Mr. Trump, who is not known to stick to prepared remarks, has not delivered a clear closing message to voters in the final weeks of the campaign. Instead, his rambling rally speeches are more like a party platter with a little something for everyone.
False coronavirus claims: His top line message to supporters is to ignore their eyes and ears and trust him that the worst of the pandemic is over, and that contracting a virus that has killed 230,000 Americans is not, in fact, a death sentence. “With the fake news, everything is Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid,” Mr. Trump complained at a rally in Omaha last week. “I had it. Here I am, right?” His riff on the media’s obsession with the coronavirus is also an admission that he has not been able to move past the pandemic, or steer the coverage, as he has been able to do in the past.
What he wants to talk about is Hunter Biden: The Trump campaign had always hoped to paint Mr. Biden and his family as corrupt, much in the way that they did four years ago with Hillary Clinton. But the story has not broken through, and Mr. Trump often complains that he can’t get the “mainstream media” to cover an unsubstantiated report by the New York Post, based on unverified information. He also refuses to concede that it’s not an effective closing message for him, as some Republicans believe. “I get a call from all the experts, right, guys that ran for president six, seven, eight times, never got past the first round, but they’re calling me up. ‘Sir, you shouldn’t be speaking about Hunter,’” he said at a rally in Tampa on Thursday. “‘You shouldn’t be saying bad things about Biden because nobody cares.’ I disagree. You know, maybe that’s why I’m here and they’re not.”
Attacks on the election: Mr. Trump sprinkles his rally speeches with unfounded attacks on the election process. Last week, he claimed with no real evidence that “everyday, there’s cheating with the ballots.” It’s part of his consistent questioning of the integrity of the election. Trump advisers said their best hope was if the president wins Ohio and Florida is too close to call early in the night, depriving Mr. Biden a swift victory and giving Mr. Trump the room to undermine the validity of uncounted mail-in ballots in the days after.
The New York Times