Team Trump Knows the End Is Near—and They’re Pissed at Their Candidate

Donald Trump’s own staff now see that the campaign is rotting from within.

According to reporting from The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta, who has followed the Trump campaign over the past year, many staffers are reflecting on the poor state of Trump’s 2024 run and are fed up.

“I just don’t know, you know, how much longer I can put up with this,” one person on the Trump campaign told Alberta last month, after John Kelly’s warning on Trump’s love of Hitler and fascism. “I’m just not even sure I can ride out this campaign,” the staffer added.

Talking with CNN and MSNBC Monday night, Alberta said that some of those working on the campaign are “disillusioned” or even feel “resentment” and “disgust” toward the Republican nominee.

“There is a fatigue and exhaustion, and at times, I think, it would be accurate to say, a disgust, for some of these people that has set in,” Alberta told MSNBC. “Even among the people who have poured their blood, sweat and tears” into reelecting Trump, there is a feeling that “something is off here.”

As Alberta reported in his Atlantic feature on Saturday, many Trump staffers appeared burnt out and even considered resignation in the home stretch of the campaign. Following Joe Biden’s resignation, as Trump cozied up to Laura Loomer and Elon Musk and “Lewandowski was going rogue,” wrote Alberta, “morale was plummeting among the rank-and-file staff.”

“The past three months had been the most unpleasant of their careers,” he continued. “Win or lose, they said, they were done with the chaos of Donald Trump—even if the nation was not.”

The same people who had been excited to reelect Trump just months before, after week after week of scandal, told Alberta “they’d had a change of heart.”

“As of a few weeks ago, people close to him were still pretty bullish on his prospects,” Alberta told CNN. “I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. I think that there is a real fear that the bottom has started to fall out here at the worst possible moment, and that they are closing in about as weak a fashion as you possibly could.”

Fake FBI videos are circulating containing misinformation about Election Day.

The bureau on Tuesday warned about two videos that make false claims about terror threats and voter fraud. One fake video claiming to be from the FBI said that there is a high terror threat and urged people to “vote remotely,” while a different video included a fake FBI press release claiming a rigged voting process in five prisons in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.

In a statement, the FBI said that both videos are “not authentic.”

“Attempts to deceive the public with false content about FBI threat assessments and activities aim to undermine our democratic process and erode trust in the electoral system,” the FBI’s statement read. 

Tuesday’s FBI warning follows a statement from the FBI and two other intelligence agencies Monday that they expect foreign actors to “intensify” influence operations “through election day and in the coming weeks,” particularly in the contested states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The agencies warned about threats from Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran.

Misinformation and conspiracies have been rife during this election, often helped along by influential personalities who should know better. Just a few days ago, Elon Musk spread a fake election video that purportedly showed a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted multiple times in Georgia and encouraging others to do the same—drawing a rebuke from Georgia’s Republican secretary of state.

Last week, Trump spread a false claim about fake voter registrations in York County, Pennsylvania, and has already tried to sow doubt in the electoral process with a lawsuit over alleged voter intimidation in the state. Earlier this month, Musk recycled debunked claims about fake voting machines at a rally in the Keystone State.

Even after polls close on Tuesday, final vote counts and certifications are likely to continue for days and possibly weeks afterward, creating opportunities for bad actors to spread rumors and conspiracies. The question is whether this misinformation will persuade people to act rashly and commit crimes, or if the results are accepted by the majority of the public to ensure a peaceful transition of power.

A mysterious text banker has been targeting progressive voters in swing states with messages about Kamala Harris’s policies on Israel.

According to reporting by the Forward, Pennsylvania voters have been receiving anonymous text messages promising that Vice President Harris “will always stand with Israel.” The texts, which came from a number with a Virginia area code, appear to be targeting pro-Palestinian voters in the state.

“The Kamala Harris campaign has been running conflicting ads about where she stands on Israel,” one of the messages sent on Sunday read. “It is just what she has to do to be able to win.”

The text included a screenshot of a CNN article about how the Democrat would “amplify different parts of her message on Gaza and Israel in Michigan and Pennsylvania.” Another included a link to a Times of Israel article describing how Harris plans to keep arming Israel.

Voters in Michigan received similar texts last week. Former Axios reporter Sam Robinson obtained messages sent to Detroit voters encouraging them to “stand up against Hamas and all radical terrorists in Gaza.”

Though it is not entirely clear if the efforts are connected, as all the messages are anonymous and not tied to any particular organization, the Michigan and Pennsylvania texts included strikingly similar language.

Moreover, voters in both states reported receiving texts from someone named “Max,” and many messages shared a link to the same story: an NBC news article from August on Harris telling pro-Palestinian protesters “I am speaking now.”

As the Forward noted, the messages overall bear a resemblance to ads targeting Michigan and Pennsylvania voters put forth by the Future Coalition PAC funded by Elon Musk and Mitch McConnell. That super PAC is running digital ads portraying Harris as a hawk for Israel in areas in Michigan with large Arab and Muslim voters, while attacking Harris on her anti-Israel policies in ads to Jewish voters in Pennsylvania.

The Verge reported Tuesday that the texts most likely came from a company called Wonder Cave based in North Carolina, which works with digital advocacy and fundraising group Twenty Manor. Over the past year, Twenty Manor has received $33,000 from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) for text messaging and more than $12,000 from former Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s leadership PAC, Defend Freedom, for “digital consulting.”

This story has been updated.

In his final rally before Election Day, Donald Trump brought out a KKK sympathizer to hype up his Grand Rapids, Michigan, crowd.

Just after 1 a.m. EST Tuesday morning, Trump invited Brian Pannebecker, the founder of Auto Workers for Trump, onstage to speak. Pannebecker, a longtime Trump supporter, was outed by Politico in 2015 for praising David Duke’s My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding in a 2001 Amazon review, and for calling President Barack Obama “a race hustler” who was “trying to benefit from racial tension and animosity,” in a 2015 Facebook post.

Pannebecker praised Trump at his last campaign rally and predicted that 65 percent of United Auto Workers members in Michigan would vote for Trump and he would carry suburban Macomb County. The county was key to Trump’s victory in the state in 2016, and Pannebecker said, shouting, “We’re gonna carry Michigan again!”

Trump and Pannebecker’s relationship goes back to that 2016 campaign, with Trump meeting with the Michigan native back then even after the news of his David Duke praise was revealed. Pennebecker has been an active campaigner for Trump during this election, making regular appearances at Trump’s rallies in Michigan and being dubbed Trump’s “go-to Michigan auto worker” by the The Detroit News.

But Pannebecker is exaggerating how much support Trump is getting from autoworkers. The UAW endorsed his opponent, Kamala Harris, in July, drawing the ire of Trump. On one of JD Vance’s visits to Michigan earlier this month, several people in the crowd for his speech wore “Auto Workers for Trump” T-shirts but weren’t autoworkers at all. On October 15, Trump even belittled autoworkers, saying their jobs were so easy children could replace them.

As a battleground state, Michigan’s election results are expected to be very close and could be a bellwether for who wins the presidency. The question is whether autoworkers in the state, a key voting constituency, will vote based on the UAW’s endorsement and Democrats’ pro-labor record or go with glib promises from Trump and Pannebecker.

Republicans have scored another ballot box victory in a crucial swing state.

The Georgia Supreme Court sided with the Republican National Committee and the state’s Republican Party in a decision that overturned efforts to extend the absentee ballot deadline in Cobb County.

Last week, Cobb Elections announced that more than 3,000 absentee ballots had been mailed out after the state required deadline. Three residents filed suit to get their ballot acceptance deadline extended, as there was no other choice.

Cobb Superior Court Senior Judge Robert Flournoy found this to be sensible, extending the deadline for votes to be counted until Friday, November 8, so long as ballots were postmarked by Election Day. But the Georgia Supreme Court overruled him on Thursday, ruling that county election officials can only count ballots received by 7 p.m. on Election Day.

The decision puts nearly 3,000 ballots at risk of going uncounted. Ballots received late will be separated and kept, “until further order of the Court.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center and American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the voters impacted, are urging Cobb residents to vote in person if they can. “Only as a last resort, should voters simply mail their ballots. Unfortunately, there are voters who will not be able to access the remaining options and will not have their voices heard in this election as a result of this ruling,” the SPLC wrote.