Giuliani was instructing Clark, the election lawyer on election issues, and separately, on the phone to the president, outlining how they had to start to position for a fight. If it was close—and it would be close, because they were trying to steal it!—they had to get to higher ground.

Meadows, the Southern Baptist, with small tolerance for drunks, turned to the obviously hammered former New York City mayor: “No, we are not going to do that because we will look foolish. Things are moving too fast. We can’t put the president in the position of looking like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Rudy had been trying to make this argument for weeks now—that they had to prepare for the worst—but everybody (Meadows, Kushner, Hicks, and the campaign team, really, everybody) had tried to shut him out. To the degree that the Trump White House was united about anything, it was united in keeping Giuliani out.

But now Rudy had the president’s ear:

The Democrats would do what they had to do to undermine a close call for Trump. Trump had to do what he needed to do to protect himself and to undermine a close call for the Democrats. He was winning, he would win—the accruing down-ballot victories for Republicans in Senate and House races made that clear: the GOP had lost in 2018 because Trump was not on the ballot; they were winning now because he was. But, if this was to be a fight—and of course it would be a fight, because the other side was surely going to do anything it had to do to win—this was, obviously, a death match. Trump had to put his stake in the ground.

There was another march up to the Residence. The original group was now joined by Giuliani; Vince Haley and Ross Worthington, the speechwriters; Derek Lyons, the staff secretary (the chief of staff’s chief of staff); Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel; and Eric Herschmann. Everybody milled around; the not-too-ambulatory Rudy sat in a chair. The president wanted numbers, but no one was giving him numbers, so he got them himself, from the television. Why had the counting stopped in Pennsylvania, he demanded to know? And Wisconsin? What was happening in Wisconsin? But no one knew. No one actually knew if the counting actually had stopped. Well, it had stopped, the president insisted, because they were going to steal it. There was no other reason.

If the counting was going to stop, his logic now went, it had to stop for good—with him still ahead. The counting couldn’t continue later or tomorrow; that was how they would steal it. They would know how many Biden ballots were needed and would come up with them. It was crystal clear to him. It had to be clear to everybody. They had stopped the counting so they could stuff the ballot box!

Obviously.