He's not a giant. He's a bumbling coward.

Some observations on the presidential election from historian Heather Cox Richardson: 

... Trump’s campaign seems to be deliberately pushing the comparisons to historic American fascism by announcing that Trump will hold a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, an echo of a February 1939 rally held there by American Nazis in honor of President George Washington’s birthday. More than 20,000 people showed up for the “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.

Nazi enthusiasts march into Madison Square Garden, 1939

Trump’s full-throated embrace of Nazi “race science” and fascism is deadly dangerous, but there is something notable about Trump’s recent rallies that undermines his claims that he is winning the 2024 election. Trump is not holding these rallies in the swing states he needs to win but rather is holding them in states—Colorado, California, New York—that he is almost certain to lose by a lot.

Longtime Republican operative Matthew Bartlett told Matt Dixon and Allan Smith of NBC News: “This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote-rich or swing vote locations—it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes.”

Trump seems eager to demonstrate that he is a strongman, a dominant candidate, when in fact he has refused another debate with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and backed out of an interview with 60 Minutes. He has refused to release a medical report although his mental acuity is a topic of concern as he rambles through speeches and seems entirely untethered from reality. And as Harris turns out larger numbers for her rallies in swing states than he does, he appears to be turning bloodthirsty in Democratic areas.

Today, Harris told a rally of her own in North Carolina: “[Trump] is not being transparent…. He refuses to release his medical records. I've done it. Every other presidential candidate in the modern era has done it. He is unwilling to do a 60 Minutes interview like every other major party candidate has done for more than half a century. He is unwilling to meet for a second debate…. It makes you wonder, why does his staff want him to hide away?... Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America? Is that what’s going on?”

“For these reasons and so many more,” she said, “it is time to turn the page.”

The political professionals who are running Trump's campaign are trying to compensate for their candidate's obvious deterioration by pouring resources into the seven states whose outcome will decide the Electoral College. I wouldn't be surprised if they like having him out of the way, fulminating threateningly somewhere else.

If you live in one of the swing states -- Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona or Nevada -- you are seeing Republican anti-Harris ads in every medium. You might even be seeing a Republican canvasser, usually paid by Elon Musk, though the union and Democratic field programs seem much more robust.

If you don't live in one of those places, you can still do your bit against our cosplay fake Nazi. You don't even have to travel to help Harris. Join the UniteHERE union phone bank and make calls to voters from home.