Still, as long as the reports were positive (that is, not negative), Trump, on the phone, was retailing this out to his long call list, who in turn, because that was what was required, assured him of what he was assuring them. Again, here was the information loop—if its intention was not to mislead, it was certainly determined to put off bad news as long as possible and, indeed, to find every possible avenue to good news. And it was a closed loop. Trump, incapable of, or uninterested in, looking at the data himself, relied on what people told him; and to the extent possible, they told him what he wanted to hear. And often, the people he was speaking to, which was why he spoke to them, strayed beyond even the good news he wanted in the assurances they offered him. They gave him ecstatic news.

Trump, having discouraged Republican mail-in votes, insisted he would prevail in a “red wave,” a vast, unprecedented turnout of Republicans at the polls on Election Day. And, indeed, at this point, twenty-four hours after the polls had first started to close, the red wave seemed a certainty: the Republicans had seen a massive, record-breaking Election Day turnout. Fearing this, and fearing that Republicans would claim a win, the Democrats in the week before the election had promoted a counter view: the “red mirage.” Don’t be distracted, they said. The Republicans might pile up big early tallies on Election Day at the polls, where votes would usually be counted first, but the Democrats would pile up even bigger tallies in the mail-in votes, which register later. This, too, was now clearly happening.

Trump, however, was personally satisfied that the red wave had won.

He clung to a specific set of numbers given to him by the pollster John McLaughlin: if Trump could raise the 63 million votes he received in 2016 to 66 million votes—and he was on track to do this and, even, substantially exceed it—he would absolutely win. This was, Trump kept repeating (and would do so for months to come), “absolute.”

By Wednesday evening, Oz was reporting that they were down by 93,000 votes in Arizona, but he believed that the outstanding votes would put them up 100,000, so they would win by 7,000. In Georgia, they were up by 46,000 and would lose the outstanding votes by 41,000, but still win by a slim margin. In Pennsylvania, they were ahead by 207,000 votes, and while they would lose the remaining outstanding ballots by 157,000, this still meant they’d win by 50,000. So, all good. These were the numbers being relayed to the president.

“We should still be okay … We should be able to pull this off … assuming no new votes,” Oz assured the campaign team throughout day two.