It was clear what was happening, but no one wanted to tell him—or, at least, everyone wanted to wait as long as possible to tell him.

Good news still flowed, at least tidbits of good news, some of which, months later, he would still be repeating: He was likely to get more votes than any sitting president had ever gotten. In many Democratic states, Biden was underperforming Obama. Trump might beat his own 2016 count by as much as 10 million votes (it would be 12 million). He was certainly going to beat his own 63 million votes in 2016 by well more than the 3-million-vote threshold he had been told he’d need for victory.

Kushner, who had so eagerly brought his father-in-law the good news on Election Day and on Wednesday morning, now delegated others to convey and couch the less-promising reports.

Here was the fact—one set of facts: They were going to do vastly better than most anyone thought they would do at most points in the campaign. If they lost, it would be by the thinnest of margins in the key states. It was clear that the down-ballot success might nearly reverse Republican losses from 2018. And they would likely hold the Senate. Trumpism—here was a headline for the 2020 election—was winning. As a minority political movement, Trumpism was remarkably strong—strong not in spite of Donald Trump, but, inexplicable to many (including many in the White House), because of him.

But this good news made it more difficult to give the president the bad news. If all the former was true, then the corollary, that he might lose, must be wrong. If you told him the former and then presented him with the latter—that he had, in fact, lost—you were wrong. The very fact that there was so much down-ballot success when, two years before, without him on the ballot, it had been a disaster everywhere was stark evidence that something was wrong on top. The Dems’ meager margins meant not that Trump was losing, but that there had to have been some funny stuff.

On Thursday, Mark Meadows, the next in the ever-increasing line of dominoes, and the West Wing linchpin, came down with COVID. He was out for almost two weeks.

Meanwhile, a gung-ho group, recasting 2020 as 2000, when Republican operatives and lawyers amassed for the Florida recount, was out putting boots on the ground in tight-race states in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

Dave Bossie went out to Arizona, where he found Boris Epshteyn (with an annoyed Bossie asking, “Who invited Boris?”). Matt Schlapp, the emcee and organizer of CPAC, the annual conservative conference, whose wife, Mercedes, had been in the White House comms office before going over to join the campaign, was off to Nevada with Ric Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence. Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general and frequent Trump TV surrogate, and Corey Lewandowski, the Trump operative, went to Pennsylvania.