News:- Trump is a lot like old Trump. Will 2016 tactics work in 2024?

The calendar says 2024. But for Donald Trump and his Republican presidential campaign, the last few days have felt like 2016 all over again.

Trump has ditched his post-assassination attempt unity argument and rebuffed calls from his party’s elected GOP stalwarts who’d prefer their presidential nominee focus on Democrats’ policies. Instead, the former president who hopes voters will send him back to the White House in November has settled into a familiar series of deeply personal attacks on his Democratic opponent, including inflammatory remarks about race.

Trump isn’t just battling with his partisan rivals. He also continues to feud with wayward Republicans and focus on his personal obsessions, such as crowd size. The GOP presidential nominee once was thought to be running a more disciplined campaign. But not anymore as he struggles to adjust to facing Vice President Kamala Harris instead of President Joe Biden in a contest that just a few weeks ago seemed over and now is back to toss-up status. Key battleground states steadily are shifting away from Trump’s outright favor as Harris boosts Democratic enthusiasm, raises large sums of money and draws big crowds.

Unable to counteract Harris’ momentum and increasingly lashing out with harsher attacks reminiscent of 2016, some in Trump’s party view his latest tactics as counterproductive – even if they previously proved effective in delivering him the presidency. Can Trump turn Harris into Clinton?
During a brief stretch following the July 13 assassination attempt, Trump talked about unity and trying to bring the country together. But that didn’t last long. He has since reverted to the cutthroat politics that characterized his first campaign.

A rookie politician who had long been famous for his real estate and media ventures, Trump shocked and offended much of the country eight years ago from the moment he came down the escalator in Trump Tower and declared his presidential bid with a screed against illegal immigrants. From there, Trump belittled his way through the White House campaign by mocking his primary opponents as “low energy Jeb” Bush, “Little Marco” Rubio and “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz. And then “Crooked Hillary” Clinton in the general election.

Trump won in 2016 despite a long list of inflammatory remarks, from the Access Hollywood tape that captured him bragging about grabbing women’s genitals to disputing that now deceased U.S. Sen. John McCain was a war hero after his time as a prisoner in Vietnam. Trump reprised his caustic 2016 campaign in 2020, but by then the incumbent president was facing significant backlash after four years of a chaotic and controversial White House that included Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, an impeachment and a mob of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the election results. He slammed Biden as “sleepy Joe,” repeatedly questioned his mental fitness and accused him of running a “basement campaign” for president during the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

The Republican president ended up losing states such as Georgia and Arizona that Democrats hadn’t carried in years.
Many in the GOP have bristled at various times over Trump’s approach, but most have eventually rallied around him. Fast forward to 2024, and Republicans are concerned that Trump seems to be returning to that 2016 formula as he struggles to change the trajectory of the current race.

He has labeled Harris “low IQ,” questioned her racial identity and mocked her name, which has left some in the party uncomfortable and critics calling him racist. While much of what Trump has done in the past was viewed as controversial, a mistake or undisciplined, he often came away without being hurt politically and in some cases his efforts may have even helped him. Some analysts believe Trump’s tactics may be less effective now.

“They’re going to have a hard time creating the same animosity toward Harris in two months that Hillary Clinton created over 25 years,” said Mike DuHaime, a GOP consultant and the former political director for the Republican National Committee who argued Harris has much less baggage than Clinton and will be harder to demonize.