The video of former President Donald Trump falling to the ground, then rising to his feet from underneath a pile of Secret Service agents with blood streaked across his cheek, pumping his fist in the air and shouting "fight, fight, fight," is among the most compelling clips in modern American political history.
Captured moments after he was shot in the ear by a would-be assassin in July it embodies Trump's carefully crafted narrative that he is strong enough to stare down any foe, foreign or domestic, on behalf of his "Make America Great Again" agenda. A still image has appeared on merchandise and become iconic among his supporters.
And yet the film sits idly in the can, unused so far in the stretch run of his campaign to return to the Oval Office. His advisers refuse to discuss publicly whether his closing ads will include clips of the assassination attempt, but they are well aware of the powerful video in their hands.
A shift to the personal narrative could distract from the substantive issues that Trump aides believe are giving their candidate a leg up over his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. Polls show a close race across seven battleground states that figure to determine the winner of the Nov. 5 election, and Trump is expected to start making his final case to voters at a rally Sunday at New York City's Madison Square Garden.
The burning question is whether Trump will eventually buck his own pattern and stick to the message.
"Kamala has failed over the last four years and only President Donald J. Trump can fix the problems that are facing our nation," Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said. "That includes inflation. That includes the border. That includes the chaos that we're seeing at home and abroad."
An NBC News survey of registered voters this month pegged the race as a dead heat, 48% to 48% nationally. That represented the high-water mark for Trump in eight polls taken since June 2023 — the first six against President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the race in July, and a 1-point drop-off for Harris since September.
Trump scored better among voters on the three "I"s his campaign has homed in on — immigration, inflation and Israel — while voters rated Harris higher on a series of issues and characteristics, including handling abortion and health care and "being competent and effective."
Though most voters don't cast their ballots on foreign policy matters, Trump blames Biden — and, by extension, Harris — for the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
“Under Harris’ time in the White House, our nation’s strength has been squandered," a Trump campaign adviser said. "Iran is richer and funding chaos and terror in the Middle East. Ukraine and Russia are still at war, and China is more emboldened than ever. Harris has broken our standing on the world stage. President Trump will fix it by using strong diplomatic, military and trade policy to bring peace and stability back.”
Trump faithfully points to his differences with Harris over those big three issues at his campaign rallies, leaning into his promise to levy tariffs against foreign competitors to strengthen the U.S. economy — an idea many economists say would raise prices for American consumers.
"With your vote this election, I will end inflation. I will stop the invasion of criminals into our country, and I will bring back, as your president, the American dream," Trump told a crowd in North Carolina on Tuesday. "We’re going to bring it back. Our country is being crippled and destroyed by Kamala Harris. But it does not have to be this way."
Campaign aides celebrated Trump’s recent performance in an at-times testy interview at the Economic Club of Chicago, where he defended his support for tariffs and accused the Biden administration of having “spent money like drunken sailors.” The economy, in particular, is a natural place where Trump's team feels he, as a longtime business owner, is strongly positioned to argue his agenda, a campaign adviser said.
But there's a tension between the focus Trump’s campaign has kept on those issues and his desire to wander into different territory. As Election Day nears, he has been taking long detours away from substance — ramping up personal attacks on Harris and other Democrats, sprinkling his speeches with profanity and musing about off-topic subjects like the size of the late golf legend Arnold Palmer's genitals.
On Tuesday, he suggested, without evidence, that Harris is campaigning under the influence.
"Does she drink? Is she on drugs?" he said. "I don’t know."
At the same time, voters are seeing a new ad produced by Trump's campaign team that pins Harris to Biden, the president of a nation that most voters think is headed in the wrong direction. It uses video of Harris on the television show "The View" saying there's "not a thing that comes to mind" when she was asked what she would have done differently from Biden.
"Nothing will change with Kamala," a narrator says. "More weakness. More war. More welfare for illegals. And even more taxes. Only President Trump cut middle-class taxes, and only President Trump will do it again.”
Brad Todd, a Republican strategist who isn’t working for Trump, said the spot "does a great job of channeling the overarching current that can push him over the line" by arguing that "America's on the wrong track and you can't keep the same people in charge."
The question, Todd said, "is whether he can keep his rallies to a message that conventional" or whether he will just be "revving up people who are already voting for him" with red-meat rhetoric.
