Shalabh Kumar, founder of the Republican Hindu coalition, which gave millions in support of Trump, said he felt his efforts had been crucial to the win, pointing to the existence of tens of thousands of Hindu voters in battlegrounds like Florida and North Carolina. He said he believed Trump would become the new Winston Churchill of a battle against radical Islamic violence.
.. McCloskey added that he does not believe Trump will proceed with mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, a point on which Trump’s campaign has offered ambiguous indications. “I’m in agriculture,” he said. “We can’t function without the Hispanics we have in this country.”
.. And he said now he planned to turn his fire on Republicans. “We hunt down the cucks,” he said, using alt-right slang for conservatives considered insufficiently committed to the movement’s ideas. “Chris Christie will not be as powerful as he now appears.”
Inside Donald Trump’s Last Stand: An Anxious Nominee Seeks Assurance
Donald J. Trump is not sleeping much these days.
Aboard his gold-plated jumbo jet, the Republican nominee does not like to rest or be alone with his thoughts, insisting that aides stay up and keep talking to him. He prefers the soothing, whispery voice of his son-in-law.
He requires constant assurance that his candidacy is on track.
.. And he is struggling to suppress his bottomless need for attention.
.. Aides to Mr. Trump have finally wrested away the Twitter account that he used to colorfully — and often counterproductively — savage his rivals. But offline, Mr. Trump still privately muses about all of the ways he will punish his enemies after Election Day, including a threat to fund a “super PAC” with vengeance as its core mission.
.. she discouraged the campaign from promoting the ad in news releases, fearing that her high-profile association with the campaign would damage the businesses that bear her name.
.. Advisers cut loose from the campaign months ago, like Corey Lewandowski, still talk to the candidate frequently, offering advice that sometimes clashes with that of the current leadership team.
.. Mr. Trump, who does not use a computer, rails against the campaign’s expenditure of tens of millions on digital ads, skeptical that spots he never sees could have any effect.
.. His aides outlined 15 bullet points for him to deliver during an Oct. 22 speech in Gettysburg, Pa., to focus voters on a new theme of cleaning up government
.. And over the firm objections of his top advisers, he insisted on using the occasion to issue a remarkable threat: that he would sue all of the women who had gone public with the accusations.
.. And over the firm objections of his top advisers, he insisted on using the occasion to issue a remarkable threat: that he would sue all of the women who had gone public with the accusations.
.. The speech was roundly criticized and seemed strikingly out of place on such sacred and historic ground. “The Grievanceburg Address,” one journalist deemed it.
.. Then came an astonishing development. On Oct. 28, the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, announced that his agency would review newly discovered emails potentially pertinent to its investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s private server.
.. To the assembled men sitting in white leather seats, the answer was simple: It could turn the election around.
But they insisted that to truly exploit it, Mr. Trump needed to do something he had been incapable of in the past: strictly follow instructions, let a story unfold on its own and resist the urge to endlessly bludgeon his rival.
.. Several advisers warned him that he risked becoming like a wild animal chasing its prey so zealously that it raced over a cliff — a reminder that he could pursue his grievances and his eagerness to fling insults, but that the cost would be a plunge into an electoral abyss.
.. Taking away Twitter turned out to be an essential move by his press team, which deprived him of a previously unfiltered channel for his aggressions.
.. as his plane idled on the tarmac in Miami, Mr. Trump spotted Air Force One outside his window. As he glowered at the larger plane, he told Ms. Hicks, his spokeswoman, to jot down a proposed tweet about President Obama, who was campaigning nearby for Mrs. Clinton.
.. Mr. Bannon, his rumpled campaign chief and a calming presence to the candidate, tried a different approach: appealing to Mr. Trump’s ego and competitive side by suggesting that the Clintons were looking to rattle him.
“They want to get inside your head,” Mr. Bannon told him. “It’s a trap.”
.. But he finally gave in when he saw the crowd reaction. And at a rally in Pensacola last week he noted with a smile that even Frank Sinatra disliked one of his biggest songs, “My Way.”
.. But he finally gave in when he saw the crowd reaction. And at a rally in Pensacola last week he noted with a smile that even Frank Sinatra disliked one of his biggest songs, “My Way.”
Richard Branson: Trump vowed to destroy 5 people who refused to help him
Branson wrote. “Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.”
Branson “found it very bizarre” that Trump was unwilling to talk about anything else. “I told him I didn’t think it was the best way of spending his life. I said it was going to eat him up, and do more damage to him than them,” Branson wrote. “There must be more constructive ways to spend the rest of your life.
.. Branson highlighted the real estate mogul’s “vindictive streak” as the most frightening thing about this election, warning it “could be so dangerous if he got into the White House.”
‘Because You’d Be in Jail’
About 20 minutes into the debate, Donald Trump delivered a menacing threat to Hillary Clinton. “If I win,” he warned, “I’m going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there’s never been so many lies, so much deception.”
Mr. Trump’s promising on national television to use the power of the president’s office to prosecute his chief political rival, to her face, was chilling enough.
But when Mrs. Clinton responded, Mr. Trump dropped the threat of an official investigation and any veneer of the rule of law.
“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Mrs. Clinton observed.
“Because,” Mr. Trump replied “you’d be in jail.”
It’s hard to think of anything Mr. Trump could have said to more powerfully underscore the truth of Mrs. Clinton’s point. He said, in a widely watched televised presidential debate, that if he became president, he would put political opponents in cages. That’s dictator talk. But it’s not Mr. Trump’s open contempt for the norms of liberal democracy that made my blood run cold. It was the applause that came after. It is the fact that it’s no longer assured that you automatically lose a presidential debate in which you promise to jail your political rival.