I'm tired of being told Trump is winning easily who have no basis for saying so and who will claim that the election was stolen from him if and when they are wrong. I have told you before that I think he is winning -- I no longer think so, by the way, for the first time -- and I have told you my basis for believing so.

My basis for not believing so is Trump's own behavior. After showing up for the debate unprepared for the opportunity to speak directly to his own voters, he compounded the damage by attacking Taylor Swift in a pointless post on Truth Social. Coupled with reports that he was traveling with Laura Loomer -- an Internet provocatuese with her own agenda but nothing in particular to offer -- I have concluded that the Trump campaign has inexcusably lost its focus.

The election is still winnable, but he is not winning it, and he needs to change.

After making that argument, I found a lot of people agreed. But I also received a lot of pushback from some conservative influencers on social media. Here are the things they appear to believe and are encouraging other people to believe:

• "The polls are wrong." Polls showing Harris with a lead, or Trump with only a narrow lead, are said to be aimed at suppressing the vote and are not to be trusted. You should be skeptical of polls in general but there is a real possibility that Harris is winning, or that Trump isn't winning by enough to overcome the familiar problems with vote-by-mail.

• "Kamala's crowds are fake." The overwhelming enthusiasm of Democratic voters after Harris replaced Biden is not an illusion; they are back in this thing.

• "There is going to be a dramatic shift of minority voters." This never happens and there is no reason to think it is going to happen in a significant way, now.

• "Kamala got the debate questions in advance." She may have had some help, and there was apparently a deal about the moderators only fact-checking one side, but she didn't have the questions: her answers were terrible.

• "Trump never posted about Taylor Swift." I've literally seen people claim it was photoshopped. Go to Truth Social yourself and see it on his own feed.

• "People in Springfield, OH, are literally eating pets." There are problems with migrants in Springfield; this isn't one of them, even if it is a symbolic idea.

You can believe these things if you want to believe them. Just be aware that for many of the people circulating these claims, these are recreational beliefs, or ways in which they cope with reality, and that if they are wrong, they will just shift to other recreational beliefs, such as that the election was stolen anyway.

I do believe the 2020 election was "neither free nor fair" (and wrote a book to that effect). I also believe that there are "rigged" elements in the system (the ABC News debate, the vote-by-mail system). I still believe that Trump could win by swamping the polls with voters. He's not doing anything to achieve that.

Accordingly, I am going to tell you what I believe is actually happening. I could be wrong, but I'm also not trying to live in an alternative reality. I'm not being "defeatist"; I'm trying to help Trump and America avoid defeat.

I'm doing what I can to keep people focused on the task at hand, now. That requires honesty.