WATCH: Chuck Todd Admits Trump Has 2016 ‘Swagger’ Back, Praises Campaign

Longtime NBC News anchor Chuck Todd has no doubt that former President Donald Trump is back in the saddle, telling viewers on Wednesday that the “swagger” he brought to his first winning campaign is evident once again.

Appearing on “Katy Tur Reports,” Todd noted that the former president seemed “oddly loose” during several campaign stops in the battleground state of Michigan, including at a rally with Black pastors who thanked him for being the first presidential candidate to visit “the hood” in decades. If he can keep his cool and focus on the many advantages he has going into November, Todd predicted, his “swagger” could be plenty abundant to charm the swing voters he’ll need.

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“I don’t mean to simplify this, but, you know, Donald Trump’s rhetoric, even, and even his sort of swagger looks more like 2016 and the campaign you covered so closely, Katy, than he looks in 2020,” Todd told host Katy Tur, the Daily Caller reported. “And in fact, I was just discussing this with somebody we all know … he even noted, we were talking about this idea that when Trump’s losing, the worst version of Trump shows up and when Trump’s winning or he thinks he’s ahead, he’s actually a different person, a different candidate.”

“Donald Trump in Detroit, and those events he did, he was oddly loose,” Todd continued. “He was trying to be funny. And all of this where from about 2017 to 2022 and even 2023 through the primaries, it’s been nothing but angry grievance Trump, angry, angry, angry. It’s interesting if he somehow drops the grievance, he could end up looking more like that 2016 candidate where he’s the outside disrupter.”

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Tur countered, arguing it may be too difficult for Trump to “drop the grievance” he still holds against President Biden, the Justice Department, and Democratic prosecutors like Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and Fani Willis, all of whom have or continue to charge him with a myriad of crimes.

“He’s going to be sentenced in a few weeks here in Manhattan,” Tur said. “The presidential immunity decisions coming out with the Supreme Court. There are reasons to continue on the grievance trail. And this whole campaign, it seems to be less for him about policy and more about what they’re doing to me is what they want to do to you. My grievances are your grievances.”

The liberal media’s inability to understand why Trump’s fury against his prosecutors is good politics is also blinding commentators from understanding how average voters feel, some conservatives say. Tara Setmayer, a recent guest on Don Lemon’s program, said “aggrieved” Americans feel Trump is fighting for them.

“They’re aggrieved. Donald Trump has given voice and credibility and a platform to their grievances, so they can take it out on everybody else and say see, ‘I’m not alone here. I have someone who’s championing our grievances too,’ and that’s Donald Trump. Why they believe that he gives two shits about them, volumes will be written about the political psychology around this,” Setmayer told Lemon, who replied it made “no sense” to him, the Caller added.

To anyone closely watching, it’s plain to see that President Trump’s criminal convictions are doing him plenty of political good. A focus group of Georgia voters conducted by MSNBC homed in on the sentiment as several Black panelists voiced their agreement that Trump is the victim of an unjust justice system.

Asked whether the trials have caused his support to waver, Antonio Jones said the opposite. “It’s actually caused me to support him more. I just don’t believe there’s a coincidence that we have a trial happening in Atlanta, we have one happening in New York. So the question people are beginning to ask themselves, like I did, ‘Why now?’”

Lisa Babbage, who is Black, said she has spoken with many former Democrats who now side with Trump. “They have changed their political persuasion to independent, and they are looking forward to voting for Trump,” she told Alexander, “because now they find something in common with a political candidate at that level.”

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