Donald Trump flew into a rage over a poll showing Kamala Harris with a three-point lead over him in Iowa, according to MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire.
The Des Moines Registerpoll showed the vice president with a slight lead in the state Trump easily won twice before, and Lemire agreed with famed pollster J. Ann Selzer, who said voter concerns about abortion rights were driving the shift away from the Republican nominee.
"We said on the show a few weeks ago that when the dust settles, if Harris wins, we would have looked at each other and say, 'It was Dobbs all along," Lemire said. "There is movement in the polls. Another analyst said it was the angriest they've ever seen him before the rally in Pennsylvania, obviously digesting the Iowa poll, in a pure fury. That's the rally we played the sound from, about shooting the press. As the day went on, he seemed to get more progressively exhausted."
Trump has focused much of his efforts in the last days of the campaign in North Carolina, while Harris has poured resources into Pennsylvania.
"Let's talk data points," Lemire said. "A clue is where the candidate spends his or her time. Trump in the last few days over and over and over, North Carolina – there's worries there, trying to piece together 270, the fact he is going back there over and over again. Lastly, Pennsylvania, which is the biggest state, most important state on the map, where Vice President Harris is spending her entire day today.
"On Saturday, the Harris campaign had over 800,000 door knocks – 800,000 in one day, in one state, unheard of number. It was relayed earlier this morning that while canvassers were out there, some reaching the same home more than once, extraordinary. They never saw any sign, any sign of a Trump ground game that he outsourced to Elon Musk and the like."
Senior political analyst John Heilemann said that Trump seems to be wearing down, and he said that exhaustion was fueling his erratic behavior.
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"It wasn't that he just looked angry, which he did sometimes," Heilemann said. "Again, the constant projections of these violent fantasies, you know, the [Liz] Cheney thing, the shooting the press thing, as he gets more and more exhausted, he just – it comes out more and more. They're all revenge fantasies, people getting shot, people he doesn't like getting shot."
"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough also noticed that Trump seems to be aware that he's losing.
"There is a dejection there, too," Scarborough said. "The exhaustion at the end, the begging, 'please vote for me, if I don't win after all of this.'"
"This is the headline after the weekend," Heilemann added. "He knows he is losing, you can see it. He's saying more and more things that project not the – he was asked by John Karl in one of these stops with ABC News whether he thought he could lose. I've never heard Trump say, in a moment like this, what he said. This is a paraphrase, but it was basically, 'Yeah, you know, you could lose, sometimes it feels good for us out there, but I don't know, we could lose.' He said, it's possible you could lose like eight times, which is not a thing that Trump would ever say, even if he thought he was losing."