We're in the home stretch now: Welcome back to your daily roundup of Donald J. Trump campaign news, which in a few short weeks will be retired to the compost pile out back to be slowly buried under banana peels, coffee grinds and vegetables that spent too much time at the bottom of the fridge.
It was a slow weekend on the Trump campaign trail, aside from the candidate's unique reinterpretation of the Gettysburg Address as shouty list of grievances. We cannot blame the candidate for being tuckered out, at this stage of the race. We're also still awaiting the long-expected pivot to the general election, rather than a state-by-state shoring up of his own base, but Trump can't help it. Republicans keep saying bad things about him, and he's not going to let such things stand.
Did I say he blamed Republicans? I meant he blames everybody. His opponent, the government, the media, his own Republican allies—there's nobody who is not apparently in on the plot to deprive him of his rightful position as king of all things.
Yup. He's spending the last weeks of the election going completely batshit insane.
"These thieves and crooks, the media, not all of it, not all of it, but much of it. They're the most crooked—they're almost as crooked Hillary, they may even be more crooked than Hillary because without the media she would be nothing. [...]
When the people control the political power in our country can rig investigations like her investigation was rigged, can rig polls, you can see these polls, and rig the media, they can wield absolute power over your life, your economy, and your country and benefit big time by it. They control what you hear and what you don't hear, what is covered, how it's covered, even if it's covered at all."
The man's mind is a Glenn Beck chalkboard in miniature. I'm not sure whether his supporters believe he's running for president or to be the general they send forth to defeat the Vampire Illuminati.
On to the rest of the news day.
• Trump's new conspiracy theory, nicked as usual from the backwoods of the far-right, is that the polls are being rigged against him. Also as usual, it is based on a profound ignorance of how polling is done.
• Trump's preferred solution to all these groups saying bad things about him continues to be restrictions on the First Amendment.
• Trump is responding to the ongoing campaign to liberate Mosul with repeated condemnations of that effort as "a total disaster."
• He's also continuing, of course, to obsessively attack the women who have accused him of a pattern of sexual harassment and assault, telling a radio interviewer of an adult film actress who accused him Saturday: "Oh, I'm sure she's never been grabbed before."
• The time Trump's soon-to-be-wife called off their engagement because Trump behaved repulsively towards women in front of her.
• RNC head you're-the-puppet Reince Priebus was again summoned to the Sunday shows this weekend to explain just why the insane things Trump has been saying are not as insane as they plainly appear to be. This Sunday, Reince's role was to explain that Trump really would concede the election unless, you know, it was close or somebody shouts "fraud." Trump, for his part, continues to speak in gibberish on the subject.
• Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway says her boss would be willing to debate Clinton a fourth time, if she was willing. While this is almost certainly a bluff, threatening America with yet another Donald Trump debate should be investigated as a possible violation of the Geneva Conventions.
• As Trump's defeat seems more inevitable, the Clinton campaign is shifting focus to helping downballot Democrats defeat their own Republican foes. President Obama is campaigning on the trail himself, making the case against specific Republican incumbents such as Joe Heck and Darrell Issa.
• Strike three, he's ... back in? Republican Sen. Mike Crapo previously endorsed Trump, then unendorsed him after Trump's Access Hollywood tape surfaced. Now that the dust has settled he's endorsing him again. Because what America needs most are leaders who have very strong moral principles for spans of, say, a week or so.
• Also standing in Trump's corner despite the electoral risks: North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr.
• National Rifle Association tinhat Wayne LaPierre recorded the group's latest pro-Trump, anti-Clinton effort with a spectacularly unhinged entry declaring that America under President Obama has now "completely unraveled" and that Hillary Clinton will "launch an all-out war" to "come for your guns." And now we're supposed to sit here and pretend not to be worried that the head of the nation's largest pro-gun group is spouting lunatic theories indistinguishable from the last rants of far-right mass murderers.
• Pro-Trump pastor Carl Gallups took to the Jim Bakker Show to praise Trump as the "wrecking ball" who will destroy the sinister globalists using Islam and radical homosexuality to "conquer us."
• Dilbert creator Scott Adams has the most Trumpian proposal ever for how to deal with a President Trump that unexpectedly became too "Hitler-ish."
• Trump supporters are now tweeting pictures of journalists with a red "X" over their faces under the hashtag #TheList. (Paging Scott Adams: Scott Adams to the red courtesy phone.)
• Latino early voting participation is soaring in this election.
• One-third of pro-Trump tweets during the last presidential debate were generated by bots.