Donald Trump, who said in Pennsylvania on Sunday that he regrets leaving the White House in 2021, is ending the 2024 campaign the way he began it – dishing out a stew of violent, disparaging rhetoric and repeated warnings that he will not accept defeat if it comes.

At a rally in the must-win battleground state, the former president told supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” office after losing the 2020 election, described Democrats as “demonic” and complained about a new poll that no longer shows him leading in Iowa, which he twice carried.

Trump spent much of his speech ranting about alleged election interference this year and lamenting his departure from office after losing to Joe Biden four years ago. The US had the “safest border in the history of our country” on the day he left office, Trump claimed.

“I shouldn’t have left, I mean, honestly,” he went on, harkening back to the aftermath of the last election.

Acknowledging he’d gone off-script, Trump – in a county he won by more than 15 points in 2020 – claimed again, with no evidence, that this vote was fixed against him.

“Isn’t this better than my speech?” Trump said. “Because honestly, somebody’s got to talk about it.”

His comments marked a continuation of the increasingly vengeful message that’s dominated the final weeks of his campaign: Promises to retaliate against his political rivals. Furious, threatening tirades against the press corps. Increasingly outlandish claims about the 2020 election and his desire for total power if restored to the presidency.

At one point, the former president, who has been the target of at least two assassination attempts, said he “wouldn’t mind” if a gunman aiming at him also shot through the “the fake news.”

“I have this piece of glass here. But all we have really over here is the fake news, right? And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news,” Trump said at a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania. “And I don’t mind that so much. I don’t mind.”

A Trump campaign spokesman said after the rally that the former president was actually musing about how the press was protecting him.

“President Trump was stating that the Media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!” Steven Cheung said in a statement.

The former president’s newest round of threats and outrageous statements caps off a campaign with one of the darkest, most menacing closing messages in modern American history. In the last few weeks alone, Trump has doubled down on a pledge to use the military to combat the civilian “enemy within,” mused – in the guise of arguing he was the pro-peace candidate – about how former Rep. Liz Cheney, one his loudest conservative Republican critics, would fare with guns “trained on her face” in a warzone.

This weekend has brought its own slate of bizarre moments. On Sunday, Trump told NBC that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent post on X about removing fluoride from public water if Trump were to win reelection “sounds OK to me.”

“Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds OK to me,” Trump told NBC. “You know, it’s possible.”

And a night earlier in North Carolina, Trump chuckled approvingly at an audience member’s suggestion that Vice President Kamala Harris worked as a prostitute. After Trump insisted yet again that Harris did not work in a McDonald’s when she was younger, a supporter in Greensboro shouted, “She worked on a corner!”

Trump laughed, paused for a beat, then declared, “This place is amazing.”

As the crowd laughed, he added: “Just remember it’s other people saying it, it’s not me.”

His response to the crude remark underscored how the rot in American political discourse, a long-running spiral, went into overdrive after Trump’s arrival on the presidential campaign trail in 2015. It’s a contrast from seven years earlier, when a supporter of John McCain said during a campaign event that Barack Obama was lying about his identity, claiming, “He’s an Arab,” and the then-GOP nominee took the microphone from her hands, insisting his rival was “a decent family man (and) citizen that just I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”

Even then, though, Trump was lurking. He would soon emerge as one of the leading proponents of the “birther” conspiracy theory, a racist narrative that said Obama was not born in the US.

In the run-up to this year’s election, Trump has used the former president’s full name – Barack Hussein Obama – in an attempt to demonize him. He frequently mispronounces Harris’ first name, though he has shown before he knows the proper way to say it, and called her a “sh*t vice president.”

At other times, Trump has descended into farce. During a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, last month, he spent some time recalling the late, great golfer Arnold Palmer’s naked body.

“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women, I love women,” Trump said. “This man was strong and tough, and I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh, my God. That’s unbelievable.’”

Trump’s message to – and more often about – women has also become increasingly bizarre. At a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, last week, he told the crowd that his aides had asked him to stop saying he would be the “protector” of American women, in part because they recognized it as inappropriate.

“‘Sir, please don’t say that,’” Trump said he was advised. “Why? I’m president. I want to protect the women of our country. Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not.”

Recent polls have shown the former president trailing Harris with female voters by a significant margin, across demographic lines. Neither Trump nor his allies have pushed back on the numbers, instead imploring more men to vote.

“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” said Charlie Kirk, the leader of a right-wing group that Trump has entrusted with managing much of his ground game. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.”

Harris has mostly countered Trump’s bleak offerings with promises to bring an end to the tribal clashes that have defined most of the past decade.

“Our democracy doesn’t require us to agree on everything. That’s not the American way,” Harris said during a speech last week from the Ellipse in Washington, DC. “We like a good debate. And the fact that someone disagrees with us, does not make them ‘the enemy from within.’ They are family, neighbors, classmates, coworkers.”

“It can be easy to forget a simple truth,” she added. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

The vice president has also zeroed-in on Trump’s attacks on rivals and detractors, including a persistent insistence he wants to use the power of the federal government to punish them. By contrast, Harris likes to say, she is focused on policy, like a push to restore federal abortion rights following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

“On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list,” Harris said in Washington. “When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list full of priorities on what I will get done for the American people.”