Trump Says He ‘Shouldn’t Have Left’ White House in 2020 at Pennsylvania Rally

Trump, in Increasingly Dark and Dour Tones, Says He ‘Shouldn’t Have Left’ the White House

Donald J. Trump, who sought to overturn his loss of the 2020 election, also suggested that he didn’t mind if reporters were shot.

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By Michael GoldMaggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher

Michael Gold reported from Lititz, Pa., Maggie Haberman from Palm Beach, Fla., and Shane Goldmacher from Philadelphia.

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With two days left in his third presidential campaign, former President Donald J. Trump told supporters at a Pennsylvania rally on Sunday that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House at the end of his term, escalated his unfounded claims of voter fraud and said “I don’t mind” if reporters are shot at.

With the remarks, Mr. Trump used the final days of his campaign to offer voters a stark reminder of the violence that came at the end of his term when, after weeks of his false claims that he had won an election he had lost, a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to try to prevent the certification of President Biden’s victory.

Mr. Trump has not committed to accepting the 2024 election results unless he believes they are fair, and he has repeatedly suggested in recent weeks that the only plausible explanation for him losing in 2024 would be if Democrats “cheat.”

On Sunday, at an airport in Lititz, Pa., Mr. Trump diverted from a closing argument about the stakes of the race with Vice President Kamala Harris and instead, his voice audibly hoarse and his speech sluggish, indulged in his personal grievances as he called the Democratic Party “demonic.”

Reflecting on the state of border security at the end of his tenure, Mr. Trump said he regretted ever leaving office.

“I shouldn’t have left, I mean, honestly,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “we did so well, we had such a great—” and then cut himself off. He then immediately noted “so now, every polling booth has hundreds of lawyers standing there.”

The remark echoed what Mr. Trump told some aides within days of his 2020 election loss: that he wasn’t going to leave the White House.

“I’m just not going to leave,” Mr. Trump told one aide. He told another, “We’re never leaving,” and added: “How can you leave when you won an election?”

His renewed focus on denying the last election’s result was not the only dark note in his speech on Sunday, the first of three stops he is making in the penultimate day of the race. At one point Mr. Trump was discussing the protective glass that has encased him at outdoor rallies since he survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., on July 13.

“To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that much, ’cause, I don’t mind. I don’t mind,” he said, as some in the crowd laughed and howled.

Later, acknowledging a gap in the protective glass, he gestured to the press area. “They’re my glass,” he said. “Those people are my glass.”

As Mr. Trump approached the end of his remarks, his top adviser, Susie Wiles, appeared and seemed to be trying to have him wrap up his speech.

His spokesman, Steven Cheung, later claimed that the comments from Mr. Trump — who has recently increased his attacks against the news media, called for revoking the licenses of broadcast outfits and said that if The Washington Post disappeared it would be positive for the nation — had “nothing to do with the media being harmed” but rather “actually looking out for their welfare.”

Mr. Cheung’s statement did not address Mr. Trump saying that he never should have left the White House.

Mr. Trump has intensified his use of threatening language recently. He has called for prosecuting a range of people if he deems they cheated in the election, and said that Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic campaigning with Ms. Harris, should be put somewhere “with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her” as he accused her of sending people into battle while not having to risk doing so herself.

Mr. Trump has never been a disciplined candidate, often taking pride in following tangents and at times incoherent digressions.

But in the campaign’s final stretch, he had been making a greater effort to stick to the script that advisers have been urging him to follow: making the argument that the Biden administration had ruined the economy, that illegal immigration was out of control and that only he could improve a country that had gone downhill since voters tossed him out of the White House in 2020.

However, Mr. Trump’s weekend was marked by a spate of new polls showing a tight race, including a Des Moines Register poll showing him behind in Iowa, which his team disputed and called an outlier. Those polls were very much on his mind as he spoke on Sunday morning. Mr. Trump suggested that some polls — presumably the ones tilted against him — should be illegal.

Mr. Trump appeared visibly fatigued on Sunday, speaking slowly and with a scratchy voice.

At his rally in Lititz Mr. Trump voiced disdain for the speech he has been giving during the final stretch of his campaign and made clear his preference for a freewheeling rant. He then made a host of baseless claims of widespread fraud, suggesting he was at the center of a conspiracy to keep him from returning to the White House.

Mr. Trump claimed that voter machines would be hacked, that only Election Day voting and paper ballots could be trusted and that a fair election was one that could be called by 11 p.m. on election night. He argued that efforts to extend polling hours to allow more people to vote — something his own party has pushed for in Pennsylvania — were tantamount to fraud.

“I’m the only one that talks about it because everyone is afraid to damn talk about it,” Mr. Trump said. “And then they accuse you of being a conspiracy theorist, ‘He’s a conspiracy theorist,’” he went on, using a singsong voice. “And they want to lock you up, they want to put you in jail. The ones that should be locked up are the ones that cheat on these horrible elections that we go through in our country.”

Mr. Trump has in recent months threatened a wide group of people that includes lawyers, political donors and operatives with prosecution if he wins the election and people have been found to have “cheated” in connection with voting.

He bragged about the size and attendance of his rallies, falsely claiming he had packed an arena in Milwaukee two nights earlier where there had been a number of empty seats.

“Isn’t this better than my speech?” Mr. Trump asked the crowd. Later, he added, “I love being off these stupid teleprompters, because the truth comes out.”