Trump, on the Eve of Election Day

Maggie Haberman, Alexander Burns, and Jonathan Martin, reporting for The New York Times:

The president, his associates say, has drawn encouragement from his larger audiences and from a stream of relatively upbeat polling information that advisers have curated for him, typically filtering out the bleakest numbers.

On a trip to Florida last week, several aides told the president that winning the Electoral College was a certainty, a prognosis not supported by Republican or Democratic polling, according to people familiar with the conversation. And Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, has responded with chipper enthusiasm when Mr. Trump has raised the idea of making a late bid for solidly Democratic states like New Mexico, an option other aides have told the president is flatly unrealistic.

Remember being a kid and learning about historical monarchs who’d execute messengers bearing bad news? Or hearing similar stories about authoritarian crackpots ruling third-world countries today? Must be so exhausting, so endlessly nerve-racking, I would think, to live in such a country, governed by a madman.

The president himself has done little to strengthen his chances in the final days of the race. On Friday, Mr. Trump used a rally in Michigan to float a baseless theory that doctors are classifying patients’ deaths as related to the coronavirus in order to make more money, drawing fierce condemnation from medical groups, as well as Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama.

And on Saturday, in Pennsylvania at the site where George Washington mapped out his Delaware crossing during the Revolution, aides wrote out a sober speech for the president to deliver. Midway through, he seemed to get bored and began to riff about the size of Mr. Biden’s sunglasses.

Eyes ever on the prize with this president. Eyes on the prize.

★ Tuesday, 3 November 2020