Donald Trump cancels his Election Night party
When Donald Trump had a Twitter meltdown last night that lasted until nearly three in the morning, it was notable for a couple reasons. First, he’s clearly too worried to sleep. Second, his rant about the Supreme Court suggested that he doesn’t think the election will be close enough for them to even try to bail him out. Now today we’re seeing a perhaps even more telling sign.
Donald Trump was planning to hold an election night party at his Trump International Hotel in Washington DC, but now the New York Times says he’s canceling the party. We know this isn’t about the pandemic, because he’s currently holding multiple super spreader rallies every day. Also, Trump would have personally profited from this party. The only reason for him to cancel it is if he doesn’t expect election night results to go his way, and he doesn’t want to be embarrassed in front of his associates. In fact we see this kind of thing fairly regularly from candidates who don’t expect to win.
Some observers are suggesting that Donald Trump is canceling his party because he doesn’t expect there to be a winner named on election night one way or the other. But it was always extraordinarily unlikely that Trump would be named the winner on election night; in the unlikely scenario where Trump did win, it would be a close race, and it would take days to sort it out. So if this were his logic, we don’t think he would have scheduled the party to begin with.
We’re taking this as a sign that Donald Trump now fears that by the end of election night, he’ll either have been declared the loser, or the election will be tilting far enough away from him that everyone will know he’s on track to lose. Of course that doesn’t mean Trump is correct. It’s our job to spend these final days driving voter turnout, and make sure Trump loses.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report