[35] It also received significant media attention for its close connections to The Heritage Foundation, which developed Project 2025,[36][35][37] a playbook which was criticized for potentially facilitating Trump's rise to dictatorial power and steering the United States toward autocracy.

[108][109][110] In August 2023, Trump was indicted separately both by the federal government and the state of Georgia on numerous criminal conspiracy and fraud charges he is alleged to have committed along with co-conspirators during efforts to illegally change and overturn the results of the lost 2020 presidential election.

[123] The New York Times Fact Check stated that "Mr. Trump repeated many familiar exaggerations about his own achievements, reiterated misleading attacks on political opponents and made dire assessments that were at odds with reality.

[32] In campaign speeches, Trump stated that he would centralize government power under his authority, replace career federal civil service employees with political loyalists, and use the military for domestic law enforcement and the deportation of immigrants.

[136] Trump has been noted by analysts' for attempting to strike a middle ground on abortion despite previously calling himself "the most pro-life president ever",[147] and taking credit for having appointed the Supreme Court justices responsible for the overturning of Roe v.

[179] By October 2024, Reuters reported that Trump was "rolling out a new tax-cut proposal about once a week in an unusual rush in the final stretch of the campaign to sway voters" but with "little acknowledgment of the fiscal cost to be paid down the road".

[190][191][192][193] In June 2024, 16 Nobel Prize in Economics laureates signed an open letter arguing that Trump's fiscal and trade policies coupled with efforts to limit the Federal Reserve's independence would reignite an inflation surge in the United States.

[194][195][196] Most economists surveyed by the WSJ in July 2024 found that inflation would be worse under Trump compared to Biden, due in part to tariffs, a crackdown on illegal immigration, and larger federal budget deficits.

[218] In November, 2022, Trump repeated claims on the campaign trail ridiculing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Green New Deal, and incorrectly stated that the effects of climate change would not happen for another 200 to 300 years.

[20] Throughout January and early February 2024, Trump successfully called on House and Senate Republicans to kill a bipartisan immigration deal to address the Mexico–United States border crisis that included several sought-after conservative proposals.

[35] Trump has frequently criticized of what he sees as perceived restrictions on police use of force, advocating for a tougher stance on local governments that receive federal grants by pushing for the reinstatement of stop-and-frisk policies.

[286][287][288] Trump has also advocated for the implementation of qualified immunity and full indemnification for law enforcement officers, a move that experts believe is largely superfluous and would simply serve to strengthen current police protocols.

[47] According to The New York Times, a computer analysis found that since 2015, Trump's speeches had grown "darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past" and were described as "rambling" and tangential.

[317] Kelly McBride has commented that it is a difficult task for journalists to convey his rhetoric in a succinct way, which results in criticisms that they are "selectively quoting his speeches to make them sound more coherent than they actually are" and "packaging Trump's ideas into news stories as if they are sensible suggestions".

[399] At rallies, Trump has stated that undocumented immigrants will "rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill" American citizens,[18] that they are "stone-cold killers", "monsters", "vile animals", "savages", and "predators" that will "walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat"[307][308][18][419] and "grab young girls and slice them up right in front of their parents".

[439][440][45] Starting in autumn of 2023,[56] Trump repeatedly stated that undocumented immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country", which has been compared to racial hygiene rhetoric language echoing that of white supremacists and Adolf Hitler.

Trump has repeatedly talked about "good genes" and previously mentioned "racehorse theory" during a campaign rally in 2020 which was used to justify selective breeding of humans and was criticized for connections to eugenics and Nazism during World War II.

[446] In November 2022, Trump was widely criticized[447][448][449] after eating dinner at his Mar-a-Lago home with guests including African-American rapper Kanye West, who had recently posted antisemitic statements on social media, and Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier.

Trump asked them to give $1 billion to his campaign and pledged to immediately roll back environmental rules and policies implemented under President Biden, including clean energy and electric vehicles.

Musk also gave $20.5 million to an "RBG PAC" that sought to use the name of former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to convince voters that Trump would not sign a national abortion ban.

Trump repeated his claims that the border crisis was an "invasion", an "open wound", "a crime against our nation" and "an atrocity against our Constitution", and admitted that he did not want a deal to pass as it would be "another gift to the Radical Left Democrats" who "need it politically" and would impact a key plank of his reelection campaign.

[516][517] On February 23, 2024, Trump was criticized for comments during a campaign speech for saying his four criminal indictments and mug shot boosted his appeal among black voters and for comparing his legal jeopardy to historical anti-black discrimination.

[526] Other artists and their agents have made similar complaints and/or demanded payment of royalties and/or the cessation of unauthorized use and lack of compensation including Beyonce, Celine Dion, Kendrick Lamar, Johnny Marr, Tom Petty, Rihanna, The Rolling Stones, The Village People, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins, and the band Journey.

[550][551] Trump and his entourage went to Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) on Monday, August 26, 2024, invited by families of soldiers fallen in Afghanistan, in a visit arranged by House Speaker Mike Johnson for a wreath-laying ceremony commemorating the 2021 Kabul airport attack.

[556] The event received widespread coverage and criticism due to the rhetoric shared by its featured speakers, which included comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who likened Puerto Rico to a "floating island of garbage," and Trump's friend David Rem, who referred to Harris as "the antichrist.

Hinchcliffe's "floating island of garbage" remark was noted as particularly potentially damaging to Trump's appeal to stateside Puerto Ricans, who make up a significant portion of the population of swing state Pennsylvania.

[449] On December 3, 2022, following the publication of the "Twitter Files" by Elon Musk, Trump complained of election fraud and posted to Truth Social, calling for "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution".

[644] On August 10, 2024, Politico revealed that it had been receiving internal Trump campaign documents from an anonymous source since July 22, including a 271-page vetting report on vice presidential candidate JD Vance's potential vulnerabilities.

"[677] In early November 2024, recorded conversations from August 2017 surfaced, allegedly over 100 hours in total, in which the author Michael Wolff interviewed the convicted child sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and the latter referred to himself as "Donald's closest friend for 10 years".

[692][693] Bloomberg noted in January 2025 how a number of highly influential podcasters, including Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Logan Paul, amplified Trump's messages to their audiences, relying on overlapping guests and conservative talking points.