President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday wrapped up his postelection victory tour, showing few signs of turning the page from his blustery campaign to focus on uniting a divided nation a month before his inauguration.
At each stop, the Republican has gloatingly recapped his election night triumph, reignited some old political feuds while starting some new ones, and done little to quiet the hate-filled chants of “Lock her up!” directed at Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
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Little changed at the tour’s finale at the same football stadium in Mobile, Alabama, that hosted the biggest rally of his campaign. Trump saluted his supporters as true “patriots” with little attempt to reach out to the more than half of the electorate that didn’t vote for him.
“We are really the people who love this country,” said Trump.
He reminisced about his campaign announcement and his ride down Trump Tower’s golden escalator. His disputed a newspaper’s account of the size of the crowd at one of his rallies and bashed the press as dishonest. And he joked that he booked a small ballroom for his election night party so, if he lost, he “could get out!”
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And he paid homage to the August 2015 rally here that he said jump-started his campaign. Though the crowd was not as large on Saturday, it was no less fervid, repeatedly chanting “Build the wall!” when Trump renewed his vow to build an impenetrable border at the Mexican border.
“We’re thanking the people of Alabama and we’re thanking the people of the South because boy did we do well,” said Trump, who remained undeterred when it began to rain on the outdoor stadium. “We’ll stay out here. To hell with this suit. I never liked this suit anyway.”
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Trump brought his nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, up onstage to receive cheers from his hometown crowd. When Trump’s plane landed, he received a water cannon salute from a pair of fire trucks and was then greeted by several Azalea Trail Maids, local women dressed in antebellum Southern Belle outfits.
The raucous rallies, a hallmark of his campaign, are meant to salute supporters who lifted him to the presidency. But these appearances also have been his primary form of communication since the Nov. 8 election.
Trump has eschewed the traditional news conference held by a president-elect within days of winning. He’s done few interviews, announced his Cabinet picks via news release and continues to rely on Twitter to broadcast his thoughts and make public pronouncements.
That continued Saturday morning when Trump turned to social media to weigh in on China’s seizure of a U.S. Navy research drone from international waters, misspelling “unprecedented” when he wrote “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act.”
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He later corrected the tweet. China said Saturday it intended to return the drone to the U.S.
Within days of beating Clinton, Trump suggested to aides that he resume his campaign-style barnstorming. Though he agreed to hold off until he assembled part of his Cabinet, Trump has repeatedly spoken of his fondness for being on the road. Aides are considering more rallies after he takes office, to help press his agenda with the public – a possibility that Trump embraced from the stage Saturday.
At the Pennsylvania rally, he launched into a 20-minute recap of his election night win. The crowd cheered as the president-elect slowly ticked off his victories state by state. He mixed in rambling criticisms of pundits and politicians from both parties.
Trump also thanked African-Americans who didn’t vote, saying “They didn’t come out to vote for Hillary. They didn’t come out. And that was a big – so thank you to the African-American community.” Such rhetoric raised new questions about his ability to unify the country.
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In Ohio, he took veiled swipes at fellow Republicans, including the state’s governor, John Kasich, and independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin, whom he solely refers to as “that guy.” McMullin competed chiefly in Utah.
In Florida, Trump remembered his general election foe by joking, “We had fun fighting Hillary, didn’t we?” He said his supporters were “vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall? We want the wall!’
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But Trump has also sounded some notes of unity on the tour. In North Carolina, he said, “We will heal our divisions and unify our country. When Americans are unified there is nothing we cannot do – nothing!”
And in Mobile he acknowledged that “now the hard work begins” and ended with a plea for all Americans, including those who did not support him, to “never give up.”
After the Alabama rally, Trump planned to return to Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach estate. Aides said the president-elect probably would spend Christmas week there and could remain at the Florida resort until New Year’s.
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