Former right-wing operative turn progressive writer Matthew Sheffield believes that, after nine years, it appears Trump has oversaturated his followers.
Trump rallies have been emptying out early in the last several months, and the crowd sizes are down compared to the man who once had overflow event sites, Sheffield pointed out with a video of MSNBC showing the 70 percent-full rally in North Carolina on Monday around lunch time.
Meanwhile, the campaign is blowing up phones, begging for money, or voting in polls that don't matter. Frustrated people who were signed up to the Trump list can't get them to stop, the San Francisco Chronicle reported over the weekend. The FCC rules mandate that replying "STOP" would stop the texts, but for some, unsolicited Trump texts persist.
"In a base turnout election, Trump loses," said Sheffield, revealing data from Gallup showing Democrats more enthusiastic to vote this year than Republican voters.
"Trump lost in 2020 because he failed to get some of his 2016 voters to come back to support him," he continued. "You can slice who these people were, but demographically, it was primarily white men. Trump improved his share among most other demographic groups."
He said that those voters either picked Joe Biden in 2024 or stayed home. If Trump wants to win, his goal must be to bring them back into his fold.
"But Trump has not modified his message really at all. So why would they return?" asked Sheffield.
He also pointed out that polling is so woefully inadequate that a better indication of enthusiasm might be donations.
"Trump's small-dollar numbers also indicate his support is lower. The oligarchs are keeping him afloat," he pointed out citing a Bloomberg chart.
Sheffield cited the New York Times/Siena College poll, which shows that the last-minute undecided voters are 55% for Harris and 44% for Trump.
It appears "his act has grown stale as aging has hit him hard. He can't adapt," the writer said. "If you've been to one Trump rally, you've been to all of them. He says the same old thing every time, despite frequently deviating from the teleprompter."
CNN correspondent Steve Contorno reported Monday that a crowd waiting to see former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania was "quite thin" with "a lot of empty seats."
Moments before Trump was set to speak in Reading, Pennsylvania, Contorno spoke from the venue where the event was being held.
"I will say the turnout today so far for this event is quite thin," the CNN correspondent said. "There is a lot of empty seats left in this arena."
"But Donald Trump has built his brand around his ability to turn out large crowds," he added. "And so far in the stops today in North Carolina and here in Reading, it is noticeably thin here."
Donald Trump is in a bad mood, and it is reflected in his closing message, said one reporter.
Trump was in Raleigh, North Carolina, Monday around lunch, where he spoke for over 90 minutes to a crowd that was about only 70% full, MSNBC reported.
Journalist and author Tim Alberta said that he has spent the past year speaking with sources inside the campaign, and things have been growing worse over time.
"There has always been this strange disconnect in the sense that people around Trump recognize that this election, certainly more than the other two, carries a certain existential consequence for Trump," Alberta said, in reference to the fact that if he loses, Trump may be facing jail time.
"So, in one sense, you're looking at that and thinking, well, nothing should concentrate the mind like the possibility of going to jail," Alberta continued, noting that people around Trump haven't made that clear to him directly.
Alberta revealed that staff have "emphasized, look, Mr. President, we got to bear down here. We have got to stay on message. If you do these things, if you deliver on these things that we are telling you to do, then we are going to win."
On Friday, Alberta said he was speaking with a source "very close to Trump who was just audibly distraught."
The person was "talking about how they can't quite understand it, but for whatever reason, he is just in a dark place right now and just seems like he is closing this campaign on this really negative, violent note where they want to be running through the tape on this kind of positive unifying note."
They're well aware, however, that they can't force Trump to do anything. They were merely hoping they could end the campaign differently.
Donald Trump over the past few weeks has occasionally been discarding his iconic blue suit, red tie and red "Make America Great Again" baseball cap, and instead wearing a black suit, gold tie, and black and gold MAGA hat.
Months before the insurrection trump had infamously signaled, "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by."
"The Proud Boys are back in the news today," wrote Rolling Stone senior writer Tim Dickinson. "Trump is not only bat signaling to the fight club with a black and gold MAGA hat -- he's campaigning for a far-right congressional candidate who had a Proud Boy on payroll."
Dickinson pointed to his reporting on Republican Joe Kent, a "far-right candidate for the House, with connections to white nationalists," who has "extremist views and affiliations, including reportedly paying a Proud Boy as a consultant."
Attorney Tristan Snell, who helped lead New York's successful $25 million prosecution in the Trump University case, warns: "MAGA's colors have always been red and white. Yet Trump is suddenly wearing black and gold MAGA hats -- and even wore a black suit and gold tie the other day, rather than his habitual blue suit and red tie. The Proud Boys colors are black and gold. THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE."
Calling it "a harbinger of potential chaos," The New York Times on Monday reports: "Groups backing former President Donald J. Trump recently sent messages to organize poll watchers to be ready to dispute votes in Democratic areas. Some posted images of armed men standing up for their rights to recruit for their cause. Others spread conspiracy theories that anything less than a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a miscarriage of justice worthy of revolt."
One post, "from an Ohio chapter of the Proud Boys, the far-right organization that was instrumental in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol," read: “The day is fast approaching when fence sitting will no longer be possible.”
“You will either stand with the resistance or take a knee and willingly accept the yoke of tyranny and oppression.”
Pointing to "the growth and increased sophistication of the election denialism movement," The Times reports its "analysis of more than one million messages across nearly 50 Telegram channels with over 500,000 members found a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome."
Posts from groups like the Proud Boys, "questioned why states might not be able to fully tally election results on election night and repeated misleading claims about voter registration numbers in Michigan. In one video, a truck with a Confederate flag chased after immigrant children, with a caption reading: '1/20/25: Trump is sworn in as President. 1/21/25: Me and the Proud Boys begin the deportation.'”
Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as "trash" during a rally where he also complained about Donald Trump supporters being called "garbage."
At a rally in Flint, Michigan, on the eve of Tuesday's election, Vance suggested President Joe Biden had called Trump's followers "garbage" after a speaker at a MAGA rally referred to Puerto Ricans with the same term.
"We don't need to attack our fellow citizens just because they have the wrong politics," Vance said. "Even if people vote the wrong way, you know what, they're still our fellow citizens, and we're still going to fight for them anyway because we love this country, and that means loving everybody who calls this place home."
"So reject the example of Kamala Harris," he continued. "Reject somebody who wants to call us racist for believing that we should have a border. Reject calling our fellow citizens garbage because we think that Kamala Harris is doing a bad job."
Vance said he had "a simple message to Kamala Harris."
"No, our fellow citizens are not garbage for thinking that you're doing a terrible job, but tomorrow, the state of Michigan is going to take out the trash in Washington, D.C.," he opined.
And now it looks like the next pre-election rally on the former president's schedule is even less likely to be well attended.
CBS Philadelphia's Josh Sanders posted several photos from inside the Santander Arena in Reading, Pennsylvania that shows massive blocks of unfilled seats in a venue that seats just under 9,000 people.
Shortly after posting this, Corn returned with another dispatch showing that the situation for the Trump Reading rally was not improving.
"At the Trump rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, not even the floor is full," he wrote. "Campaign staff is trying to herd attendees into a couple of sections to make the place look packed. Very low energy."
Donald Trump woke up in a foul mood Sunday morning and his campaign staff watched in horror as he took out his frustrations in an off-message speech in Pennsylvania, according to a report.
The 78-year-old former president was stewing over a poll released Saturday afternoon showing Kamala Harris with a three-point lead in Iowa, before the vice president made a surprise appearance on "Saturday Night Live." His pollster Tony Fabrizio and data chief Tim Saler scrambled to craft a memo questioning New York Times' polling that suggested he would lose tight races in swing states, reported The Bulwark.
“This was as much about pushing back on the media as it was placating the boss — he was infuriated,” said a campaign adviser. “But all of us trust Tony’s numbers, including the boss. In Tony we trust, [but] Sunday morning sucked.”
Trump went onstage in Lititz, Pennsylvania, "rattled by the news," The Bulwark's Marc Caputo wrote. He largely ignored the teleprompter for 96 minutes in his first of three rallies two days before the election, and while the crowd laughed and cheered as he suggested he wouldn't care if "bloodsucker" journalists were shot, his campaign staffers groaned because he sounded defeated.
“He knew after he got off stage,” said a confidant who spoke with Trump afterward. “The thing about Donald Trump, is that, even when he goes off, he knows it’s not necessary to be mad or litigate grievances about 2020. It helps them. It hurts you.”
Co-campaign manager Susie Wiles walked into his line of sight as he aired his grievances from the stage and glowered at Trump, which a campaign adviser insisted was an effort to encourage him to wrap things up. He later seemed to agree with senior staffers after a plane ride to North Carolina that he should tone things down, the report stated.
“There wasn’t a come-to-Jesus talk with Trump," said a source. "We don’t have those, really. It was just making adjustments on the fly, kind of typical."
"We’re going to win this," that source added, "but he sounded like he thought he was losing.”
Former Donald Trump adviser and short-lived communications director Anthony Scaramucci sees a vast difference between the Trump he saw in 2016 and the one he sees now.
"You probably caught some hoarseness in his voice yesterday," he said of a Trump rally in North Carolina. "He even admitted he had a sore throat when he was sort of manipulating the microphone, let's just put it that way," he said referring to a Friday appearance at which Trump apparently simulated a sex act.
When Trump's final schedule was released last week, questions were raised about why he would have four events in typically red North Carolina. The move led political analysts and observers to wonder if the internal campaign numbers suggested that Trump was at risk of losing the state.
MSNBC played several clips of Trump in the closing days of his 2016 campaign, and him now. The difference was stark.
"He's also tired, and I think he's very disgruntled and things haven't gone the way he was expecting. I think if Joe Biden was still in the race, he was sort of expecting that," said Scaramucci. "
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) attacked her fellow Republicans on Monday when she appeared on The View with the co-hosts.
The day before the election, Cheney was on hand in an effort to convince voters to cast their ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris over Donald Trump.
"I think I echo everyone: We owe you such a debt. Well done, and thank you," Sunny Hostin told her as they began their conversation.
They first addressed Trump's latest threats against Cheney, in which he called her a "war hawk" and said she should experience how it feels to have guns "trained at her face."
She noted that she's been talking to voters about Trump's failures on Jan. 6, 2021, and "he knows he has no defense" with them. So, his only option is to attack her to distract voters.
"We think of people like [former Speaker] Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), [Speaker] Mike Johnson (R-LA), and [Minority Leader, Sen.] Mitchell McConnell (R-KY), who have heard the same words we've heard and seen the same actions and yet continue to make excuses, and after the comment against you, this weekend he talked about basically the press being shot at," said Griffin, referencing a comment he made at a rally Sunday night.
"Why do these people still defend him?" she asked. "And why do they have such a hard time taking his word seriously despite everything we've seen?"
"I think that it has really taught us a lot about some of the people that we've elected," Cheney continued. "It's taught us a lot about cowardice. "And look, I think that if you look at so many of the people who stood up, it has been young women, and it's been, you know, brave and courageous women and men ... willing to say, wait a minute, you know, I am not going to go down that path of defending him."
Former President Donald Trump has used violent language to describe what he wanted to do to the former first lady Michelle Obama.
The Republican presidential nominee told attendees of a campaign rally in North Carolina on Monday that he was pressing his staff for permission to go on the attack after Obama condemned his values and policies the night before.
"She hit me the other day," Trump said. "I was going to say to my people, 'Am I allowed to hit her now?'"
Trump appears to have been referencing Obama's Sunday evening rally during which she argued parents could not reasonably vote for the Republican presidential nominee.
"There is no way that we can tell our kids that anything is possible, that we should be open and accepting of every voice and perspective, and then give them a leader who contradicts all of those lessons," Obama reportedly said.
“If this election goes the wrong way, this backward vision of America being spewed by Kamala’s opponent – it will infect all of our lives no matter how old we are.”
Trump on Monday went on to mimic a conversation between himself and staff members, whom he derisively referred to as "geniuses," and who apparently have been urging the former president to tone down the rhetoric.
"Well, what do you mean?" Trump replied to himself. "She said bad about me. I can't hit back?"
The conversation continued with Trump's imaginary staff pleading with the former president to "just relax."
Trump asked the crowd if that was "good or bad advice" and got a disturbing reply.
"They say hit back," Trump said. "I'd actually love to hit back, but we'll hold it a little while."
Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign shared the video on X where Trump's comment caused a stir.
"He was never nice to the Obamas," said The Hill opinion writer Tara Dublin. "He also looks & sounds like he died last week but no one wants to tell him."
Former President Donald Trump held an election eve rally in Raleigh, North Carolina on Monday — but it packed nowhere near the punch of the former president's past campaign events.
The New York Times' Michael Gold reported on Monday morning shortly before the rally began that the arena where the rally was being held was "far from a full house, and no line outside."
Gold wasn't the only one who noticed how sparsely attended the Trump rally was, as MSNBC's Vaughn Hillyard estimated that the arena in Raleigh was only around 70 percent full, whereas in past years Trump rallies would be packed to the rafters.
"For nine years we have talked about the enthusiasm and the masses that have come out for Trump's rallies time and again, even at his politically lowest points, including in 2022," said Hillyard. "But interestingly, and I can't exactly tell you why, in this final week we have seen far smaller crowds."
Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign, meanwhile, was quick to pounce on news that Trump couldn't fill an arena in a must-win swing state on the day before the election.
Over the weekend Donald Trump said he is considering a ban on not just vaccine mandates, but vaccines themselves—an extension of his embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The ex-president also said he is considering RFK Jr.'s declaration that he would immediately ban fluoride treatments in public water, which protect about two out of three Americans, according to the CDC.
NBC News' Dasha Burns spoke with Trump on Sunday. She reports, "I asked if banning certain vaccines might be on the table. Former President Trump said, 'I'm going to talk to him,' meaning Kennedy, 'talk to other people and I'll make a decision, but he's a very talented guy and has strong views.' So it could really have a massive impact on how our government functions in terms of health should the former president win and give Kennedy a big role here."
Trump, as of publication time, has a 53-47 chance of winning the White House, FiveThirtyEight reports. He is expected to put RFK Jr., a known AIDS denialist and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and purveyor of vaccine misinformation who has likened the use of vaccines to the "holocaust," in charge of all public health agencies and public health policies, should Trump win election this week.
Kennedy in 2021 said, “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated.”
One week ago Sunday, at Trump's now-infamous Madison Square Garden rally, the ex-president promised to let RFK Jr. “go wild.”
“I’m gonna let him go wild on health. I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump told supporters. Two days later, Kennedy said: “The key that President Trump has promised me is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others, and then also the USDA.”
Across the board, modern-day vaccines have eradicated or nearly eradicated diseases that have killed millions. How would putting an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist in charge of determining public health policy for a nation, and the world, work out?
Felix Richter, a data journalist for Statistia in 2022 wrote, "Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows just how effective vaccines have been in all but eradicating major diseases in the United States. In 2021, there were no reported cases of small pox, diphteria and paralytic polio for example, compared to an annual average of 29,005 cases, 21,053 cases and 16,316 cases in the 20th century, respectively."
"And even though progress in eradicating measles has stalled in recent years (due in part to growing vaccine skepticism), its morbidity is nowhere near the annual case load seen in the 20th century, when half a million people were infected in an average year. Its prevalence has fallen by more than 99 percent due to vaccinations, along with a whole host of other diseases such as pertussis (whooping cough), mumps and rubella."
Kennedy had a history of gravitating to areas where vaccines have been controversial.
In 2015, The Sacramento Bee reported, "prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived at the Sacramento screening of a film linking autism to the vaccine preservative thimerosal and warned that public health officials cannot be trusted." His appearance came as "lawmakers [were] preparing to vote on a bill blocking parents from skipping vaccinations for their children," which "was prompted by soaring exemption rates in some schools districts and outbreaks of long-dormant diseases like measles and whooping cough."
Last year, The Associated Press called Kennedy's anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), "a multimillion-dollar misinformation engine."
In that deep-dive report, the AP also revealed that "Kennedy’s role in legitimizing anti-vaccine activism has not been limited to the U.S. Perhaps the most well-known example was in 2019 on the Pacific island nation of Samoa."
"That year, dozens of children died of measles. Many factors led to the wave of deaths, including medical mistakes and poor decisions by government authorities. But people involved in the response who spoke to AP said Kennedy and the anti-vaccine activists he supported made things worse," the AP reported. "In June 2019, Kennedy and his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, visited Samoa, a trip Kennedy later wrote was arranged by Edwin Tamasese, a Samoan local anti-vaccine influencer."
"Vaccine rates had plummeted after two children died in 2018 from a measles vaccine that a nurse had incorrectly mixed with a muscle relaxant," the AP noted, but Kennedy "was treated as a distinguished guest, traveling in a government vehicle, meeting with the prime minister and, according to Kennedy, many health officials and the health minister. He also met with anti-vaccine activists, including Tamasese and another well-known influencer, Taylor Winterstein, who posted a photograph of herself and Kennedy on her Instagram."
"A few months later, a measles epidemic broke out in Samoa, killing 83 people, mostly infants and children in a population of about 200,000. Public health officials said at the time that anti-vaccine misinformation had made the nation vulnerable."
Last year, The Autism Science Foundation (ASF) reported: "There is no correlation between autism and vaccines. This has been confirmed through dozens of scientific studies examining different types of vaccines and different vaccine timing schedules. Researchers have also studied thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines, to see if it had any relation to autism. The results are clear: The data show no relationship between vaccines, thimerosal and autism."
There are other ways to look at how anti-vaccine polices and beliefs affect populations.
Lat month, The Associated Press reported that "Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year."
"There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800." In Wisconsin, for example, "there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year."
An Idaho public health department has banned its practitioners from administering the COVID vaccine.
Last week the AP reported that a "regional public health department in Idaho is no longer providing COVID-19 vaccines to residents in six counties after a narrow decision by its board."
"Southwest District Health appears to be the first in the nation to be restricted from giving COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccinations are an essential function of a public health department," the AP added. "Demand for COVID vaccines in the health district has declined — with 1,601 given in 2021 to 64 so far in 2024. The same is true for other vaccines: Idaho has the highest childhood vaccination exemption rate in the nation, and last year, the Southwest District Health Department rushed to contain a rare measles outbreak that sickened 10."
The UK's award-wining i newspaper warns if the U.S. bans vaccines, it could spark an international health crisis.
"A US ban on vaccines would have 'dire implications' for Americans and could put vulnerable Britons at greater risk of harm, a leading UK-based expert has said."
"For example, the resurgence of diseases like measles and polio, which had been largely eradicated in the US, could occur. The 2019 measles outbreaks, fuelled by vaccine hesitancy, serve as a stark reminder of this risk," Kirsty Le Doare, Professor of Vaccinology and Immunology at St Georges University of London, told the i.
“Internationally, countries like the UK could see increased vulnerability. If the US stops vaccinating, it might lead to a rise in infections that could cross borders, impacting global health. For instance, a decline in US vaccination rates could affect herd immunity in neighbouring countries, leading to outbreaks that strain resources and public health systems," Professor Le Doare added. “A US ban could disrupt supply chains and funding for vaccine research, impacting vaccination efforts in developing nations where access is already limited. This could ultimately stall progress on global health initiatives."
Banning vaccines and fluoride are just two of the possible looming attacks on Americans' healthcare under a Trump presidency. Last week, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said he and Trump want to "take a blowtorch to the regulatory state," and the entire U.S. healthcare system needed to be deregulated, and a "free market" system implemented. When asked by an attendee at a Pennsylvania event for a local GOP candidate if that meant "No ObamaCare?" Johnson replied, “No Obamacare," explaining how Trump wants to “go big” in removing regulations. He later tried to backtrack, by saying that killing ObamaCare was not what he meant, but Trump has repeatedly not only said he wants to repeal ObamaCare, he has tried several times.
Dr. Syra Madad, an epidemiologist, told CNN putting RFK Jr. in charge of Americans' health is "dangerous."
