[guest post by Dana]

Here’s an interesting look at Trump gearing up for election day, and his shift between combativeness and grievance. But this is what stood out to me:

Seldom far from Mr. Trump’s thoughts, however, is the possibility of defeat—and the potential consequences of being ejected from the White House. In unguarded moments, Mr. Trump has for weeks told advisers that he expects to face intensifying scrutiny from prosecutors if he loses. He is concerned not only about existing investigations in New York, but the potential for new federal probes as well, according to people who have spoken with him.

Consider:

Trump has famously survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. Few people have evaded consequences more cunningly. That run of good luck may well end, perhaps brutally, if Joe Biden wins. Even if Trump wins, grave legal and financial threats will loom over his second term…Trump’s legal expenses alone are likely to be daunting. (By the time Bill Clinton left the White House, he’d racked up more than ten million dollars in legal fees.) And Trump’s finances are already under growing strain. During the next four years, according to a stunning recent Times report, Trump—whether reëlected or not—must meet payment deadlines for more than three hundred million dollars in loans that he has personally guaranteed; much of this debt is owed to such foreign creditors as Deutsche Bank. Unless he can refinance with the lenders, he will be on the hook.

So, maybe underneath it all, he wasn’t just thinking about losing to Joe Biden here. Maybe he was thinking about something terrible finally catching up to him, and that something could be very damaging, long-lasting, and with a potentially disastrous outcome for the President…or former president:

“I shouldn’t joke because you know what? Running against the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics puts pressure on me. Could you imagine if I lose? My whole life, what am I going to do? I’m going to say ‘I lost to the worst candidate in the history of politics.’ I’m not going to feel so good.”

“Maybe I’ll have to leave the country? I don’t know.” Trump added.

–Dana

The prospect of this man unbounded by the reality of facing of another election is terrifying.

TRUMP: You turn on the news, ‘Covid, covid, covid, covid.’

CROWD: Fire Fauci! Fire Fauci!

TRUMP: Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait til a little bit after the election. pic.twitter.com/qOT0OZnJUE

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) November 2, 2020

He follows up the suggestion by saying Fauci has been wrong about a lot of things, like wearing masks early on. Trump firing Fauci for initially suggesting Americans need not wear masks would be like Trump firing James Comey for having treated Hillary Clinton unfairly. It does not quite pass the smell test, does it? Keep in mind that, as Dana recently noted, Trump continues to characterize mask-wearing as “politically correct” — and we all know what he and his followers think of political correctness.

That kind of attitude kills people.

Speaking of which . . .

Meanwhile, a Stanford study estimates that Trump’s recent rallies may have killed 700 people:

A group of Stanford University economists who created a statistical model estimate that there have been at least 30,000 coronavirus infections and 700 deaths as a result of 18 campaign rallies President Trump held from June to September.

The numbers, which will surely reignite accusations from Democratic leaders and public health officials that the president is putting voters at risk for political gain, are not based on individual cases traced directly to particular campaign events.

Instead, the Stanford researchers, led by Professor B. Douglas Bernheim, the chairman of the university’s economics department, conducted a regression analysis. They compared the 18 counties where Mr. Trump held rallies with as many as 200 counties with similar demographics and similar trajectories of confirmed Covid-19 cases before the rally date.

Trump’s path to victory is very narrow. He cannot afford to kill more of his supporters.

I filled out my ballot for Joe Biden yesterday. We’ll walk them to a dropoff point today or tomorrow. I had opportunities to research the Republicans running for state and federal offices. My criterion: have they said they support Donald Trump? Both had.

Neither got my vote. I left those races blank.