Inside Mar-a-Lago: PA Anxiety, Chief of Staff Games & Czar R.F.K. Jr.

donald trump
Not unlike 2020, Trump and his allies are preemptively making outlandish and extreme assertions to lay the groundwork for a claim, if they don’t prevail, that the election was stolen. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Tara Palmeri
October 31, 2024

We’re less than a week from Election Day, and the mood inside the Trump campaign has undergone yet another transformation. Last week, I reported on the preemptive but undeniably palpable sense of euphoria washing over Mar-a-Lago as data rolled in depicting early-voting surges in Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina. But now, as the early results from Pennsylvania reveal an influx of first-time female voters who will likely break for Harris, a newfound anxiety is taking hold. While Trump continues to claim he has a massive lead, setting the stage to contest any unfavorable result, some in the Mar-a-Lago-sphere are starting to believe that his surge last week was two weeks premature.