We’re watching a Trump who feels validated by the voters who believe his conspiracy theories – or will look past them

By Vaughan Hillyard, correspondent for NBC News with the Trump campaign

Since the onset of the pandemic four and a half years ago, I’d contend that I haven’t seen Trump as seemingly unencumbered or confident in his own societal standing as he publicly is portraying from the campaign stage right now – two weeks from the 2024 election.

“We need you!” multiple faithful supporters yelled out toward him at this Greenville, NC, rally as he told them about how he could comfortably be sitting on a beach right now rather than running for president again.

But after four indictments, civil findings of financial fraud, defamation and sexual abuse, a guilty verdict on 34 felony counts, and surviving an assassination attempt, Trump is exuding confidence, telling crowds that he is up in the polls in all the battleground states – but also that he will even win California.

The crowds at his events are adding fuel to his final two-week run. For the first time, the aura of Election Day feeling imminent is here.

“15 days!” Trump said as the crowd erupted. He took a pause to let its immediacy soak in.

Trump’s unencumbered dismissal of message discipline in this home stretch is paired, however, with a marked recent attention to suggest Democratic “cheating” is to come.

Despite telling NBC literally two hours earlier that he hasn’t scene any specific incidents of cheating so far, he went on a riff at a rally that Democrats are preparing to cheat, implying it’s the one obstacle in his way.

He is increasingly placing the onus on Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley to take the blame in the scenario the election were to go in Harris’s favour.

“He’s going to stop the cheating,” Trump said at the rally about Whatley in his home state.

In 2022, Trump was fighting for his relevancy by trying to prove to the country that his endorsement of candidates in GOP primaries was the key to the MAGA base.

Then, in 2023, he scoffed at a litany of other GOPers who dared to rival him for their party’s nomination.

And through 2024, he’s effectively staved off, thus far, any immediate repercussions of the criminal charges against him.

We’re watching a Donald Trump who feels validated and supported by a segment of the American population who either believes his conspiracy theories or is willing to look past his history of alleged indiscretions.