"Despite weeks of hype from the president and his campaign, the official kickoff rally for a re-election campaign that he has been running since the day he took office was, in the end, just another rally."

"Mr. Trump had no new campaign message to unveil. He had no new theory of the case to mount against any of his potential opponents. He instead spent much of his time relitigating his outrage against Hillary Clinton’s email server, promising that he would build a wall that was 'stronger, bigger, better and cheaper' and talking about the 'Russia hoax.' When Mr. Trump seemed to sense that the crowd’s energy was sagging, he quickly started polling attendees about what campaign slogan he should use."

That's Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni in "What We Learned From Trump’s Orlando Rally" (NYT), and I agree. I looked forward to the big announcement rally, and I mostly zoned out because I've watched many Trump rallies and this was just another one. I recognized all the riffs.

The NYT article is an 8-point list of observations. What I quoted above was #1: "It was just a rally."

ADDED: It's conceivable that Trump is engaging in some devious trickery, seeming as though he's got nothing new and he'll just be running on autopilot. Maybe he's got all new stuff — or will have it — and he's waiting to drop it when the time is right, and that's not now. If he puts out the new material now, 20 Democratic candidates will rip it apart, and the Democratic race will be about their capacity to counter what will be his actual 2020 campaign. If he withholds it, the Democrats will have less to talk about, and they'll pick their nominee based on who's best suited to fight the Trump of the past.