When President Grover Cleveland left the presidency in 1889, the 22nd president of the United States had no designs to seek a second term. Four years later, on March 4, 1893, Cleveland stood at the East Portico of the Capitol, swearing the same oath he had recited eight years prior.
Cleveland became the 24th president battered and bruised, but unbroken: He’d taken on Tammany Hall, survived scandal, and overcome an embarrassing defeat in the 1888 election. Cleveland, the only Democratic president of the Reconstruction era, believed his administration’s policies were vindicated by the intermittent four years. The American people appeared to feel the same, as Cleveland’s popular vote margin of victory, about 400,000 votes, was the largest since President Ulysses S. Grant’s reelection in 1872.
More than 130 years on, a similar story seems to be unfolding: Former President Donald Trump is on the cusp of doing what only Cleveland had managed to do before, by returning to the White House after four years out of power.
Trump, as well as his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris, are making their closing arguments to the American people ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5. As the Trump campaign did in 2016, it has reduced the former president’s pitch into a two-minute advertisement.
Trump’s closing advertisement of the 2016 cycle, titled “Donald Trump’s Argument for America,” spoke of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement as an insurgency.
“Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people,” Trump said in the advertisement. “For those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don’t have your good in mind.”
Trump attacked the same sacred cows of the Washington establishment—immigration, trade, and foreign policy—that propelled him to political prominence. “The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration, and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry,” he said. “It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.”
The message carried Trump all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Trump himself, though a billionaire, encapsulated the insurgency through his candidacy. He remains the only man ever elected president of the United States without political or military experience. His experience, or lack thereof, led Trump to lean on a piece of his identity that he shared with the average American—the Washington outsider.
“The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. The only force strong enough to save our country is us. The only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you, the American people,” the advertisement concludes. “I’m doing this for the people and for the movement, and we will take back this country for you. And we will make America great again.”
In 2024, the situation is more complex, and the Trump campaign’s identity more nuanced.
The core issues in this election remain the same as they were in 2016: immigration, foreign policy, and the economy and trade. The fundamentals appear to cut in the former president’s favor. Millions of migrants have surged across the southern border into the United States during President Joe Biden’s tenure. The chaos has flowed into American cities, where migrants have overwhelmed schools and social services and gangs have taken over apartment buildings and hotels.
The United States finds itself intimately involved in two wars—one in the Middle East and one in Eastern Europe—that are on the brink of broadening beyond their region, with the threat of nuclear weapons always lurking in the background. Economic and job growth continues to underwhelm, while prices and interest rates rise too rapidly for the average American family to keep pace.
Trump is no longer, as Michael Moore said predicting Trump’s victory in 2016, simply “the human Molotov cocktail” the forgotten man can throw at the establishment. Now, he’s a precision drone strike—the former president with a record and experience dealing with the establishment that opposes him. In 2024, Trump is equal parts politician and outsider and equal parts incumbent and challenger. He’s the demolition crew and the construction crew.
Trump’s closing advertisement for this election cycle, titled “Never Quit,” makes a similar argument, seeking to untangle the enigmatic Trump campaign of 2024.
The two-minute advertisement begins with a quick rehashing of Trump’s record as president—tax cuts, rising wages, and an economy outperforming growth expectations—before abruptly cutting to what has transpired under the Biden-Harris administration. “Inflation destroyed the lives of so many people. Interest rates went from 2% to 10%. Millions of illegal immigrants, traffickers, and drugs coming into our country,” Trump says. “Our country has gone to hell”
“So, I made a decision to run,” Trump continues. “I will fight for you with every breath, and I will never let you down.” The advertisement then features members of the president’s family and prominent figures who have coalesced behind the former president’s message over the course of the 2024 campaign. Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, now a Republican, is among them. “We can’t allow our country to be destroyed by politicians who will put their own power ahead of the interests of the American people, our freedom, and our future,” Gabbard says in the advertisement.
While Cleveland was bruised and bled figuratively before returning to the presidency, Trump has done so literally—escaping two assassination attempts over the course of his campaign. “President Trump is literally putting his life on the line, and he’s willing to risk it all because he loves this country,” a clip from UFC President Dana White’s speech at the Republican National Convention says during the advertisement as video plays of the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
While Trump’s closing argument in 2016 implored the American people to ignite a revolt against the status quo in Washington, the former president’s closing argument in 2024 tells a story of survival and successes in the course of a nearly decade-long war against the political establishment.
