He is preaching to the converted. He is lashing out at anyone who is not completely loyal. He is detaching himself from and delegitimising the institutions of American political life. And he is proclaiming conspiracies everywhere - in polls (rigged), in debate moderators (biased) and in the election itself (soon to be stolen).
In the presidential campaign's home stretch, Donald Trump is fully inhabiting his own echo chamber. The Republican nominee has turned inward, increasingly isolated from the country's mainstream and leaders of his own party, and determined to rouse his most fervent supporters with dire warnings that their populist movement could fall prey to dark and collusive forces.
This is a campaign right out of Breitbart, the incendiary conservative website run until recently by Stephen Bannon, now the Trump campaign's chief executive - and it is an act of retaliation.
A turbulent few weeks punctuated by allegations of sexual harassment have left Trump trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in nearly every swing state. Trump's gamble is that igniting his army of working-class whites could do more to put him in contention than any sort of broad, tempered appeal to undecided voters.
The execution has been volatile. Since announcing last week that "the shackles have been taken off me," Trump, bolstered by allies on talk radio and social media, has been creating an alternate reality - one full of innuendo about Clinton, tirades about the unfair news media and prophecies of Trump's imminent triumph.
