Donald Trump: can the great salesman sell America on giving him a second term?

Donald Trump considers himself a legendary salesman, but can he really sell America on giving him four more drama-filled years at the White House?

Tuesday, he’ll make his big pitch.

The 2020 re-election kick-off rally is being held in Orlando, Florida and campaign operations chief Michael Glassner says the “historic” event “has already generated tens of thousands of ticketing requests”.

There’s little mystery about how the night will go down.

Expect Trump, the self-promoting hero of his ghostwritten book The Art of the Deal, to claim the US economy is richer, the military stronger, and the country more respected than ever in history.

He has warned that the US would face an epic stock market crash if he is not re-elected.

“If anyone but me takes over,” Trump told his 61 million Twitter followers on Saturday, “there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before!”

“Tuesday will be a Big Crowd and Big Day,” he said in another tweet.

Expect ultraloyal, core Republican supporters in red “Make America Great Again” baseball caps to chant “USA!”

When the president points to journalists covering the event, expect the crowd to boo.

In 2016, Trump was a novelty, a candidate so different and to many outrageous that few seriously thought he could beat his seemingly bulletproof Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

But this time around, everyone knows what to expect.

“The way he looks at it, it worked beautifully in 2016 when everyone else was wrong, so he’ll follow the same instincts and (believe he’ll) win again in 2020,” veteran University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato said.

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“It may not be the right strategy, but it is Trump, and he’s incapable of reorienting himself.”

While Tuesday is framed as a launch, the former reality TV actor and property dealer has never actually stopped campaigning since his 2016 bid opened with a choreographed ride down the Trump Tower golden escalator in New York.

Seeing himself as an outsider who prefers connecting directly with voters, rather than Congress or – even worse – the “enemy” media, Trump holds far more rallies than recent presidents.

As if following the script in a long-running play, each event barely differs.

First, Trump warms up the crowd with classic rock, then he comes out to tout his achievements in office, and to brag about his 2016 win, often harking wistfully back to the “day I came down with your first lady on the escalator”.

The escalator has become such a mythical element in Trump’s narrative that son-in-law Jared Kushner – part of the extended Trump family presence in the White House – even considered recreating the scene for the 2020 bid, The New York Times reported.

Instead, Trump will rock the 20,000-seat Amway Centre in Orlando, deep in a state whose 29 electoral college votes could help decide whether he gets to keep his job.

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It’s the kind of scene that the president relishes and a perfect stage for his showmanship skills.

Just as he used to revel in over-the-top swaggering – often exaggerated – about his real estate triumphs, Trump hardly holds back on the campaign trail.

He does, in fact, have positives to trumpet.

The economy, traditionally the number one selling point for voters, is booming, with rock bottom unemployment and strong growth.

But to the despair of many Republican leaders, the 45th US president can’t help dropping from the news agenda’s sunny uplands into dark, seething valleys of grudges and conflicts -whether with personal Washington enemies or entire foreign countries.

The trade war with China that Trump once claimed would be “easy” is threatening to settle into a perilous new normal of permanent tariffs and tension.

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The Mexican border wall, which he told his supporters would be paid for by Mexico, remains largely unbuilt, underfunded, and the source of often ugly debate across the country.

And while the two-year investigation into Trump’s Russia links may be over, the president appears incapable of letting go, most recently getting in hot water for saying he might not tell the FBI if a foreign government came to him with dirt on political opponents.

The constant controversy and scandal have left US voters angrier and more polarised than they have been for decades.

That makes the election unpredictable.

Democrats are not even close to picking their presidential candidate from a long list of more than 20. And whichever figure gets the nomination, he or she faces a savaging from Trump.

Front runner Joe Biden, who was vice-president under Barack Obama, has already been indelibly branded “Sleepy Joe”.

Still, polls show Biden ahead of Trump and several Democrats believe they can make him a one-term president.

Trump may even end up regretting his “Sleepy Joe” jibe if Biden does get the nomination, says New York Times columnist Gail Collins.

“Americans may start asking themselves whether they’d rather have a president who sleeps through the night or one who’s up at 5am sending out tweets with a lot of misspelled words,” Collins wrote.

Trump’s first term: hits and misses

HITS

Economy: The economy will be Trump’s major selling point.

GDP grew 3.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2019 and the last recession was a decade ago. Unemployment is at a 50-year low of 3.6 per cent.

Trump’s frequent claim that the economy is probably “the best” in US history is an exaggeration, though.

Economists see growing dangers, including exploding government debt and growing backlash from Trump’s aggressive trade policies, especially with China.

Courts: Trump promised to get large numbers of conservative federal judges appointed. He has succeeded.

Notably, he used the Republican majority in the Senate to put conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, likely tilting the constitutional decision-making body to the right for decades.

Foreign policy: Trump delivered on his promise of a foreign policy shake-up.

Whether this has made America “respected” around the world, as he frequently claims, is debatable. The level of disruption is not.

Trump pulled the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. He likewise withdrew from an international agreement rewarding Iran for allowing controls over its nuclear programme

To the dismay of scientists around the world, he ended US participation in the historic Paris climate agreement meant to mitigate global climate change.

He also made good on threats to play hardball with China on trade, demanded more financial help from Nato allies, and renegotiated the Nafta trade pact with Mexico and Canada. He has tried, unsuccessfully so far, to charm North Korea into abandoning nuclear weapons.

With another swing of his diplomatic wrecking ball, Trump ended the decades-old status quo by recognising the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

MISSES

Health care: At home, Trump failed on one of his biggest To Do items: repealing former president Barack Obama’s health care law known as Obamacare.

The law, which seeks to get millions of uninsured Americans into the US health care system, is a bogeyman for right-wingers, but is generally popular among the public.

More importantly, Republicans have failed to come up with a credible alternative plan.

The wall: Another Trump campaign vow was to wall off the US-Mexico border against what the president calls an immigrant invasion. Mexico was meant to pay the bill.

That hasn’t happened.

Trump resorted to a record-length 35-day shutdown of US government funding in an attempt to pressure Congress into giving him funds for wall construction, finally getting a meagre US$1.7 billion.

This month, he used the threat of another trade war to pressure Mexico into doing more to stop migrants as they cross northward from Central America.

Midterm elections: Trump wasn’t on the ballot as Americans voted in congressional midterm elections in November. But the vote was still partly a referendum on the divisive president, who campaigned heavily across the nation. His Republican Party got thumped.

Although Republicans increased what had been a razor-thin majority in the Senate, they lost the House of Representatives. This means Democrats finally have a meaningful way to oppose Trump, including through the use of investigative committees.