POTTERVILLE, Michigan — Inside a hulking steel warehouse where Donald Trump rallied his supporters on Thursday, the former president’s backers sweltered in the heat — and gave no oxygen, either, to the idea that their candidate arrived in this battleground state weakened by Kamala Harris’ ascent.
None said they believed recent polling showing Trump slipping behind Harris here. Nor could they stomach the latest Fox News polling showing that, entering the crucial post-Labor Day stretch of the campaign, the vice president had improved her position over President Joe Biden against Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.
And none could envision a world where they wake up on Nov. 6 and Trump is not the winner; if he isn’t, they say, Harris has either cheated or the election has been rigged.
“The media would tell you that Harris is winning, but the heart of America will tell you that Trump’s got it made,” said Kirk Deatrick, who said he stopped trusting Fox News when the network parted ways with Tucker Carlson.
He added of Democrats, “I think if they don’t cheat, I think he’ll win by a huge amount,” predicting an 80-20 margin of victory for Trump “if it was a fair and honest election, and illegal people don’t vote and they don’t use cheating.”
The rank and file’s certainty about Trump’s standing is at odds with Trump’s own, private concerns about the state of the race — and those of his allies. And it reflects a MAGA base that, far from adjusting to the shifting dynamics of the race, is digging in, and poised to protest any result other than a Trump victory come November.
“We need God’s help, and I’m praying he’ll transition this thing peacefully, but if not, that’s where I come in,” said 62-year-old Richard McLeod, who said he was a member of two Michigan militias. He added: “I’m standing my ground. I’m fighting ‘til I die. And I want to make the other side die for their cause.”
In more than a dozen interviews awaiting Trump’s appearance here, Trump loyalists said they paid no credence to a bevy of nonpartisan surveys showing Harris gaining on if not outright beating Trump, surging in fundraising and arresting his momentum accrued through much of the summer.
“It’s kind of like the rabbit and the sloth,” said Dan Danger, a 67-year-old retired truck driver of Hartford, who wore a camouflage Trump 2024 hat and a red, white and blue T-shirt featuring no fewer than 31 Trump faces emblazoned on it. “Have you ever seen a sloth? They have no brain. They work really slow. And that’s Harris.”
To a person, none said they would believe a result in which Harris was the winner on Election Day.
These voters’ confidence in their candidate belied public polling in their own state of tossup Michigan: A pre-Democratic convention poll for AARP by Trump’s own pollster Tony Fabrizio and one of Biden’s pollsters John Anzalone found the race tied at 48 percent, while a post-convention poll by The Hill/Emerson had Harris up by 2 points.
But his supporters here aren’t even conceding the race is close. In fact, to talk to the Trump faithful here is like entering an alternate political universe in which Trump is not already winning but cruising toward a landslide.
Trump on Thursday continued his long-standing effort to fuel that belief. He told the crowd that he was leading in the polls “by a lot” and that recent polling was “rigged.” And, as he has previously, he fixated on the size of his crowd.
“I got thousands of people, by the way, outside trying to get in. I never — they never said Trump’s a great speaker. I don’t even want that. But I must be a great speaker, right? We got thousands of people. No, we got thousands and thousands.” (In fact, there were not thousands and thousands just outside the warehouse; instead a few law enforcement officials idled, and lining the road, maybe a few hundred took in the scene, though they brought their own chairs and did not expect to get inside.)
There was, though, a delta between the MAGA faithful and the more establishment members of the party in the warehouse.
“A dead heat,” Michigan GOP Chair Pete Hoekstra, Trump’s former ambassador to the Netherlands, said of what the polls show. “Michigan is always close.”
Hoekstra found himself on the phone with Trump a week and a half ago, he said. Trump wanted to know whether the endorsement of the former Detroit Democratic Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who served time in connection with a conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice, would resonate nationally.
“And I told the president, ‘I don’t care,’” Hoekstra said. “He said, ‘What do you mean you don’t care?’ I said, ‘Mr. President, you asked me to win Michigan. That’s what I’m focused on.’”
Russ Jennings, chair of the GOP in Michigan’s Jackson County, admitted Trump could be more focused on the issues: “The economy. The economy. The economy. And immigration,” he said.
And then there was the view from outside the building where the rally was held. Far from the feverish crowd and a few hundred yards from the warehouse, on a hillside in front of a Dollar General, Jessica Chamberlain, a retired deputy sheriff, stood among a hundred well wishers spread out waiting to greet Trump’s motorcade.
“It’s kind of close,” she said of the race. “Some of our friends who are women are just voting for a woman.”
Kierra Frazier contributed to this report.
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