As he flew aboard Air Force One to an airport hangar rally in Mosinee, Wis., President Trump groused to aides about having to tone down his prepared remarks.

Pipe bombs had been mailed to several of his favorite foils, including to the homes of two former presidents and the New York offices of CNN. It was a moment for presidential leadership, less than two weeks before the midterm elections that would deliver a verdict on his first two years in office.

But, according to two aides familiar with Trump’s objections, the words set to be loaded into the teleprompter didn’t match the president’s own plans for closing the campaign, the details of which he had kept from other Republican leaders. He wanted controversy, fury and fear that would push limits and get ratings, paint a caravan of Central American migrants as a mortal threat and color Democrats as their co-conspirators.

Now speechwriters were telling the man who encouraged fistfights at his 2016 campaign rallies to call for “all sides to come together in peace and harmony.” They wanted the real estate promoter who dubbed his Democratic opponent “crooked” to demand an end to “treating political opponents as being morally defective.”