> Trump is turning off his base with this name-calling.<
Yep. Trump has drifted from a Reaganesque character to a Grandpa Simpson character. It is both sad and bad for the country.
He was never even close to Reaganesque. Not in terms of sunny happy personality (vs grumpy face), or brilliant reactionary cute jabs (vs attack-first childish name-calling), or even general communication.
He won the nomination in 2016 by destroying all the rival candidates (none of whom would have been able to win the general election)—a lot of it by name-calling. But I don’t think it is going to work to clear the field of any potential rivals for 2024, although that may be his strategy, judging from his behavior the last week. We’ll have to see what his big announcement is on Tuesday.
Trump is the same as always. Remember the complaints about ‘mean tweets’? Trump hasn’t changed, others perceptions or opinions have. They don’t like ‘mean tweets’ anymore.