Election Eve in Trump’s Lair

After making hundreds of calls to undecided North Carolina voters, The Resistant Grandmother (TRG) imagines Trump’s final hours before the election.

The Resistant Grandmother

The setting:  It’s mid-morning in Trump’s private quarters at Mar-a-Lago.  The Republican candidate emits a dark mood, mirrored by his closing the blinds to an otherwise sunny Florida day.  It could remind literature students of Romeo’s fastening together the draperies in his room as he contemplates a dark future—”creating for himself an artificial night”—as Shakespeare penned in Romeo and Juliet.

But as a famously incurious and indolent student, Donald Trump would not be conversant with that metaphor.  Trump’s modus operandi has always been to eschew the written word and rely on his gut to guide his thoughts and actions, not on the frontal cerebral cortex where higher thinking resides.  

He turns on the TV and watches Saturday Night Live with Kamala Harris doing a guest appearance. There she is—attractive, friendly, intelligent, confident, funny—and comfortably entertaining with her SNL doppelganger, Maya Rudolph, who does not hide being on Harris’s side.

Trump then feels a profound resentment welling up from his deepest inner recesses. Fuming, he throws a plate of buffalo wild wings at the wall yelling, “F*** that bitch and that liberal elitist craphole who invited her there, three days before the election!” as the wings’ sticky sauce meanders down the wall.

“I guess I’ll have to add NBC to CBS, ABC, and MSNBC as the networks I’ll close down when I become president!” ungrateful for the notoriety he gained from NBC’s “The Apprentice” that laid the groundwork for his becoming president and for his own appearance on the NBC latenight mainstay in 2015. 

Savagely, he lays on the intercom and shrieks at valet Waltine (Walt) Nauta to summon his three campaign managers—Corey Lewandowski, Susie Wiles, and Chris LaCivita—to join him immediately. 

NAUTA:  Yes, Boss.  Right away! 

TRUMP:  Trump continues to use the remote to turn the TV on and off during the opening skit as if to spare himself seeing too much at one time.  At one point, he sees SNL cast member James Austin Johnson dressed in a fat suit and fluorescent safety vest. He spouts notable phrases from last week’s rallies—”I will protect women, whether they like it or not,” “I shouldn’t have left the White House,” and, worse, envisioning “War Hawk” Liz Cheney facing “nine (gun) barrels shooting at her.” His subsequent visit to a garbage truck was an attempt to blunt comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s slam of Puerto Rico as a pile of garbage in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.**

(**After the Hinchcliffe crack, Joe Biden retorted awkwardly. It sounded as if he were calling Trump’s supporters “garbage,” when he was referring to Hinchcliffe’s comment.  Biden clarified his meaning in a subsequent statement.  Ironically, however, the garbage truck photo op only served to remind voters of the comedian’s original slur, Trump’s connection to it, and his own garbage-related epithets related to the United States. And his shambling attempt to open the truck’s door showcased his advancing age.)

TRUMP: “That twerp.  He doesn’t even sound like me.  Just wait…I’ll keep him tied up in IRS audits for years!”  

NAUTA: (announcing campaign managers Lewandowski, Wiles, and LaCivita)  Here they are, boss!

TRUMP: (With his back toward his advisers, he points the remote at the TV where Maya Rudolph and Kamala Harris share a look-in-the-mirror skit where each jokes and smiles—the vibe suggesting Harris will emerge victorious on Tuesday.) 

“F*** this crap!  They’re making Harris out the winner! (Turns to his campaign directors.) “How’d you let this happen? Why didn’t you book me on the show?”

WILES:  Well, actually they get to pick their own guests.
TRUMP (threateningly): Not for long!
WILES:  She didn’t get off unscathed, Mr. President. You saw how they mocked her laugh, right?

TRUMP: Not nearly enough!  That bitch is getting all the good press.

LACIVITA:  Relax, Mr. President. The race is still tied.  NBC’s last national poll shows you and Harris deadlocked at 49/49.  That’s no material change from last month when it was 48/48.

TRUMP (running the stats through his own filter):  So, I’m still leading.  What about the battlegrounds?
LACIVITA: She’s slightly ahead in Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Georgia.  You’re tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan, but ahead in Arizona.  All in the margin of error, of course. 

TRUMP: Well, we’ll say we’re ahead in all of them—get that? We’ll use that line when it comes to denying the outcome if she’s declared the winner… 

LEWANDOWSKI, WILES, AND LACIVITA: Sure—our plan all along.

TRUMP:  But there’s a bigger issue here, scumbags. You’ve been telling me all along we’re in for a landslide.  And that we’ve got this in the bag.  What happened?

LEWANDOWSKI: Frankly, Mr. President. The Dems have a better door-knocking and phone-banking ground game.  On Saturday in Pennsylvania, Dem volunteers knocked on 800,000 front doors.  There were so many volunteers they came around to the same houses a second time (10.29.24 time.com).  Impressive show of force…

TRUMP:  How’d you idiots allow that to happen?

WILES (clearing throat before speaking):  Well, as you may remember, our original ground game plans that resembled the Democrats were scotched when Michael Whatley and your daughter-in-law Lara Trump fired Ronna Romney McDaniel and most of the Republican National Committee staff to replace them with staffers who were deemed completely loyal to you. 

Dozens of field offices were closed at the same time the people with experience in getting out the vote were let go (8.3.24 washingtonpost.com).

TRUMP: So we have no ground game?
WILES:  Well, it’s different now. Everything was outsourced to Elon and a few other big donors with PAC money.  Their start-up was difficult, this being their first time, so staffing was slow and there was a lot of turnover and hiring replacements.  And they were using a new model, so that was hard.

TRUMP:  What model?
WILES: They decided to parrot the strategy used by Iowa Republicans during the caucuses.
TRUMP: We had a strategy for them?

LACIVITA:  Yes, you know.  We used a cluster of outside groups to build a pyramid scheme of volunteers to run the turnout operations for low propensity voters—people who didn’t vote very often or follow politics. The idea was, they’d be good bets as Trump voters.

They’d use stealth methods to identify them and gain trust—like approaching them during dog walks or monitoring them in things like online neighborhood forums.  Once somebody started talking about what plumber to use, our people would subtly start dropping reasons to vote for you—you know, after they’d gained their trust (8.3.24 washingtonpost.com).

TRUMP: And this worked?
LEWANDOWSKI (sensing a way to cast doubt on Wiles and LaCivita):  Well, the turnout record in Iowa last winter underperformed expectations.  You won among a low turnout population (1.16.24 cbsnews.com).  If more had turned out, maybe it would have been a closer race.

WILES and LACIVITA:  It was freezing cold…maybe that had something to do with it!

LEWANDOWSKI, crowing:  Well, if had been me, I wouldn’t have fallen for such an untested technique as the basis for our ground game!
WILES and LACIVITA: Uh huh. You’ve been with the campaign since August—three months before the election.  You could have done something between then and now.
LEWANDOWSKI (sarcastically): Sure, right.  By then the trillionaire had a tight grip on our ground operations, or said he did. Elon had it in the bag, remember?  Big ideas based on no experience whatsoever.  And so, no surprise, the hit-and-miss deployment of his confused volunteers slowed things down (10.16.24 washingtonpost.com). 

WILES: Maybe he should have spent less time prancing around the stage at rallies and paying more attention to getting out the vote.

TRUMP: Yeah, he’s been getting too high-handed for his own good. But he’s got more money than god, and he’s shoveling it our way. So it’s on you to fix things, not him.

LEWANDOWSKI WILES and LACIVITA: (Knowingly looking at each other, for once feeling like a band of brothers, while also knowing it’s an alliance of those getting screwed by Trump and Musk.)           

TRUMP:  OK, forget the ground game.  Everyone knows my voters respond to my directives more than a bunch of volunteers, anyway.  Tell me who’s showing up at the early voting polls. 

WILES: Blacks and Latinos seem to be coming home to the Democrats. The New York comedian’s cracks about Puerto Rico being a floating garbage pile didn’t help.  And more Black men than not are supporting Harris. You know Obama has really been courting their vote, and Michelle has been shaming them for even thinking about not supporting black women over the abortion thing. 

TRUMP:  What about our bro votes? Aren’t our men putting us over the top?

WILES:  (again clears throat and takes a drink of water before speaking): Well, the North Carolina data is very instructive.  Of the current early vote, 44 percent are male voters. But…
TRUMP: But what?
WILES:  55 percent are female.

TRUMP:  F*** those young guys. They’ve been promising me they’ll get out of their basements and support me.

LEWANDOWSKI:  There’s still a good chance they’ll show up on Election Day, Mr. President, especially if the weather’s  good.
TRUMP: Wiles?
WILES: North Carolina’ll be warm enough, in the 70s.  But there’ll be intermittent showers throughout the day. I’m worried our fair weather bros won’t be willing to stand in lines in raincoats or with umbrellas.  Too effeminate.  And rain’s expected in all three Blue Wall states, too.

TRUMP: This will depress the Dems more than our people.  They’re all such wimps.
(LEWANDOWSKI WILES and LACIVITA remembering the huge 2020 student turnouts in long lines across the Blue Wall States in cold weather, neither disputing nor agreeing with Trump’s assumption.)

TRUMP: This women/man thing isn’t holding up anywhere else, right! I’ve told women I’ll be their protector! What more do they want?

WILES:  Not all are buying that pledge, Mr. President—as we’ve seen in the latest Iowa polling…

TRUMP: What Iowa…?
WILES:  Well, we’ve all got a bit of a shock on Saturday, Mr. President. The well respected Des Moines Register poll shows Harris up by 3 points in the Hawkeye State—Harris is at 47 percent to your 44 (11.3.24 desmoinesregister.com). 

TRUMP:  What the F***...?!
WILES:  Yes, we all had similar reactions, Mr. President.  This is very troubling and unanticipated.

TRUMP: Fake poll!
WILES: Not exactly.  We had a warning sign back in September when Register polling showed Harris coming in only four points behind you.  It was then we thought this early data might not be reliable.  But the phenomenon has only grown since then.

TRUMP: Those damn women. 
WILES:  They’re pissed off over Dobbs, Mr. President. There’s almost no getting around it. There’s been ongoing media accounts since Dobbs all across the nation—woman with miscarriages dying because doctors refuse to treat them in time, doctors forcing pregnant women carrying dead fetuses to wait for care until it’s too late and they die of sepsis.  And twelve-year-olds forced to give birth to their rapist uncle’s child...it never stops. 

And now we’re seeing the effect even in places like Iowa, especially with older women 50 and up who lived most of their lives under Roe.  They want the same protections for their daughters, granddaughters, nieces, friends, and so on. We knew it would be consequential, but not to this extent. 

TRUMP: Spare me, Susie.  Yes, but for all the so-called aggrieved women, there are all my men who don’t care and support me.

WILES: You’re in good shape with the manoverse; we know that—up 52 percent with men to Harris’ 38 percent.  But let’s look at Hawkeye women in the Register’s survey. They favor Harris 56 percent to your 36.  So you’re up with men but not enough to offset her numbers with women (11.3.24 desmoinesregister.com).

TRUMP: Those f***ing old Jayhawk hags!  They’ll rue the day…just wait until I get my hands on their Medicare records…
WILES:  It’s Hawkeye, Mr. President. Jayhawks are Kansans. 

TRUMP: (not listening)
WILES (trying to get him to pay attention): Well, let’s keep our eyes on the prize, Mr. President.  First, you’ve got to get elected... I would suggest laying off the “I’ll protect women” memes.  Having caused Dobbs with your three SCOTUS picks, they don’t trust you. They want Harris to restore Roe.  And another thing, please scrap all the dark, violent speech and images in the next 24 hours.  It’s gone over the line.

TRUMP (Irritated at the rebuf, he changes the subject):  Well then, let’s turn to the “election security” scheme. Get the word to our inside election moles and turn the screws on them. I want them rejecting vote tallies right and left.  There will be hell to pay if they don’t. Tell them we know where they live.

WILES: What did we just say?!

TRUMP: Also, let’s work the Black and Latino male voters, and maybe some of their women.  Send a tsunami of social media messages to Blacks and Puerto Ricans and their media outlets with facts on how much I’ve done for them. Tell them it’ll be their fault if I lose and I’ll hold them accountable. 

LEWANDOWSKI WILES and LACIVITA look at each other nervously, knowing both that Trump won’t help himself on canning the violent rhetoric and that he has done nothing for Blacks or Hispanics, Puerto Ricans or otherwise (11.3.24 the hill.com and 10.29.24 nytimes.com).   What to do?

As they leave, Wiles comes up with a simple, although deceptive, solution: Tell Trump, “We’re working on it and will get it out ASAP.”  She assures her male co-directors, “He’ll forget to follow-up, as usual.  So he’ll never know the difference.  And with tomorrow’s being Election Day, we won’t have to sell this s*** anymore.”
ALL:  We hope…

–trg

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