Season finale
THE PRESIDENT’S VOICE STARTS OUT A LITTLE raspy, but before long he’s in full roar. “We’re going to have a big victory, and that will be the end of it,” Donald Trump says. “Because you know what? One more defeat and they’re going to accept it.”
A murmur rises from the sweaty, jubilant crowd in this horse-breeding hub northwest of Orlando. Thousands are packed onto the airport tarmac in the blazing October sun. Nearly everyone is wearing a Trump shirt or hat—KEEP AMERICA GREAT, MAKE LIBERALS CRY AGAIN, NO MORE BULLSH-T, ADORABLE DEPLORABLE KID FOR TRUMP—and almost no one is wearing a face mask. They’re going to win Florida again, Trump says. There’s going to be a big red wave.
In the other version of reality, things are far less hopeful for Trump. Most polls say his opponent, Joe Biden, is ahead in Florida, a state without which it’s almost impossible for Trump to win, where more than 16,000 people have died of COVID-19 and nearly 4 million have already voted. The President is on the defensive in the battlegrounds he won four years ago, struggling even in states he should have locked up, like Ohio and Georgia. At a time when the nation’s problems are urgent and obvious, Trump’s closing message is an argle-bargle of conspiracy theories and personal grievance.
‘THEY CAN GET RID OF TRUMP, BUT THEY CAN’T GET RID OF US.’
—RAYMOND TEDESCO, TRUMP SUPPORTER
As the President rallies in Florida, Biden is in Michigan doing normal-candidate things: giving
