President Donald Trump waves to the crowd after speaking at the Mitchell Center at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama on October 2, 2026. The president is visiting several red states in support of GOP nominees about a month ahead of midterm elections in November. (Dan Anderson for Alabama Reflector)
The Donald Trump who took the stage in Mobile Friday night was not the man who catapulted onto the political scene in the same city in 2015.
Eleven years ago, he strode into Ladd-Peebles Stadium on a warm August night looking crisp, tan, and tieless, wearing a white shirt, khakis and a navy blazer. On his head perched an O.G. “Make America Great Again” hat, the only red hat in sight. The people cheering behind him wore regular clothes; Trump merch hadn’t yet become ubiquitous.
“I’m a non-politician,” he declared back then. “The other day I served jury duty. I told you — they had ‘occupation.’ I refused to put down ‘politician.’”
The 30,000-odd people in attendance ate it up. That night launched the Trump Train, full steam ahead. Who among us, in the ensuing decade, has managed to go an entire week without thinking, reading, or speaking the word “Trump”? If you have, tell me your secret.
But a decade at the center of America’s political orbit has sucked Trump into the very swamp he promised to drain. He has become the thing he ran against.
Compare that fizzy August night in 2015 to last Friday, as gray clouds hung thick in the sky and lines of Trump die-hards trooped into the 10,000-seat Mitchell Center on the campus of the University of South Alabama.
The former “non-politician” returned to Mobile to stump for Republicans in the midterms. “It’s the most important midterm election we’ve ever had,” he said. “Close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot.”
He promised that if Republicans keep the House and Senate in November, every adult citizen will get a check for $5,000. I guess if the GOP keeps both chambers, we can add that trillion-dollar payout to Trump’s tab, alongside the promised DOGE checks and tariff dividends.
He seemed subdued as he ticked through all his boilerplate talking points: “radical left dumbocrats,” “hottest country in the world,” “fake news media,” etc., etc. Empty seats dotted the uppermost sections of the stadium.
He looked faded, his bronzed cheeks a few shades paler than usual, his suit a little loose on his diminished figure. Normally a charming showman, he wasn’t really selling it on Friday night
Eleven years will do that to a person. There’s a marked difference between a 69-year-old man and an 80-year-old man.
There’s also a difference between a salesman confident in his untested ability to run a country, and a leader who’s had to live through the grind of governing.
The Trump of 2015 was a dynamic speaker who exuded enthusiasm about his vision for the country. Many voters didn’t care for his brand of optimism, but he sold his idea of a gold-plated future with a heart and soul that had not yet calcified into bitterness against his enemies. In the open air of Ladd-Peebles Stadium, he held forth on the corrupting power of lobbyists, outlined how he’d fix America’s flagging manufacturing sector. He signed an attendee’s copy of “The Art of the Deal” and crowed about his successes in real estate. He was buoyant; his future held nothing but upside.
Sure, he talked about the “dummies” running the government. But his bite didn’t have the same vicious edge that it does now. “We have people that don’t have a clue,” he said in 2015. “And I don’t know, some people say they’re bad people. I don’t think they’re bad people. I think they’re incompetent people.”
He has now had six years as president to prove his own competence. For the last two years, he has enjoyed a Republican trifecta in all three branches of government.
And last Friday, ever the salesman, he trotted out a line off the teleprompter declaring that we’re living in a “golden age” even as “communists” try to tear down the country. But Americans are no longer buying what he’s selling. With gas above $4 a gallon, diesel hitting all-time highs, inflation still pummeling household budgets, and Democrats shut out from power (and therefore blame), his approval rating is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
(He might also want to check that “golden age” message with gubernatorial candidate Tommy Tuberville, who glad-handed him onstage on Friday and who, just last week, said that Alabama’s major cities are so dangerous, it might require deploying the National Guard if he’s elected.)
Toward the end of his speech — his attention flagging as he churned through his canned lines — Trump put the cherry on top by mispronouncing “Mobile.” Twice.
Ouch. Such a rookie mistake.
And so Mobile, the launchpad for his meteoric rise, is now also sealed as a symbol of his decline. How fitting that the same town should serve as bookends for his relevance.
He still has two more years in the Oval Office. Who knows what national monuments he might decide to tear down in that time, what novel ways he might find to diminish America’s global standing and commit human rights abuses? He will maintain access to the nuclear launch codes, God help us.
The damage he has wrought will be generational.
But last Friday showed that he is well and truly past his peak. If Democrats eke out a majority in one or both chambers of Congress in November, he will become the lamest of lame ducks.
I can almost see the glimmer of the next era peeking around the corner — an era when we’ll go days or weeks without thinking or speaking his name.
At a rally in Ohio on Saturday, he mused about the impending end of his presidency: “Perhaps I’ll try a couple of years of being nonconsequential, if you don’t mind.”
Be my guest, sir.
From Alabama Reflector Post Url: Visit
Author: Catherine Dorrough