Former President Donald Trump still won’t stop saying the 2020 election was “rigged” against him. He said he doesn’t owe his former vice president, Mike Pence, an apology for riling up the crowd that threatened to hang Pence on Jan. 6, 2021. And the day after a jury in New York City found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation, he was still claiming he had never met victim E. Jean Carroll and has no idea who she is.
The above is a small sampling of the cascade of lies, the bullying behavior and the self-aggrandizing bluster that made CNN’s town hall with Trump in New Hampshire on Wednesday night a grueling, torturous hour. Throughout the evening, moderator Kaitlan Collins tried to give Trump the space to admit his wrongs and show that this, his third presidential campaign, would be different. Instead, it is clearer than ever that Trump regrets nothing — and expects Republican voters to reward him for refusing to admit ever being wrong at any point in his life.
Not that we should be surprised by this turn of events. Since he first won the White House in 2016, Trump has seemingly convinced himself that he could do no wrong — on any front. He sloughed off the numerous investigations into his behavior and let the unwavering adoration of his base buoy him through his most turbulent moments. Similarly, the audience at Wednesday’s town hall — 400 likely GOP primary voters — bolstered him as the night went on, laughing, for example, as he mocked the woman a jury found he sexually abused and as he mocked the woman hosting the town hall.
But since that initial 2016 victory, Trump has suffered a string of defeats that would make most politicians question themselves. And maybe some people believed he was taking a more measured approach this time around, because his 2024 campaign has, at times, appeared to be a little different. He has hammered away at a likely rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, before he could announce his candidacy, and, in lieu of his giant rallies, he has been making more “retail politics” stops to meet with voters. In fact, those changes prompted CNN to declare ahead of time that Wednesday’s event was more evidence that Trump is “adopting a more traditional campaign in his third run for the White House.”
In the first minutes of the town hall, it was clear that Trump isn’t embracing a change in style, let alone in substance.
But there’s only so much change a campaign can manage if the principal isn’t on board with it. In the first minutes of the town hall, it was clear that Trump isn’t embracing a change in style, let alone in substance. Trump had already refused to accept his 2020 loss by the time the first voter to be tapped for a question sheepishly asked whether he would cut the “polarizing talk” about election fraud, knowing Trump had already made it clear he wouldn’t. Things only spiraled from there. Trump proceeded to say he would most likely pardon most Jan. 6 rioters, maybe even the four Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy last week, and came out in favor of the government’s defaulting on its debt if Democrats don’t cave in to the GOP’s hostage-taking. And that’s not even getting into the litany of his other falsehoods, including his pro-drilling policies’ causing energy prices to plummet on his watch (they collapsed during the pandemic) or his claim that when he was president, the border was more secure than it had ever been (border crossings spiked during his administration ahead of the pandemic).
If his prolific lies weren’t enough to convince you that little about him has changed, consider the softballs Trump missed. A voter expressed disagreement with DeSantis’ clashes with businesses, including Disney, and asked what Trump would do to stop government from interfering with the private sector. If he were really running a more traditional campaign, Trump would have seized the chance to go to town on DeSantis, and he would have knocked that question out of the park. But because he was still riled up from Collins’ pointed questioning about his handling of classified documents — a moment when he called her “nasty” — Trump kept ranting about the investigations against him and President Joe Biden’s own mishandling of documents. In the end, he made no effort to entice any undecided voters watching at home or in the audience. He spoke only sparingly about policy despite the many questions designed to nail him down on anything. He refused, for example, to say whether he’d support a federal abortion ban. And when asked whether he’d accept the 2024 election results no matter what, he again hedged to say he would do so “if I think it’s an honest election.” (Translation: no.) In Trump’s world, there’s no room for remorse or doubt, let alone atonement and repentance. What we saw Wednesday night was a master class in Trump’s doing the only thing he knows how to do: double down. It has been a losing bet for multiple hands. Doubling down has cost him the White House and placed him in profound legal jeopardy. And yet hearing the audience laugh and cheer along with him, I can’t help but think that when it comes to the GOP primary? He’s unfortunately reading the table pretty accurately.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW Daily. 
