I’ll be waiting. 🙂
1. Campaign #1 was the GOP primary, where Trump basically came across as a troll who was looking to run an entertaining campaign that would humiliate his primary opponents (Jeb Bush in particular) and perhaps show unexpected strength in a wide field. His campaign theme was "Make America Great Again," and that was enough to win the GOP nomination on a wave of discontent among grassroots Republican supporters.
2. Campaign #2 would cover the period in 2016 between Trump securing the nomination (late spring) and Labor Day. This period included the Republican and Democratic Party conventions. If you remember back then, Trump was polling pretty poorly at that time. This was the major reason he was such a heavy underdog during the last few months of the campaign.
3. Campaign #3 started at some undetermined time after Labor Day and carried through to the end. I don't remember the exact time when this happened, but by late September 2016 there was a major change in the air around the Trump campaign. I suspect his campaign leaders had done some heavy polling and focus group work at the time. By late September, "Make America Great Again" had very subtly been replaced by a new campaign theme: "Drain the Swamp." It was at this time when I first began to see remarkably effective campaign ads like this one:
The thing to keep in mind here is that Trump's path to victory in 2016 was very much a non-traditional GOP winning presidential campaign. His victory was surprising enough, but what was even more remarkable was that the winning electoral map on Election Night looked nothing like what you'd expect from a Republican Party candidate like Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush -- with almost the entire Rust Belt in the Republican column and states like Nevada, New Mexico and Virginia in the Democratic column.
This electoral map was built on a voter cohort who would support Trump but would never vote for an establishment Republican candidate: white Democrats and independents.
I am convinced that Trump wants an "establishment Republican" candidate to stay in this race for several months so he can help set himself apart from the feckless frauds and morons in Washington who are universally despised by Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. Nikki Haley is the perfect loser to fill this role. She represents everything that has been wrong with the Republican Party for more than 20 years, and her loss in the Nevada primary to "None of the Above" captures her pitiful public standing perfectly.