The president-elect has been firing off daily broadsides on Twitter just as he did as a candidate. | Getty Trump to launch 'thank you' tour with Thursday rally in Cincinnati

Donald Trump’s presidential transition is looking more and more like Donald Trump’s campaign — now complete with a massive rally in the Rust Belt.

The president-elect has been firing off daily broadsides on Twitter just as he did as a candidate -- attacking CNN, making false accusations about widespread voter fraud, and launching veiled attacks at his old nemesis Hillary Clinton, for participating in a recount.


Now, the president-elect is set to return to the heart of a state that helped deliver him his unexpected victory earlier this month. On Thursday evening, Trump will kick off a “thank you” tour in Ohio, with a massive rally at the U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati, according to a source familiar with the planning.

Trump has said he wants to get back to the trail and revisit the states he won, on a victory tour where he can re-energize the base of white, working class voters who put him in the White House. It's also where Trump still feels most comfortable.

Privately, insiders said, Trump is still in postmortem mode, rehashing with friends his unexpected victory, even as his day to day is consumed with looking forward. He’s not alone: His top advisers still flash iPhone videos from their biggest rallies, with “everyone was wrong but us” pride.

But the victory tour comes as Trump has yet to settle on some main Cabinet positions -- most glaringly, secretary of state, which has become a proxy war for the rival factions of his incoming administration.

And it offers Trump -- a master of reading a crowd, who has revealed a more moderated version of himself in meetings with the New York Times and with President Barack Obama -- the dangerous possibility of returning to some of his most divisive and fiery rhetoric on the trail, with his base.

The Trump transition team has yet to provide details on the full scope of Trump's post-election tour, but George Gigicos, the director the campaign's advance team, told reporters on Nov. 17 that the president-elect would be traveling "obviously to the states that we won and the swing states we flipped over."