The Final Days of Trump's Unprecedented Campaign

As the unmanageable, unrepentant, and unprecedented candidate careens to the finish line Donald Trump's advisers try to figure out how to save themselves – and the movement he started.

- Gabriel Sherman

"I'M ON THE BATTLEFIELD RIGHT NOW, which is amazing," Donald Trump said as he surveyed the Gettysburg National Military Park. "When you talk about historic, this is the whole ballgame." It was the afternoon of October 22, and Trump was speaking by phone shortly after delivering a speech at the place where Lincoln pledged to unite a divided country. Trump had used the same location to pledge lawsuits against the women accusing him of grabbing them by the pussy. "I feel really good," Trump continued, making his way to the motorcade to leave for the campaign's next rally, in Virginia. "We had three polls this week that came out where we're No. 1. I think we're going to have a very big surprise in store for a lot of people?"

Even given the October surprise of the FBI’s reviewing a new batch of emails that may be related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server, Trump still faces difficult odds. But he is ending the race much as he got into it: not worrying too much about the future and not listening to any of the advisers around him. In recent weeks, I spoke with more than two dozen current and former Trump advisers, friends, and senior Republican officials, many of whom would speak only off the record given that the campaign is not yet over. What they described was an unmanageable candidate who still does not fully understand the power of the movement he has tapped into, who can’t see that it is larger than himself.

“I got really mad at him the other day,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told me. “He said, ‘I think we’ll win, and if not, that’s okay too. And I said, ‘It’s not okay! You can’t say that! Your dry-cleaning bill is like the annual salaries of the people who came to your rallies, and they believe in you!’ ”