In just 24 hours this weekend, Donald J. Trump traversed two very different worlds, neither of which were his own.
On Friday night, he appeared before religious leaders in West Palm Beach, Florida. The next afternoon, he was in Nashville, speaking with thousands of crypto evangelists at a Bitcoin conference.
The two groups could hardly be less similar, and Mr. Trump, neither a pious man nor a tech expert, has been an unlikely champion in either. And yet, taken together, the two appearances have provided a case study in how he codes changes — from Christianity to cryptography — during his campaign.
He begs, he brags, he makes extravagant promises. And his attempts to convince an audience that is not his own can be extremely clumsy.
On Friday, he spoke at the Believers Summit, a religious conference organized by Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative activist group. It was a well-orchestrated event, worthy of Southern televangelists and the hundreds of pastors and ministry leaders who attended.
In this context, martyrdom was the central theme, and Mr. Trump latched onto it strongly (“I took a bullet for democracy,” he said at one point).
His speech that night veered between fire and brimstone and a desperate attempt to win votes. “I don’t know how a Catholic can vote for the Democrats,” he said, “because they resent Catholics almost as much as they resent me. I would say I’m the best.” He added that his potential new rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, “doesn’t like Jews,” even though her husband is Jewish.
And yet when he bragged about the accomplishment that probably mattered most to those voters — the Supreme Court nominations that overturned Roe v. Wade and made abortion policy a state matter — Mr. Trump’s visit became complicated.
The crowd booed him when he said he supported the abortion ban, which includes exceptions for the mother’s life, rape and incest. “I think it’s very important,” he said, suddenly defensive.
“You have to win elections,” he said. “If you don’t do certain things, you won’t win elections, and it will be a Pyrrhic victory – a victory that won’t really be a victory.”
Some of the believers who plan to vote for Mr. Trump have expressed ambivalence. “I don’t think Trump is perfect, he’s not Jesus, so you don’t want to idolize him,” said John Clark, 26, a graphic designer in Minneapolis. “As much as he represents conservative values, he doesn’t represent them in many ways. For example, he’s, let’s say, hateful in some ways.”
Ben Carson, Mr. Trump’s housing secretary, reminded the crowd that Mr. Trump came from the “dog-eat-dog world” of Manhattan real estate. “But that’s OK, because, you know, David was also a pretty slimy guy, in the Bible — I mean, murder, adultery and cheating. And yet God said he was a man after my own heart.”
Conservative Christians and Mr. Trump have now struck a long-standing bargain: They neglect certain personal qualities, and Mr. Trump conforms to their priorities. Mr. Trump’s speech seems designed to remind them of their end of the bargain.
He reprimanded them for not voting in sufficient numbers. “I don’t want to scold you,” he said, “but did you know that Christians don’t vote proportionally? They don’t vote as they should.”
He promised that if they could bring themselves to vote for him one last time, he would grant their every wish and they would never have to worry about the ballot box again. “You won’t have to do it anymore,” the former president urged. “In four years, it will be all over, everything will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my dear Christians.”
In closing, he spoke to his Christian beaus about the next stage of the campaign. “Tomorrow, I’ll be with the Bitcoin supporters,” he said. “It’s a little different.”
And it was.
The next afternoon, at Nashville’s Music City Center, Mr. Trump made a fresh start. He found himself in front of a new audience to whom he could promise the world, regardless of political reality or the election.
“Hello, bitcoiners,” he told thousands of blockchain fans at the Bitcoin 2024 conference. “It’s a great honor.”
He was done with the Jesus talk. He was now preaching the gospel of cryptography. “There’s never been anything like it,” he said. “Most people have no idea what it is, you know that, don’t you?”
It was an absurd spectacle: a Luddite who not long ago had one of his assistants follow him around with a portable printer so he could read the news on the Internet in paper form was now extolling the wonders of Bitcoin, a digital currency he recently described as being “based on thin air.”
This was an apolitical audience, atypical for him. These weren’t natural Trump supporters. A lot of them were just guys, guys who liked technology. Some said they’d never voted before, but were newly curious about Trump.
“He’s coming here to try to win your vote, I respect that,” said Dave Smith, a comedian who spoke before the former president. Mr. Smith pontificated that Mr. Trump might not be so bad when measured against his enemies, “the entire corporate media” and intelligence agencies, and the crowd cheered in approval.
Mr. Trump began by flattering them. He told them they were all “high-IQ individuals” and tried to warm up to them, somewhat awkwardly, by telling them about an uncle of his who was a professor at MIT. “He actually could have fit in here very well,” he told them.
At one point, he launched into a digression about how Bill and Hillary Clinton attended his third wedding, to Melania, and the crowd seemed unsure what to make of that information.
He called on his usual friends, that dark stuff that plays so well at his rallies: talk of declining cities, “left-wing fascists,” and immigrants crossing the border. But all this American carnage was better received by the believers in Florida. At the Bitcoin event, his grievances were strangely suspended. Sometimes he paused for applause that never came. He spoke only once about a stolen election, and quickly moved on.
But his teleprompter speech contained plenty of elements that won over the crowd. Mr. Trump began making promises: He said he would appoint a cryptocurrency advisory board (“Would anybody like to be on that board?”) and that he would create a “strategic national stockpile of bitcoin.”
He vowed he would fire Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the bête noire of all bitcoin advocates, and the room erupted. Mr. Trump was surprised by the reaction.
“Wow, I didn’t know he was so unpopular! Let me say that again.” He repeated his line and the room began chanting, for the first time, “Trump! Trump! Trump!”
Eventually he found a villain and the Bitcoin conference became a Trump rally.
“Oh, you’ll be very happy with me,” he told the crowd. Mr. Trump said he would make America “the crypto capital of the world,” and they roared again.
There were other bad guys to warn off: He called Democrats “totalitarians” who are “determined to crush cryptocurrency.” Perhaps anticipating this attack, Vice President Kamala Harris began making overtures last week to cryptocurrency companies, seemingly signaling that her administration would be more open to the sector than the current one, according to reports in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.
The former president’s speech was well-received by many attendees who left the auditorium after the speech. “I’ve never voted and I’m not affiliated with any party,” said Sean McCaffrey, 24, who works for a cryptocurrency company called TravelSwap and was visiting from Jacksonville, Florida. “He may have just convinced me.”
Whether bitcoin advocates and Mr. Trump have struck a lasting new political deal remains an open question. While he spent 50 minutes talking enthusiastically about his newfound love of cryptocurrencies, there was little sign that he understood the policies he promised or would be able to implement them. (The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether a president can actually fire an SEC commissioner without cause.)
As he bid farewell to the group, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was still not part of their world: “Have fun with your Bitcoin and your crypto, and whatever you play with.”