indirectly created so much change in the culture, as Trump has done?)
-One of the old critiques of Trump used to be that he didn't do very many press conferences. Democrats like Obama, Hillary, and the Biden '20 campaign did a lot of press conferences and interviews.
But now Trump is doing a lot of interviews, and Kamala has famously only done one meaningful interview so far.
Even more interesting is Trump doing long-form podcasts, and other long-form videos. It seems particularly unusual for the Trump campaign to do that when they have the oldest candidate. (Putting Biden out in public killed Biden's campaign, after all.)
And yet, Kamala is doing almost no interviews, while Trump is acting confident.
-In '16 and '20, Trump was almost constantly attacking other Republicans, and other institutions like Fox News. And other major Republicans were almost constantly attacking Trump.
This time around, there seems to be much less of this. I remember a tiff with Gov. Kemp in Georgia, which was almost immediately sorted out, and not much else.
It seems like Trump killed the careers of a lot of the disloyalists, and they are mostly out of the public arena now. There are some professional Never Trumpers who are still attacking Trump, but they do that no matter what Trump does, and it's no longer news.
But it also seems like Trump is simply more disciplined now in his targets. He isn't constantly wildly lashing out in every direction.
I also frankly think that after hiring and firing enough people, Trump has finally ended up with a much more loyal staff than he's ever had before. (This is one reason for the lack of leaks to the media.) And he seems to understand the people in the political arena, better than he understood them before (which Trump mentioned in a recent podcast).
-Trump is literally less "orange" than he used to be. His "orangeness" used to be a common trait Democrats made fun of, but his coloring seems to have become more natural since then. (Although it's obvious that, like Kamala, plenty of makeup is being applied to his face before public appearances.)
His coloring is now so unremarkable that the "orange man bad" phrase wouldn't even make sense, unless you remembered what his skin tone used to be.
-Trump seems to have lost weight. I remember Democrats almost constantly making fun of Trump's weight. They don't seem to do that as much any more, because Trump is thinner. Who knows whether it's diet, exercise, or Ozempic, but it's noticeable.
-Perhaps partly due to having less physical heft, he isn't as audibly "loud" as he used to be. His voice tends to be quiet now. Being older might also be a part of it.
But his voice isn't just more quiet. It seems like he is deliberately speaking in a very mellow and relaxed manner in most of his interviews and campaign rallies, perhaps to make people less afraid of him.
I would describe it as Trump possibly trying to lean into a "nice Grandpa" vibe, rather than "angry rabble-rouser", like he was the last two times. The physical difference in his tone is huge.
"Nice Grandpa" might be a good vibe to lean into, politically. Ronald Reagan, Eisenhower, FDR, and Biden '20 did a good job of that, and had great election success. (Well, prior to Biden seeming outright senile...) But it's also a big change from Trump's vibe in '16 and '20.
.............................
Anyway, I have been surprised at how little discussion there has been in the media, and in social media, about Trump's ability to evolve. I honestly had never expected Trump to evolve, and if he did finally evolve, I would have thought it would get more attention, since one of the major narratives about Trump used to be "Trump doesn't learn".
I broadly agree with your points, but I think you fail to take into account just how much your perception of Trump's changes are already "through the goose" by the time you form them. You're trying to form opinions of how Trump is acting, but you're really forming opinions about how Trump's actions are being reported and presented to you. This is true regardless of where you get your information from, unless you are basing it purely on personally attending Trump rallies.
-- Trump "leaks" are still a constant feature of the more TRS themed accounts I see on Twitter, and on the rare occasion I wander onto Slate or listen to a libtard podcast. The "leaks" have always been low quality information, frequently entirely falsified and often stretched beyond recognition. "Trump reportedly 'furious' about JD Vance pick foisted on him by sons." Without even lying, that anonymous source can be exaggerating a single sarcastic comment about Vance, exaggerating the role the sons played in choosing Vance, etc. Which the writer again exaggerates to the limit of journalistic integrity. The leaks haven't stopped, but they're being reported less in mainstream press.
-- While they backslide (see the recent Arlington kerfuffle) the Cathedral seems to have realized collectively that there is no new scandal that can really harm Trump or help Harris. The public has been immunized from Trump scandal, he's been accused of so much and proven to do so much that there's no new act of crassness, tastelessness, selfishness, that can move the needle. Trump's frequent outbursts would have been reported as Scandals in 2016, like when he seemed like he was cheering on the guy who tried to break into the press-box at a rally and then went into a bizarre soliloquy about two flags forming angels wings as he was shot at. That didn't really make the news for long this year, but he's still doing it. The scandals and bizarre behavior haven't stopped, they're just being deemphasized in reporting on the topic.
-- Trump fans seem grimmer. In 2016 Trump fans were having fun, in 2020 they were angry, in 2024 they mostly seem grimly determined. In 2016 they were playing, in 2024 it's a death march. Where in 2016 bizarre Trump comments were memed to the moon, in 2024 there's a half-hearted effort to defend it followed by a shrug and "I'm voting for him anyway because something-something groomers." So you're not hearing the bizarre sayings get amplified by his fans.
All of those points are notable in themselves, and point to a changing environment, but it's not all down to a rate-change in Trump's behavior. He is still perfectly capable of everything he did in 2016 and 2020.
C'mon, man. You know better.
You're right, I should have specified the podast, in my mind I was referring specifically to Pod Save America or Political Gabfest, but as written it's too broad.
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This idea has crept into my mind over the last week. I think MAGA is limping on fumes (to mix some ambulatory metaphors). MAGA folks in 2016 had energy and vitality. Today, it feels like embattled victim mentality and a kind of Hold The Alamo grim determination.
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You’re spot on with the drifting of parties. I was just reading
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/27/us/politics/trump-harris-tariffs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb&ngrp=mxn&pvid=87B8A821-F493-4769-B45D-A5B25E9DD7A7
The other day—the gist is that Trump and Kamala are both talking about tariffs, but they’re “different.”
We don’t know what Kamala’s proposals are but obviously we don’t need to know to conclude they’re better /s.
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Regarding scandals, the first campaign had to contend about 50 years of scandals, the second with time in office (although it wasn’t hugely relevant), the third with a mere four years. Also, Trump’s old, something could come out but it seems unlikely he’s still sleeping with porn stars.
Regarding policy, I think Trump wants to win and I think he does care about polling. He’s also still close to a lot of coastal rich people (in private even if some won’t associate with him as openly) who aren’t social conservatives and who probably (correctly) flag abortion as something most people are moderately liberal about.
This election is personal. In 2016 I think there was a kind of civic impulse in Trump. Yes, it was bound up in ego and, sure, he wanted to be president and make everyone have to listen to him. But he was also angry about the country, about Obama and Hillary, about politics.
Today - despite the fact that his ‘punishment’ for losing will be much, much tougher than it would have been in 2016, his heart doesn’t seem in it as much. The anger has softened. He mostly just seems to want to prove his enemies and detractors wrong. I also don’t think he actually believes he might go to jail, which is interesting.
There’s a lot of things going on here, but Trump might just expect to plea out his charges if he loses.
The irony is that while Kamala is campaigning on being his figurative prosecutor just as he was being Hillary's, she'll have the same incentives to let it go as he did if she wins.
Some of the more Trump deranged parts of the American left will still want their pound of flesh though, and that includes some of those actual prosecutors.
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Some of the object-level details in your post are wrong, but your overall message is correct: there certainly has been a change in Trump's campaign. It's a combination of Trump's visible aging, along with a decent dose of Trump fatigue. The man is old news by this point, so unless he does something very crazy, nobody really pays attention like they used to. He's also less energetic than he used to be and so he's likely abdicated some of his responsibilities to his campaign staff, most of whom probably want him on a tighter leash.
Claiming this is Trump "evolving" is... charitable. He's regressing to a more median politician in his old age.
For the object-level details:
The campaign is still very leaky, e.g. there was inside reporting on the disastrous weeks where he lost the polling lead, his anger at Vance, and his campaign getting hacked.
This is a combination of two things: 1) the public becoming more anti-immigrant due to Biden's defacto open borders for the first 2 years, and 2) the public knowing that Trump is mostly BS'ing here. Trump promised deportations in his first go around and that didn't really happen. Trump was basically no better than Obama when it comes to stopping illegal immigration.
These are all true. Trump might have been a small part of changing the culture. Most of it is just woke burnout. If you want, I guess you could credit Trump with supercharging the woke movement from 2017 to 2020 which poured gasoline on the movement.
He's certainly not the first to talk about gas prices -- that's just laughably wrong. I can't remember other politicians talking about the stock market so explicitly so this one seems true-ish.
When he first became president, he tried hiring a combination of 1) establishment conservatives, 2) hard-right zealots, and 3) supplicating grifters. He'd eventually learn that he hated (1), distrusts but is forced to pay lip service to (2), and really likes (3). Now he knows to fill his staff with a sprinkling of (2) and a ton of (3). So yeah, I expect somewhat less churn in his admin if he becomes president, although that wouldn't exactly be a high bar compared to his first term.
Yes, this is a common issue with the elderly.
A combination of people acclimatizing to his face, and losing coloration from getting older.
Yep, it's harder to yell as people get older.
Agreed, there should be much more discussion of his age. Even Elon knew this a few years ago, but it seems like Biden being even older broke the media's brains a bit and so they put the yardstick for "old politician" at "unable to speak more than a few sentences".
LOL, earlier in the campaign season we were hearing all about how Trump was obese. He loses some weight, possibly a result of relentless in-person campaigning, maybe also an effect of the shock from the assassination attempt, and suddenly he's supposedly experience wasting?
Given he ran 2 other political campaigns where this didn't happen, and he's nearly 80 years old now, yes I'd say it's a reasonable conclusion. If the shoe fits...
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‘Relentless in person campaigning’ is not going to burn enough calories to make a very fat man lose a lot of weight.
Hadn’t he lost weight before he started the campaign?
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The exercise part won't, the screwed up meal schedule can.
Fortunately Diet Coke, McDonald’s and well-done steaks are available in every town in America.
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The meal schedule would probably make things worse, though,. especially given Trump's known predilection for fast food. When your diet consists solely of restaurant meals and catered events, it generally isn't as healthy as if you were eating at home, even for wealthy people like Trump.
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