Donald Trump ends his campaign with ad bashing the political establishment and “corrupt machine.”

“They’re so much more brave than me. I wouldn’t have done what they did. I’m brave in other ways — I’m financially brave.”

— Donald Trump, quoted by the Washington Examiner, while paying tribute to seven Medal of Honor recepients who have endorsed him.

“If you try to apply conventional political wisdom to Donald Trump you lose every time.”

— Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, interviewed on Morning Joe.

“Donald Trump’s presidential transition team has kicked into higher gear as the race for the White House tightens, with a team of conservative Washington policy wonks fleshing out plans to dismantle President Barack Obama’s legacy,” Politico reports.

“What once seemed like a futile exercise in preparing for a government that might never be is suddenly becoming very real for the 100-plus Republicans on Trump’s transition team. The group — made up of an unlikely hodgepodge of conservative think tank fellows, former Mitt Romney advisers and die-hard Trump supporters — has been working at a frenzied pace to put the finishing touches on a road map for the nominee’s first 100 days.”

“Pretend we’re slightly behind. You gotta get out. We don’t wanna blow this.”

— Donald Trump, quoted by Politico.

A woman who says Donald Trump raped her as a 13-year-old in the 1990s is planning a press conference at 6 pm ET today.

Huffington Post: “For months, people have wondered why this case isn’t getting more ― or, really, any ― attention in the press, even now that Trump faces an actual court date: a Dec. 16 status conference with the judge.”

Update: Politico reports the woman “abruptly canceled a news conference” today.

“Among the small number of American newspapers that have embraced Donald Trump’s campaign, there is one, in particular, that stands out. It is called the Crusader — and it is the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan,” the Washington Post reports.

“Under the banner ‘Make America Great Again,’ the paper’s current issue devoted its entire front page to a lengthy defense of Trump’s message — an embrace some have labeled a de facto endorsement.”

Donald Trump “proudly acknowledges he did not pay a dime in federal income taxes for years on end. He insists he merely exploited tax loopholes legally available to any billionaire — loopholes he says Hillary Clinton failed to close during her years in the United States Senate,” the New York Times reports.

“But newly obtained documents show that in the early 1990s, as he scrambled to stave off financial ruin, Mr. Trump avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tax avoidance maneuver so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would likely declare it improper if he were audited.”

“Thanks to this one maneuver — which was later outlawed by Congress — Mr. Trump potentially escaped paying tens of millions of dollars in federal personal income taxes. It is impossible to know for sure because Mr. Trump has declined to release his tax returns, or even a summary of his returns, breaking a practice followed by every Republican and Democratic presidential candidate for more than four decades.”

“Over the course of decades, Donald Trump’s companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders. These tactics—exposed by a Newsweek review of thousands of pages of court filings, judicial orders and affidavits from an array of court cases—have enraged judges, prosecutors, opposing lawyers and the many ordinary citizens entangled in litigation with Trump. In each instance, Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled—sometimes in vain—to obtain records.”

“This behavior is of particular import given Trump’s frequent condemnations of Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, for having deleted more than 30,000 emails from a server she used during her time as secretary of state.”

“For as long as he has been rich and famous, Donald Trump has also wanted people to believe he is generous. He spent years constructing an image as a philanthropist by appearing at charity events and by making very public — even nationally televised — promises to give his own money away.”

“It was, in large part, a facade. A months-long investigation by The Washington Post has not been able to verify many of Trump’s boasts about his philanthropy.”

“Instead, throughout his life in the spotlight, whether as a businessman, television star or presidential candidate, The Post found that Trump had sought credit for charity he had not given — or had claimed other people’s giving as his own.”

Gabriel Sherman: “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 Republicans 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.”

“Trump may not be all that focused on what happens to the masses of white, nativist, working-class voters who have coalesced around him, but there are people in the campaign who recognize how valuable those Trump believers could be long after the election is over.”

“Donald Trump’s list of highest-paid campaign vendors is brimming with his own name,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“An airline he owns has drawn the fifth-largest paycheck of any company the campaign paid through Oct. 19. Mr. Trump has also paid at least eight of his golf clubs, seven of his hotels and five of his restaurants.”

“In all, the New York businessman has spent close to $10 million over the course of the election cycle reimbursing his children for travel expenses and family-owned companies for campaign services, the most recent Federal Election Commission reports show.”