Trump says he “shouldn't have left” the White House as he wraps up the campaign with an increasingly dark message

CNN
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Donald Trump, who said Sunday in Pennsylvania that he regrets leaving the White House in 2021, is ending the 2024 campaign the way he started it – with a mix of violent, derogatory rhetoric and repeated warnings that he will not accept defeat in case of defeat.

At a rally in the battleground state, the former president told his supporters that he “should not have left office” after losing the 2020 election; described Democrats as “demonic”; complained about a new poll showing him no longer leading in Iowa, a state he led twice; and said he wouldn't mind if a gunman who aimed at him also fired through “the fake news.”

Trump spent much of his speech bolstering baseless claims that Democrats cheated in the 2024 election, sowing doubts about their integrity as polls show he and Vice President Kamala Harris deadlocked nationally. He railed against alleged election interference this year and lamented his resignation from office after losing to Joe Biden four years ago.

“I shouldn't have gone. I mean, honestly, because we did that, we did it so well,” Trump said during his rally in Lititz, claiming the U.S.-Mexico border is more secure under his administration.

It was a rare public admission of regret about taking part in the peaceful transfer of power after he incited his supporters to violently storm the US Capitol as he sought to undermine the results of the 2020 election, which he lost, but didn't want to admit – something Trump is currently doing The federal charges are over.

Trump, whose voice sounded hoarse throughout his speech, repeatedly railed against the new Iowa poll released Saturday evening that showed no clear leader between him and Harris in the state.

“We do all this crap with the press and fake stuff and fake polls,” Trump said, claiming the Des Moines Register and Mediacom poll was published by “one of my enemies.”

The poll delivered a gut punch to those close to Trump on Saturday evening, several people familiar with the reaction told CNN. The former president privately bristled at the numbers and argued the highly anticipated poll should never have been released.

Trump's advisers tried to reassure him that the poll was incorrect, calling it false and telling him that there is always a poll that stands out. His longtime pollster released a memo Saturday night arguing it was a “clear outlier.” But the gender breakdown showing women driving a swing toward Harris has privately worried Trump's allies, with the focus on the poll's finding that women in Iowa prefer Harris over him, 56% to 36%.

At another point during his Lititz rally, the former president, the target of two assassination attempts, suggested he would be okay with a gunman targeting him also firing through the “fake news.”

“I have this piece of glass here. But all we really have here is the fake news, right? And to get me, someone would have to shoot through the fake news,” Trump said. “And that doesn’t bother me that much. I don’t mind.”

A Trump campaign spokesman said after the rally that the former president was actually thinking about how the press was protecting him.

“President Trump stated that the media was in danger by protecting him and therefore was in grave danger itself and should have had a glass shield as well. There can be no other interpretation of what has been said. “He actually cared about her well-being, far more than his own!” said Steven Cheung in a statement.

Responding to Trump's comments on Sunday, a senior Harris campaign official said in a call with reporters: “For Trump, this election is really all about his own grievances and he is not about the American people.”

In his speech, Trump baselessly claimed that Democrats were “fighting so hard to steal this damn thing” and that voting machines were being rigged.

“They're spending all this money, all this money on machinery, and they're going to say we might need another 12 days to figure this out. And what do you think will happen in these 12 days? “What do you think is happening?” Trump said.

The crowd shouted back: “Fraud!”

“These elections must take place, they must be decided by Tuesday evening at 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock. “A bunch of corrupt people, they’re corrupt people,” Trump said.

The former president's latest threat caps a campaign with one of the darkest and most ominous closing messages in modern American history. In the last few weeks alone, Trump reiterated his promise to use the military to fight the civilian “enemy within” and mused – under the pretext that he was the pro-peace candidate – about how former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of his most vocal conservative Republicans Critic, would cope in a war zone with guns “pointed at their faces.”

This weekend brought a number of bizarre moments. On Sunday, Trump told NBC News that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s recent post on X about removing fluoride from public waters if Trump wins a second term “sounds OK to me.”

“Well, I haven't talked to him about it yet, but it sounds fine to me,” Trump told NBC. “You know, it’s possible.”

And a night earlier in North Carolina, Trump laughed approvingly at an audience member's suggestion that Harris worked as a prostitute. After Trump again insisted that Harris did not work at McDonald's when she was younger, a supporter in Greensboro shouted, “She worked on a corner!”

Trump laughed, paused for a moment, then declared: “This place is incredible.”

As the crowd laughed, he added, “Remember, it's other people saying it, not me.”

His reaction to the crude remark underscored how the decline in American political discourse, a long-running spiral, kicked into high gear after Trump's arrival on the presidential campaign trail in 2015. It's a contrast to seven years earlier, when a John McCain supporter said during a campaign rally that Barack Obama had lied about his identity, claiming, “He's an Arab,” and the then-GOP nominee took the microphone away from her out of hand and emphasized that his rival was “a decent family man (and) citizen, which is just me.” There just happen to be differences of opinion on fundamental issues.”

But even then, Trump was lurking. He would soon emerge as a leading proponent of the “Birther” conspiracy theory, a racist narrative that claimed Obama was not born in the United States.

Ahead of this year's election, Trump has used the former president's full name – Barack Hussein Obama – to demonize him. He frequently mispronounces Harris' first name, despite showing it before he knows how to pronounce it correctly, and calls her a “shitty vice president.”

At other times, Trump descended into farce. During a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, last month, he spent some time remembering the naked body of the late golf great Arnold Palmer.

“Arnold Palmer was a pure man, and I say that with all due respect to women, I love women,” Trump said. “This man was strong and tough, and I refused to say it, but when he was showering with the other pros when they came out there, they said, 'Oh my God.' This is unbelievable.'”

Trump's message to women – and more often about them – has also become increasingly bizarre. At a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, last week, he told the crowd that his staff had asked him to stop saying he was the “protector” of American women, in part because they recognized it as inappropriate.

“'Sir, please don't say that,'” Trump said he was advised. “Why? I'm president. I want to protect the women of our country. Well, I'm going to do it whether the women like it or not.”

Recent polls have shown the former president trailing Harris significantly among female voters across all demographic lines. Neither Trump nor his allies have pushed back the numbers, instead urging more men to vote.

“The early vote was disproportionately female,” said Charlie Kirk, the leader of a right-wing group that has entrusted Trump with managing much of his political activity. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.”

Harris has largely countered Trump's dire overtures with a promise to end the tribal conflicts that have characterized most of the last decade.

“Our democracy does not require us to agree on everything. That's not the American way,” Harris said last week during a speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. “We like a good debate. And the fact that someone has a different opinion than us does not make them an “enemy within.” They are family, neighbors, classmates, colleagues.”

“It can be easy to forget a simple truth,” she added. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

The vice president has also focused on Trump's attacks on rivals and critics, insisting he wants to use the power of the federal government to punish them. In contrast, Harris likes to say, she's focused on policy, such as the push to restore federal abortion rights after the Supreme Court's 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade was lifted.

“On day one, if Donald Trump were elected, he would walk into his office with a list of enemies,” Harris said in Washington. “If elected, I will come in with a to-do list full of priorities about what I will do for the American people.”

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins and Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this report.