Welcome back to your daily roundup of news on the Donald J. Trump campaign trail. Let’s jump right in, shall we? Oh—and don’t bother donning those protective goggles. Trust me, they won’t help.
• As the election nears and Trump's chances dwindle, the crowds at his rallies are becoming angrier and quicker to lash out at detractors and the media. Coupled with constant right-wing media assertions of "election rigging", there's reason to be concerned that the more unhinged of those supporters may turn violent after election day.
• The latest bee in Trump's hair-bonnet is not just that the election is being rigged against him, but that it's being rigged against him in Texas—a state controlled by Republicans. We can infer from this that Trump thinks he might lose Texas.
• Does Trump himself know he's losing? His team commissions their own polls and surveys that show how badly he's doing, so he has no excuse not to. That said, this is Donald Trump we're talking about.
• Another woman has come forward to accuse Trump of sexual assault.
• Tea party Republican Jason Chaffetz rescinded his endorsement of Trump after Trump's Access Hollywood tape surfaced, giving a personal reason for doing so: "We have a 15-year-old daughter, and if I can't look her in the eye and tell her these things, I can't endorse this person." But that was several weeks ago, and he's now clarified that while he's still not "endorsing" Trump, he will still be voting for him. Let's imagine how that conversation went in the Chaffetz household:
Daughter: But you said the stuff he says was abhorrent and offensive.
Chaffetz: Yes but he should still be president because Clinton is worse for some reason.
Daughter: I can't wait to move out of this house. I swear I'm going to go to the most liberal college I can find just to spite you.
• Trump's word-war against the parents of fallen U.S. soldier Humayun Khan continues. He just cannot shut his mouth on this one.
• The Log Cabin Republicans, an LGBT Republican group, has finally in the last days of October declined to endorse Trump due to Trump surrounding himself with virulently anti-LGBT figures. Yep, it took that long to come to a decision, apparently.
• Nevada congressman Joe Heck, meanwhile, is embroiled in a very silly battle with state party officials over his prior badmouthing of Trump.
• The far-right militia group Oath Keepers is asking members to form "incognito intelligence gathering and crime spotting teams" to search for and videotape voter fraud or intimidation on election day. You may remember the name Oath Keepers as being a sorry band of halfwits who have inserted themselves and their loaded weapons into everything from the Bundy Ranch saga to Ferguson protests, so it's fair to say other election observers aren't thrilled about their "help."
• Also "helping": the Roger Stone-tied Vote Protectors, whose own efforts to videotape voters were considered to be too dodgy even for Roger Stone.
• Trump's call for supporters to monitor polling places is also causing trouble for the Republican Party itself. The party is under a consent degree barring it from intimidating voters in the manner Trump is suggesting after a 1981 New Jersey effort to do just that led to armband-wearing armed Republican "poll watchers" challenging minority voters as they attempted to cast their votes. Now the party has to go before a federal judge to explain why Trump's call isn't itself a violation of that consent decree, which was due to expire next year.
• Trump advocates have been suggesting there's a movement of "hidden Trump voters" who don't show up in current polls but who will turn out election day. There's not much evidence for that.
• After a campaign peppered with anti-Semitic imagery, language and retweets, it's fair to ask whether Donald Trump is himself anti-Semitic or just deeply stupid. As someone who has had to keep daily tabs on Trump throughout the entire presidential race, put my vote down for deeply stupid.
• A new David Duke campaign ad asks voters to vote for both himself and Trump.
