The President-elect emerged from three weeks closeted in Trump Tower and his private resorts where he is building his Cabinet, for a full bore, campaign style rally, before a fired up and adoring crowd on the first leg of a pre-inauguration "thank-you" tour through key battleground states with Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
Anyone who thought that Trump would preview a new, soberer, presidential version of himself just 50 days before he takes the oath of office was mistaken.
"The bottom line is we won!" a triumphant Trump declared to a rowdy throng that half filled a hockey arena in downtown Cincinnati, in a state, Ohio, which Trump won by nearly nine points on election night.
The ostensible purpose of the event was to stress a message of national unity after a fractious campaign and to lay out a road map for Trump's presidency.
But the President-elect showed that the heavy burdens of office that are about to settle on his shoulders and the behavioral constraints that normally apply to a head of state are not going to cramp his quintessential political style.
