Reimagining Trump Rally 1.0 to win in November

OPINION:

Since 2016, Donald Trump’s more than 600 rallies have built an impregnable Republican base. With less than 90 days until Election Day — and less than a month before early voting begins in key battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania — now is the time to quickly reimagine, retool and reposition Trump Rally 1.0 to woo the relatively small number of swing voters who will determine the election outcome.

Roughly half a Trump rally speech is scripted red meat for his base. The other half is often humorous Trump improvisations on the day’s news. Throw in the former president’s playful and sometimes brutal eviscerations of his opponent (or whoever may have wronged him), and a Trump Rally 1.0 has always been a fast-moving feast for rallygoers and TV networks alike.

Mr. Trump doesn’t need feasts now. He needs votes, and the current rally formula is not sufficiently focused on the stark policy differences between him and Kamala Harris that will swing voters in battleground states. Instead, when Mr. Trump attacks Ms. Harris personally rather than on policy, Ms. Harris’ support among swing voters rises, particularly among women.

Let’s reimagine a Trump Rally 2.0 as my old boss takes the podium at his next rally. After a big welcome to the crowd and his obligatory recognition of the local dignitaries and political candidates he has endorsed, the former president immediately begins entering into an interactive Jumbotron “policy dialogue” with Kamala Harris.

Mr. Trump’s goal is to expose the radical and often incompetent and inexperienced elements of Ms. Harris’ policies. Yet in this interactive experience, instead of telling his rally audience that she supports an open border, defunding the police, defracking Pennsylvania, men competing in women’s sports or higher corporate taxes, Mr. Trump shows Ms. Harris expressing and revealing these stark differences in her own words on the Jumbotrons throughout the arena and on the TV sets of audiences watching the rally.

Through such simulated interactions, once Ms. Harris’ words are played and shown, Mr. Trump then offers his side of the policy equation, relates her policy to one of the many crises facing this country and, most importantly, offers concrete solutions.

As a second and synergistic Trump innovation and to further boost the policy content of the rallies, Mr. Trump could also feature video clips from former and perhaps future Trump advisers and Cabinet officials offering details of the specific policy actions he plans to take to bring inflation under control, secure the border, bring peace to Ukraine and the Middle East and so on. This suggests a third innovation.

Suppose that before each rally, Mr. Trump holds a press conference with select advisers on the issues: for example, Ric Grenell on foreign policy, Robert O’Brien on national security, former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on trade and tariffs, former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on fracking, Tom Homan and Stephen Miller on illegal immigration.

As a fourth synergy, Mr. Trump might intersperse his remarks with video clips from citizens harmed by the policies that the Harris-Biden White House has implemented. For example, at a rally in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump might introduce a video clip montage from workers in the fracking patch who have lost their jobs. These workers might be brought on at the end of the speech to join his policy advisers and the president on stage in a kind of “traveling road show” bow as you see at the end of a Broadway production.

Retooling and repositioning Trump Rally 1.0 to incorporate these innovations would be easy. Jumbotron and video screens are abundant in every arena Mr. Trump will play, speechwriters Vince Haley and Ross Worthington can easily incorporate the appropriate cues and language to simulate the proposed interactions, and there is a cornucopia of video clips that expose both Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, for the “woke,” radical, dangerous politicians that they are.

It would be equally easy to schedule news conferences before rallies, and Mr. Trump has no shortage of policy advisers to call upon to join him at the press conferences and record video clips for the interactive rally speeches.

With this interactive Jumbotron-speak, Mr. Trump can have equal fun skewing Mr. Walz. Here, Mr. Trump can choose from any number of TV clips in which “Tampon Tim” supports feminine napkins in boys’ restrooms; deadly COVID-19 lockdowns as Minnesota governor; letting Minneapolis burn during the 2020 riots or committing “stolen valor” offenses as Mr. Walz abandoned his fellow soldiers on their way to the Iraq War.

As a final innovation — more of a courtesy and a strategy — Mr. Trump’s appearances at his rallies must always start on time at five after the hour in prime time and end promptly in 55 minutes. Why?

Trump rallies offer millions of dollars in free media, and if TV producers can count on precision timing, they will be much more inclined to cover them. When Mr. Trump goes long, he not only squanders precious time and energy he will need for the homestretch. He runs the risk of going off message and upsetting the whole rally apple cart. Never is there an admonition that less is more than in this Trump Rally 2.0 context.

And to make sure rallygoers get their “money’s worth,” policy advisers and politician dignitaries can warm up the crowd in the preceding hour in the same fashion as the tightly scripted and highly successful Republic National Convention.

A Duke Ellington song once said, “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” Trump Rally 2.0 may be one of the best ways to reach the swing voters my old boss needs to win on Nov. 5.

• Peter Navarro served for four years in the Trump White House as a senior adviser. His most recent book is “The New MAGA Deal: An Unofficial ’Deplorables Guide’ to the Trump 2024 Policy Platform.”