Trump's advisers fretted about letting 'Trump be Trump.' He won anyway.

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

62% : As his polling numbers started to improve in October, some advisors and donors praised Trump: They now believed he had shifted the focus in his favor.
61% : Musk and Trump also spoke regularly, according to a source with knowledge of the conversations.
59% : "America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate," Trump said early on Wednesday to a roaring crowd of supporters at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.
57% : Malik, a former Democrat, is part of a group of rich tech investors who have shifted right and embraced Trump in recent years.
57% : Trump had opted for a lean ground game that targeted a specific universe: infrequent voters inclined to support Trump.
55% : Two days later, a week before Election Day, Trump got a break - and ran with it.
51% : Reuters spoke to more than 20 Trump allies, advisers, donors and Republican operatives for a detailed account of how Trump managed to pull off a stunning comeback, becoming the first former president in more than a century to win a second term after leaving the White House.
51% : "I have to do it my way," Trump told reporters a day after the North Carolina event, dismissing suggestions to alter his approach.
51% : And crucially, Trump was able to capitalize on voters' sour economic mood, which left them looking for a change in leadership.
50% : As Trump sealed the presidential election, winning 279 electoral votes to Harris' 223 by Wednesday morning, the result wasn't just a win for him.
50% : A majority of voters said they trust Trump more to handle the economy, with 51% saying they did so compared to 47% for Harris, according to preliminary results from a national exit poll conducted by data provider Edison Research.
50% : Trump refused to debate his Republican rivals during primary elections, yet he still glided to victory as the party's nominee.
50% : He briefed Trump separately from the rest of the leadership team and advised Trump to shake up his top campaign brass, one of the operatives said.
50% : It was the economy, Fleischman argued, that in the final hours led undecided voters to break for Trump.
49% : Then, on July 13, Trump was grazed in the ear by a would-be assassin's bullet during a speech in Pennsylvania.
48% : That week, Trump announced his running mate would be Senator JD Vance, author of best-selling 2016 memoir
47% : Trump shouted.
44% : And the voters who identified the economy as their primary concern voted overwhelmingly for Trump over Harris - 79% to 20%.
40% : As voters responded - some with support, others with sharp criticism - Trump succeeded in injecting immigration deeper into the race.
39% : Over the summer, a Musk-founded super PAC, an outside spending group that can raise unlimited sums, emerged to help Trump turn out voters.
39% : Beyond these erratic flourishes in the final days, however, Trump regularly made a point of asking supporters whether they were better off during his presidency or the current Biden-Harris administration.
38% : The interviews reveal how he forged key alliances, including with tech billionaire Elon Musk, who spent at least $119 million on canvassing for Trump in the seven battleground states.
36% : In the final months of the presidential campaign, Trump did it his way: diverging from prepared remarks, resorting to personal attacks, spouting anti-immigrant rhetoric, threatening retribution against rivals and ignoring advice from allies to stay focused on the issues.
36% : When top advisers made suggestions to get his campaign back on track, Trump at times ignored or berated them, claiming they were unprepared for Harris' rise, associates said.
34% : One prominent Trump ally, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, warned Trump over the summer that his ground game appeared almost non-existent in her state of Georgia, said a person close to both politicians.
33% : Trump publicly promised to tap Musk to lead a government efficiency commission if elected.
32% : But this time, Trump did not fire the team.
31% : Harris quickly emerged as the alternative, raising $100 million in two days - about the amount Trump had spent during his entire campaign to date - and unifying the Democratic Party almost overnight.
30% : The billionaire regularly dashed off posts supporting Trump and spread misinformation about voting to his more than 203 million followers.
29% : "The results speak for themselves," the official said..YOU'RE NOT FIREDOver the summer, Trump and his allies grilled campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita about what went wrong, according to three sources close to the campaign.
29% : Author of a book titled "Let Trump Be Trump," Lewandowski was known for supporting some of the ex-president's most controversial instincts, including his tendency to lean into conspiracy theories.
28% : While immigration has long been a hot-button social issue in the U.S., Trump spun it as an urgent existential threat, based largely on unfounded conspiracy theories.
27% : A campaign official who declined to be identified denied Trump threw papers and that campaign money was wasted.
26% : Stubbornly high prices weighed on voters, an issue Trump successfully pinned on Democrats.
26% : But Trump doubled down.
25% : Trump frequently put the spotlight on young white women allegedly killed by migrants illegally in the country.
25% : The extreme rhetoric, though divisive, diverted attention from issues where Trump was vulnerable, such as abortion or the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
23% : But when Trump got on stage, he essentially tore up the script, dropping some economic talking points, delving instead into the border and crime - and ripping into Harris in personal terms.
23% : Harris' shortened campaign season narrowed the time she had to make her case to voters and launch attack ads on Trump.
23% : Those Americans, especially white, working-class voters in economically struggling towns, once again saw Trump as an anti-establishment figure who understood their grievances.
23% : In Pennsylvania in late October, Trump discussed the purported size of the late golfer Arnold Palmer's penis.
21% : Trump responded by hiring Corey Lewandowski, a longtime adviser who was fired during the 2016 campaign after clashing with other staff.
21% : On immigration, he quipped, Trump was "as dumb as a fox," referring to the animal known for its cunning.
20% : As Harris started to rise in the polls and fill arenas, Trump complained in private of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars to beat a man who was no longer in the race, according to two associates who spoke with him frequently.
20% : Yet the rhetoric kept the spotlight on immigration, an issue that favored Trump more than Harris, according to opinion polls.
17% : "DUMB AS A FOX"As Harris retained a small lead in some polls in September, Trump leaned into dark rhetoric about migrants.
11% : At his Sept. 10 debate with Harris, their only face-to-face showdown, Trump repeated false claims that Venezuelan gangs had taken over swathes of a Colorado town.
7% : At one point, when Trump was handed polling figures showing Harris making gains, he cast the papers aside in disgust, according to one of the two Trump associates.

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