The offensive Trump the media invented never really existed. This is his normal usual self.
For example, in the article you linked:
That never happened. He accused Mexico of taking advantage of lax border security and sending the US rapists. He did not "call Mexican immigrants rapists". The journalist is blatantly lying through their teeth and should be terminated, but it functions as a helpful illustration of where he's coming from in his delusional expectations of the current Trump.
When you have a voter base consistently in a large part of angsty teenagers and fashionable females you can use this drive-by media style to fabricate a bogeyman the way they did with Trump.
The guy who said all of those terrible things about Islam.
Such as:
Then, when he is more directly visible as president, you can pretend he sold out.