Trump facing a 'crushing loss' on election day as he scrambles to save states he won in 2016: report

When Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign kicked off the president and his aides targeted states they felt they could pick up that went to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.

That was then and this is now.

According to a report from Politico, with the president's approval numbers in freefall and pollsters predicting a substantial Electoral College loss, the president is now being forced to appear in states he won in 2016 to keep them out of the loss column in what could be a "crushing loss" at the ballot box.

According to the report from Politico's Gabby Orr, "In the final 18 days before voters decide whether to keep President Donald Trump in the White House, the incumbent Republican is spending precious time in states that were never supposed to be this close but now threaten to upend his reelection campaign."

If recent polling is to be believed, Trump is in danger of losing normally stalwart Republican states like Georgia, Arizona, Iowa and Florida -- making his path to re-election near impossible.

As Orr wrote, "The president's campaign schedule in the final weeks is either a tacit acknowledgment that he's on the brink of crushing losses in major battlegrounds and once-impenetrable red states, or an over cautious exercise in due-diligence." She then added, "Trump's defensive posture follows a stretch of devastating blows to his reelection campaign that further imperiled his standing in the industrial Midwest, where the 2020 election is likely to be decided, and cast new doubt on his ability to keep the Sun Belt in his column."

Noting the stunning reversal of Trump's political fortunes, one person close to Trump's campaign admitted, "I've never seen a Republican president with numbers like this in Arizona."

According to the Politico report, "Trump is expected to remain on the campaign trail nearly every day until the election, zig-zagging between the Midwest and southern tier of the U.S. to cover all his bases. Next week he will participate in his second and final debate against Biden at Belmont University in Nashville."

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