Wistful Trump reflects on nine years of MAGA rallies

Donald Trump is not a man overly given to reflection. But he cut a briefly forlorn figure on Friday afternoon as he told his supporters that after nine years he was holding some of his last ever campaign rallies.

'We're winding down,' he told a crowd in Warren, just outside Detroit, Michigan. 

'Nine years we've been doing it, right? And now we're winding down.' 

Aides have frequently described how Trump thrives off his rally audiences, coming away energized after entertaining arenas crammed with fans for upwards of 90 minutes at a time.

He has made the format his own since descending the golden escalator in 2015, even adapting them to outdoor, airfield events during the pandemic-hit 2020 campaign. 

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It all ends on Monday night, with the finale to his 2024 race in Grand Rapids. That was where he finished his victorious 2016 campaign, an event his supporters talk of in near-mystical terms.

Trump has said he will not run again. Which means, win or lose, Monday will herald his final campaign rally.

Instead, he said he was planning for what comes after Monday.

'Hopefully we'll be going to the next phase, which is turning our country around' he said. 'Because we've got a little bit of a mess to take care of, don't we?'

His mood brightened as he whipped his supporters into a frenzy.

As ever, they turned the event into a pantomime, engaging in call and response ('Are you better off now than you were four years ago?), booing villains (Harris and Biden, the 'fake news,' various Cheneys), and joining in on the punchlines ('Kamala, you're fired.')

There were costumes. 

On Friday, dozens of people donned sanitary worker vests. Braver souls arrived in black garbage bags, as they wore Biden's stammer or insult (depending on your political persuasion) as a badge of honor.

And the 'Front Row Joes' took their usual places, wearing red, white, and blue baseball-style jerseys.

While critics compare Trump's events to Nazi rallies, a more accurate comparison may be a singalong 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' screening in a midwestern megachurch.

All topped off with the Village People's Y.M.C.A., one of the campest songs in music history. 

It all leant a bittersweet air to Friday. 

'I can only say, it's been the experience of a lifetime for a lot of us,' said Trump, the televangelist in the analogy. 'Some of you have been to 300 rallies.

'You're going to look back at this time in life, you know ... you're going to say there was something very, very special about what we all did together.

'We all did it together.' 

Other politicians, he added, might hope for about 300 people in a crowd. 'If they're good.' 

The final DailyMail.com poll of the race gives Trump a three-point lead over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

But neither candidate is leaving anything to chance as they crisscross the seven battleground states that will decide the election.

Trump officials are buoyed by early voting data and polls that they believe shows they are in a much better position than either 2016 or 2020.

At each rally, Trump is billing the vote as the most important in history. And on Friday it came with a warning that this could be the last 

"Because it's now or never. If we don't do it, it's never going to happen again,' he said. 

'You know, there are those that say that if we don't win this election, you may never have another election in this country again. 

'That's a positive with these radical left lunatics that we're dealing with.'