5 clues on how Trump may campaign between now and the November election against Biden
Missed Donald Trump's "Super Tuesday" speech?
The former president spoke to the nation Tuesday night after nearly a perfect score of presidential primary and caucus results.
Saying it was a "big night," Trump won 14 of 15 contests and now has secured nearly 1,000 delegates, just over 200 short of the number he needs to clinch the GOP nomination for a third time.
The rout has been so overwhelming that on Wednesday morning, the remaining Republican rival in the race, Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign. That sets up the long-predicted rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden.
So, what can the electorate expect to hear and see going forward?
Trump's speech laid out five key clues to how he will wage his campaign for a White House return.
1. Dystopia versus utopia
As Trump tells it, America under Biden is a country going to "hell."
He decried the millions of what he calls migrant criminals fist-fighting police officers and attacking the citizenry. It includes his view of the United States as a country so energy-limited that it has to buy tar from socialist Venezuela to provide gasoline and fuels. And it is a country that, in foreign affairs, is considered a "joke" by adversaries that Trump says he got along with fine, leading to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East he claims he would have deterred.
In his America, people of all walks of life, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic Americans, women, men, people with diplomas from the best schools in the world and people that didn't graduate high school all prospered.
"Every single group was doing better than ever before and it was a beautiful thing," Trump said.
The question for the broader pool of voters is: do they embrace his view or be turned off by his dark view of the country?
2. Trump's speech was as equally notable for the topics he didn't address
For example, reproductive rights. Trump's three U.S. Supreme Court nominees were critical in overturning Roe v. Wade. In its wake, a slew of state bans and restrictions on abortions have followed, and now include an assault on in vitro fertilization.
Another area he did not address was gun safety, an issue polls show that a broad majority of Americans want to see addressed as the country witnesses more than 600 mass shootings annually. Trump has been an ardent opponent of efforts to regulate firearm ownership and possession.
Super Tuesday: Trump vows to unify country with "success." Will centrists be convinced?
3. To pivot to the center and woo moderates — or not?
The axiom in political campaigns is that once a nomination is in hand, or close to it, candidates lurch back to the middle to position themselves for a general election win.
Trump's rhetoric this primary season has been caustic and, critics have said, toxic. He has called defendants charged for participating in the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 "hostages." He has said migrants crossing the U.S. southern border come straight out mental institutions and has compared them to the serial killer Hannibal Lecter in the "Silence of the Lambs" movie.
Trump refrained from such strident verbiage on Tuesday night. But he stepped to the brink several times.
At one point, he decried the "weaponization" of law enforcement against political figures, but stopped short of launching into attacks calling federal prosecutors "deranged" and state officials "racist."
At another juncture, he returned to his grievances about the border saying we have "many, many criminals coming into our country," including "murderers" and that the crisis is "choking" U.S. cities and states.
4. Trump's MAGA base has faith in him. Other voters will want the receipts.
In his speech, Trump promised to deliver the "greatest economy ever," to make the United States the "energy center of the world," "pay off debt," "drill baby drill" and get "inflation down."
"We're going to do things that nobody ever thought was possible," he said to cheers in his Mar-a-Lago ballroom.
Those have been campaign trail talking points and the MAGA base has demonstrated infinite faith in their leader.
But other electorates and voters, pollsters and political observers have said, will be far more discerning and are going to want the details on how a Trump 47 administration will actually deliver.
5. Finally, COVID is back. No, we mean in Trump's speech.
Trump does not mention the 2020 pandemic in his speeches. The years-long global health crisis ranks among the greatest national emergencies the nation has faced in the past century.
In many ways, much of the political atmosphere in America today is fallout from the illness and the economic shutdown imposed at the recommendation of national and world public health authorities and experts.
On Tuesday night, Trump acknowledged that "I don't even talk about" the coronavirus pandemic. And he lamented that he and his administration's efforts have been fully appreciated.
"We did a fantastic job on that. We never got credit for that," he said. "We never got the kind of due that we should have for the COVID."
It will be interesting to see if Trump continues to tout his administration's leadership on the coronavirus response in light of the public backlash of the past few years. Trump himself was booed during appearances in 2021 and 2022 when he championed the vaccine developed as part of Operation Warp Speed during his term.
And demanding credit for his handling of the crisis opens him up to criticism, such as reminders of his widely-ridiculed April 2020 advice during a nationally televised daily briefing for people to protect against coronavirus infection by consuming bleach and absorbing sunlight.
Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at [email protected]. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Super Tuesday speech: 5 clues on how Trump will campaign into November
