Facing a double-digit deficit in a slew of national polls after weeks of continual scandals and bad headlines, Donald Trump is entering the final two weeks of the election a wounded candidate with a less than five percent chance of winning the White House—and he knows it. Notwithstanding his attempts to paint the election as “rigged” or his threats to discount the results if he loses, the Republican nominee has fallen back on what Trump does best: promoting Trump brands.

While Hillary Clinton and her entourage of top-flight surrogates are busy attacking the campaign trail in key battleground states, Trump appears to have grown bored with his failing presidential bid. On Wednesday, Trump spent much of the day at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for his new hotel in Washington, D.C., a deep-blue district whose three electoral votes he stands no chance of winning. “We’re very proud of our company,” he said, as he formally opened the renovated Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue to customers. Many Republicans, naturally, were furious. “The only rationale I think he’d have for that is he sees the handwriting on the wall and he wants to do his best to also protect his brand,” an anonymous senior Republican strategist told Politico.

“The only rationale I think he’d have for that is he sees the handwriting on the wall and he wants to do his best to also protect his brand.”

This isn’t the first time that the real-estate mogul turned G.O.P. standard-bearer used his presidential run to boost a new business. Last month, Trump coaxed reporters into joining him at the Washington, D.C. hotel for a much-hyped press conference that was supposedly going to focus on the birther controversy, but that instead turned out to be mostly an opportunity for Trump to offer a tour of the property. The event prompted CNN’s Jake Tapper to concede that the press had fallen victim to a “political Rick-roll.” The media was scandalized, but Trump, who once boasted that he “could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it,” seemed to revel in the free publicity. On Tuesday, the Republican standard-bearer pulled the same stunt again, corralling reporters at one of his marquee Florida resorts, Trump National Doral Miami, for what was more akin to an infomercial than a campaign stop. “With less than two weeks to go until Election Day,” Kevin Madden, a former adviser to Mitt Romney told the New York Times, “Mr. Trump is repaying [his loyal supporters] by using their campaign to showcase his hotel. He said he wouldn’t let them down, but he already has. They have a right to be disappointed.”

Trump’s latest self-promotional detour came the same day that the Trump campaign dealt a major blow to the Republican National Committee when it announced that the G.O.P. nominee has no plans to participate in any big-money fund-raisers in the final two-week stretch, signaling both that he doesn’t expect to win and that he doesn’t care about rescuing the G.O.P.’s increasingly vulnerable majority in the Senate, either.

While Trump uses his remaining days in the political spotlight to get free publicity for his hotels and talk up his brand, the former reality TV star is also laying the groundwork for his potential next act. In recent days, Trump has begun airing his own nightly news broadcast on Facebook, the beginning, perhaps, of his long-rumored ambition to launch his own media empire. That ability to pivot has always been the key to Trump’s success, or at least the mythology of his success. “I never had a failure,” Trump says in one of a series of recently uncovered interview, “because I always turned a failure into a success.” Even as he hurtles toward the most humiliating defeat of his career, Trump is searching for the silver lining.