Controversies Erupt as Trump and G.O.P. Make Critical Push to Voters

A Republican who reportedly called himself a “Black Nazi,” a false story about migrants eating cats and dogs, and a feud with Taylor Swift bring back a sense of chaos.

Even by the standards of a head-spinning presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump’s campaign over the past two weeks has been tumultuous.

A period that began when Mr. Trump pushed baseless claims from the debate stage that immigrants in Ohio were stealing and eating household pets ended with him facing attacks over his support of the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, who referred to himself as a “black Nazi” on the message board of a pornographic website.

In between, Mr. Trump invited Laura Loomer, a right-wing influencer known for promoting Sept. 11 conspiracy theories, to join him at events commemorating the anniversary of the attacks. He urged a government shutdown, attacked a cornerstone of his own tax policy, declared “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” on social media after she endorsed his rival and — at events intended to woo Jewish voters — said “the Jewish people” would be responsible if he lost the election, prompting fears of antisemitic reprisal.

While Vice President Kamala Harris crisscrosses the battleground states pressing her message about Mr. Trump being a danger to abortion rights, democracy and the country’s future, Republicans have been re-immersed in the kind of drama that has defined the former president’s political brand for more than a decade.

In the past, such a drumbeat of controversy in the final weeks of the campaign might have given voters pause, even prompting shifts in the race. But this year, the nation has met the crush of chaos with little more than a shrug and, some strategists say, a desire to tune out the campaign altogether.

“We are on overload with wild stories every news cycle,” said David Kochel, a longtime Republican strategist and a veteran of several presidential campaigns. “It’s absolutely overwhelming the capacity of people to track politics. You can’t keep up with it all, so a lot of people just tune it out.”

Adding to it all was a moment far outside his control: Mr. Trump faced a second assassination attempt. Instead of calling for the country to join together and condemn political violence in the aftermath, he used the threat to attack, blaming what he described as the “Communist Left Rhetoric” of President Biden and Ms. Harris for the attempts on his life.

It is unclear what — if anything — could reshuffle the race in such a fiercely polarized nation. Surveys conducted since the presidential debate this month show a tight race, with polling averages separating the two candidates by less than two points in all seven swing states. In fact, views of Mr. Trump have improved from earlier this year when he was leading Mr. Biden, with more voters viewing him favorably now than they did several months ago.

The tepid response to Mr. Trump’s latest round of provocations reflects both the nation’s deep partisan splits and a sense that voters are inured to his style after three election cycles where his showmanship has dominated the news.

In the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump followed the release of a tape showing him bragging about grabbing women by their genitals by bringing women who had claimed to have had affairs with Bill Clinton to a debate with Hillary Clinton. Four years later, in the fall of 2020, a Covid-stricken Mr. Trump skipped a debate, and then portrayed his return to the White House from the hospital as the voyage of a conquering hero.

For much of the 2024 race, Mr. Trump embraced a more streamlined campaign run by seasoned Republican operatives. Legal gag orders and weeks spent sitting in a New York courtroom limited his time on the campaign trail and what he could say about the felony charges against him. And during the first presidential debate in June, he stood back as Mr. Biden struggled through his answers, allowing his opponent to self-destruct.

But since Ms. Harris has ascended to the top of the ticket, and he has been freed from the prospect of imminent legal consequences, Mr. Trump has returned to the kind of attention-seeking habits honed by a career spent shaping his image in New York tabloids.

He pledged to visit Springfield, Ohio, even as local Republican officials pleaded with him to stay away, as the town continues to reel from a political firestorm ignited by his false claims.

And on Friday evening, he posted an all-caps appeal to women on his social media site, Truth Social, that also served as a reminder of his role in appointing the Supreme Court justices whose votes were pivotal to overturning Roe v. Wade.

“You will no longer be thinking about abortion, because it is now where it always had to be, with the states," he wrote.

Surveys have consistently found abortion rights, a cause that has lifted Democrats to electoral victories across the country, to be one of Mr. Trump’s weakest issues.

At a campaign rally in Wilmington, N.C., on Saturday, Mr. Trump repeated those appeals to women, who polls show favor Ms. Harris. He also ran through a series of complaints about electric cars, transgender athletes, immigrants, the news media and Ms. Harris herself, whom he called “not competent.”

Some Republicans worry that the collective impact could alienate more moderate Republicans, whose support could prove to be decisive in such a tight contest, as Mr. Trump perhaps reminds those voters why they denied him a second term.

The elevation of Ms. Loomer, who posted a racist joke about Ms. Harris, concerned even some of his closest allies, as his campaign has sought to make inroads with voters of color, whose support could make a difference in key battlegrounds. Amid a flurry of criticism, he sought to distance himself somewhat on social media, calling her a “private citizen.”

Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican seeking re-election in a swing district that Mr. Trump lost in 2020 and where he is trailing in private polling this year, said he had implored the former president’s campaign team to keep him focused on issues like inflation, the danger from wars in the Middle East and Ms. Harris’s record of embracing liberal policies — and to avoid self-inflicted wounds.

“If he’d stay on message, he’d win easy,” Mr. Bacon said.

The congressman said Mr. Trump’s lack of discipline was making it harder for him to fend off his own Democratic challenger, warning of the impact the former president’s rhetoric could have in the swing districts that will determine control of Congress.

“If Trump is down seven, that’s a heavy lift for me to win,” Mr. Bacon said. “There’s fewer and fewer split voters. We had a 12-point split in 2020, but I’d rather not have to make that heavy lift.”

Many Democrats agree, saying that Mr. Trump’s recent remarks remind voters of their concerns about his temperament and his ability to guide the nation.

“He has disproportionally benefited from people having forgotten the bad things about his presidency and having rose-colored glasses about some of the more positive things,” said Navin Nayak, a Democratic strategist and the president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “Now, people are being reminded why they fired him in the first place.”

Trump aides reject the idea that the former president’s inflammatory statements have hurt his efforts to recapture the White House. Many believe that little will dramatically alter attitudes of Mr. Trump, who captured his party’s nomination even after becoming the first president to be impeached twice by Congress and the first to be convicted of felony crimes.

A set of polls from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College released last week found that nearly 90 percent of voters say they do not need to learn more about Mr. Trump to decide their vote.

His campaign is focused on driving its supporters to the polls, reflecting a belief that the path to victory echoes the 2016 strategy, when Mr. Trump won the White House by expanding his base rather than by winning over swing voters.

“President Trump has built the most powerful, disciplined and professional team in political history and, under his leadership, has overcome every single obstacle in his way,” said Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, adding that the “enemies of America will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump from returning to the White House.”

Democrats have been running against Mr. Trump’s polarizing politics practically since he descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower to declare his presidential bid in 2015. Their strategy of transforming the campaign into a referendum on Mr. Trump’s character failed in 2016 but succeeded four years later, when Mr. Biden captured the White House with promises to restore order to American governance and heal the country’s divisions. Attacking Mr. Trump as unfit for office was a central plank of Mr. Biden’s re-election strategy for much of the year.

Ms. Harris has taken a slightly different approach. Rather than build up Mr. Trump as an existential threat to democracy, she has minimized him as “weird,” stuck in the past and more interested in enriching himself than in fighting for American voters. She has focused her attacks on how a second Trump administration would erode reproductive rights, hurt the middle class and lead the country into chaos.

Campaigning in Madison, Wis., on Friday, she pronounced the country “tired of the division and hate” emanating from Mr. Trump’s campaign and argued that her campaign was the one aiming to unite the country with a steady hand. Mr. Trump, she said, has no consistent beliefs beyond helping billionaires and hurting women.

“In many ways, as you’ve heard me say before, he is an unserious man,” Ms. Harris said. “But the consequences of putting him back in the White House are extremely serious.”