Indeed, Trump made two remarkable assertions in a new interview with Bill O’Reilly: First, with Paul Ryan and other Republicans deserting him, Trump claimed he doesn’t even want Ryan’s support at this point. And second, he said his chief vulnerability — his awful performance among female voters — may not exist. That latter exchange is remarkable:

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O’REILLY: You’re behind with women. TRUMP: I’m not sure I believe that. O’REILLY: Whether you believe it or not, that’s what the polling says. TRUMP: Yeah. O’REILLY: Do you have any plan to speak to women directly?

When Trump seemed to assent to O’Reilly’s claim about the polls, he also shrugged incredulously, as if to say, sure, that’s what the polls say. Trump then referenced a child care plan that his daughter Ivanka had made him adopt, and continued:

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TRUMP: What women want is they want secure borders. They want safety. They want law and order. They want a police department that’s allowed to do its job. They want justice for all. They want a lot of things that everybody else wants. And Hillary Clinton can’t do it.

Trump then launched into an extended indictment of Clinton’s many failures as secretary of state, blaming her, among other things, for the rise of the Islamic State.

To hear Trump tell it, then, women mainly want a president who will keep them safe, which only Trump alone can do, as his latest ad states explicitly. No, really. That TV ad says: “Donald Trump will protect you. He’s the only one who can.” Meanwhile, as he says regularly, Clinton is too weak for that job, a case that was made most colorfully in another recent Trump ad, which showed Clinton collapsing and coughing, with the tagline: “Hillary Clinton doesn’t have the fortitude, strength or stamina to lead in our world.”

Whether Trump believes the polls or not, they actually show that women are killing his presidential hopes. Nate Silver drew up this chart of all the latest polling:

Clinton has led among women by an average of 15 points. As Silver concluded: “if Trump loses the election, it will be because women voted against him.”

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By the way, a recent CNN poll found that women think Clinton, rather than Trump, would better handle immigration by 55-39; would better handle terrorism by 49-44; would better handle the Islamic State by 53-39; and would better handle the criminal justice system by 51-43. Women picked Clinton as the stronger and more decisive leader by 51-36.

That has to be the ultimate indignity: women don’t even trust Trump as much as Clinton to protect him from the very things he says they should fear the most. And they think she is stronger than he is.

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* REPUBLICANS PANIC ABOUT DOWN-BALLOT RACES: The New York Times reports that Republicans are increasingly worried that Trump’s toxicity could put Senate and House seats at risk. Note this:

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The voting bloc that especially concerns Republican officials are the right-of-center, college-educated voters who usually favor Republican candidates but cannot abide Mr. Trump. These voters can make up anywhere between a quarter to a third of the party’s electoral coalition.

As I reported, Democrats are working to target women in this demographic in down-ballot races by casting Republicans who are running from Trump as only doing so after it’s too late.

* REPUBLICANS PANIC ABOUT DOWN-BALLOT TURNOUT: The Washington Examiner’s David Drucker poses a key question: With Trump now attacking the GOP, what impact will that have on whether Republican voters support down-ballot candidate?

As Drucker notes: “anxiety that Trump might blow up GOP and urge his base outright to vote for him but spurn the down ticket, is running high.” And of course, if Trump continues to slide, he’ll only crank up the attacks on Republican “disloyalty” over it.

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* REPUBLICANS TELL TRUMP TO SHUT UP ABOUT ‘RIGGED’ ELECTION: Politico reports that Republicans are beginning to criticize Trump for claiming the outcome will be rigged:

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“Somebody claiming in the election, ‘I was defrauded,’ that isn’t going to cut it,” said former Sen. Kit Bond…“I don’t think leading candidates for the presidency should undercut the process unless you have a really good reason,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who gained little support for his own 2016 White House run, told Politico.

That’s good to see, but how long until Trump starts claiming Republicans are in on the plot to rig the outcome against him?

* TRUMP AND CLINTON TIED…IN UTAH? The Deseret News reports that a new Y2 Analytics poll of Utah finds Trump and Clinton at 26 percent apiece, with minor party candidates gobbling up much of the rest. This is interesting:

A majority of voters statewide and specifically Mormons, as well as a near majority of Republicans, say Trump should drop out of the race….The poll shows that 94 percent of Utahns have watched or heard about the video in which Trump had an extremely lewd conversation.

Talk about the bottom falling out…

* CLINTON EXPANDING LEAD IN OHIO? A new Baldwin Wallace University poll finds Clinton leading Trump in Ohio by 48-38 in the head-to-head match-up, and by 43-34 in the four-way. This poll was all taken post-debate, too.

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Still, I’d be cautious about the polling right in the wake of the sex tape and the debate — there’s a lot of volatility. The polling averages still show a dead heat, so let’s wait on more data.

* REPUBLICAN CREATIVELY DISTANCES HIMSELF FROM TRUMP: The GOP Senate candidate in Colorado, Darryl Glenn, has suspended his support for Trump in the wake of the sex tape. But the Associated Press adds:

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But Glenn also said…that he believes Trump has apologized for his remarks….And Glenn says he wants to meet Trump “to know what’s in his heart” before deciding whether to re-endorse the Republican presidential candidate.

What’s in Trump’s heart? Somehow one doubts that the real answer to that question would be any more reassuring.

* QUOTE OF THE DAY, CLOSED TRUMPIAN FEEDBACK LOOP EDITION: Trip Gabriel reports that at Trump rallies, everyone is convinced he’s going to win. Including Trump:

Mr. Trump was in high spirits…in northeastern Pennsylvania, in the heart of a largely white, blue-collar region that he has visited regularly, running a campaign sustained by a visceral feel for his audience while ignoring abstractions like data and research. “I think the state of Pennsylvania, we’re going to win so big,” he said.