Former President Trump, a Queens native, has been talking about staging a rally in Madison Square Garden since being indicted on business fraud charges by a Manhattan jury in March 2023.

• At a cost of more than $1 million, his campaign will fulfill his wish with a Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday evening. New York is hardly a swing state, but Trump'll get tons of coverage, Axios' Sophia Cai reports.

Why it matters: In the campaign's closing days, Trump is combining splashy stunts with dark, apocalyptic messaging — a grand-finale twist on his lifelong formula of staying in the news, being provocative, deflecting.

🔭 Zoom out: In the weeks after Vice President Harris replaced President Biden as the Democratic candidate, Trump stewed as she dominated the headlines. He struggled to find the best way to undermine her.

• Trump and his campaign eventually hatched a plan for a series of provocative October events.

🎙️ As part of the strategy, and in his continued quest for young male voters, Trump will tape an interview with Joe Rogan on Friday.

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Tucker Carlson will stump with Trump in the swing state of Georgia this evening, and tells Mike he hopes to make at least one more joint appearance before Election Day.

• Carlson — who now heads the Tucker Carlson Network of podcasts, films and events — will appear with Trump in the Atlanta suburbs at Gwinnett County's Gas South Arena in Duluth.
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlie Kirk, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and other Trumpworld luminaries are also scheduled to appear.

🎃 🌵Carlson also hopes to meet up with Trump for a Halloween show on Oct. 31 at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Ariz., outside Phoenix, as an "Election Special Grand Finale" of the "Tucker Carlson Live Tour," which has sold out arenas nationwide. But that isn't nailed down.

• Keep reading.

The Harris campaign and other Democratic groups spent $1 billion on ads (cable, broadcast, satellite and streaming TV + radio and digital) over the past three months, according to AdImpact data via Bruce Mehlman.

Vice President Harris told NBC News' Hallie Jackson yesterday that she wouldn't offer "concessions" on protecting access to abortion — a topic she has made a central tenet of her campaign, Axios' Erin Doherty writes.

• Full interview.

A series of "Behind the Curtain" columns by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen will help you get ready for the radically different Washington environments that businesses will face depending on the election's outcome.

• Why it matters: Whether one party runs the table or we wind up with divided government, expect cultural wars that are stoked by the election's winners and losers, are fueled by the media, then seep into the workplace.

Our four scenarios:

1. Republican sweep: Trump, with a Republican House and Senate, would institutionalize the MAGA movement, with massive consequences for governance, civil rights and international relations. Keep reading.
2. Democratic sweep: Harris with a Democratic House and Senate (the least likely scenario, since the GOP looks likely to flip the Senate) would bring a progressive push across virtually every sector. Keep reading.
3. Trump with handcuffs: If a President Trump were constrained by Democratic control of at least one chamber of Congress, Washington would plunge into an epic power struggle and gridlock. Keep reading.
4. Harris with divided government: If President Harris faced a Republican Senate and/or House, she'd have to govern like a more moderate version of President Biden. Keep reading.

💭 The series was inspired by a clever "Alternative Futures" matrix by the consultancy FGS Global. Michael Feldman, partner and co-chairman, North America, tells us CEOs and other leaders gobbled up the series:

• "It's easy to get lost in the white noise of the data and the sport of the horserace. The reaction to the Alternative Futures analysis from executives and boards has been overwhelming. It's not about predicting results — the power of the tool is in preparation and planning for any outcome." 

Vice President Harris is trying to retain the White House for Democrats at a time when voters all over the world are throwing out their incumbents, Axios' Dave Lawler and Neil Irwin write.

Why it matters: Harris could be swept out in the same tide of inflation-fueled economic angst that has doomed incumbents elsewhere.

• Or she could be saved by the relative buoyancy of the Biden-era U.S. economy — the envy of the world (charted above).

🖼️ The big picture: Job security could hardly be lower for incumbents across the world's wealthy democracies.

• The Conservatives lost in a historic landslide this July in the U.K. after a decade in power. French President Emmanuel Macron and South Korea's Yoon Suk Yeol suffered setbacks in their legislative elections.
• Japan's long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party is poised to lose seats in a snap general election on Sunday.

Between the lines: The anti-incumbent trend looks like it will continue into next year.

• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals are down around 20 points to the Conservatives.
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party is running third with less than 20% in the polls.
• Approval ratings for Trudeau (25%), Scholz (20%), Macron (18%) and Yoon (16%) make President Biden's 38% look stratospheric — let alone Harris' in the mid-40s.

💵 The other side: Those leaders are presiding over considerably weaker economies than the U.S., which is on track to grow faster in 2024 than any other G7 nation for the second consecutive year — by a wide margin.

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Two of America's biggest business titans — Bill Gates and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon — are secretly supporting Vice President Harris, the N.Y. Times reported yesterday in separate stories.

• Why it matters: Former President Trump has threatened retribution against Democratic donors and political opponents.

Gates has "said privately that he recently donated about $50 million to a nonprofit organization" that backs Harris but doesn't have to disclose its donors.

• In a statement to The Times, Gates avoided endorsing Harris but said that "this election is different, with unprecedented significance for Americans and the most vulnerable people around the world."

Dimon has been vague about his political leanings in public but has made his support for Harris clear in private, The Times writes.

• He says he'd consider a role in her administration — likely Treasury secretary.

In a series of interviews with The Times' Michael Schmidt, John Kelly — Trump's longest-serving chief of staff — said the former president repeatedly praised Hitler.

• Kelly said he told Trump that "if you knew what Hitler was all about from the beginning to the end, everything he did was in support of his racist, fascist life, ... nothing he did, you could argue, was good — it was certainly not done for the right reason."
• "Kelly said that would usually end the conversation. But Mr. Trump would occasionally bring it up again," Schmidt reports.

Listen to the audio (NYT gift link).

🎤 Eminem spoke briefly at a rally for Vice President Harris in his hometown of Detroit yesterday before welcoming former President Obama to the stage.

• Obama, who took the stage to the beat of Eminem's "Lose Yourself," joked that he "noticed my palms are sweaty" — a reference to the hit song, before rapping several lines from it. Keep reading.

🎸Coming attractions: Tomorrow evening in Atlanta, Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen will headline Harris' first joint rally with Obama, kicking off a series of concerts in swing states. Actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry will speak, and Mix Master David will emcee and DJ. Go deeper.

• Continuing the series of "When We Vote We Win" concerts. Springsteen will join Obama in Philly on Monday for a concert and rally. Go deeper.

Anthropic — one of OpenAI's biggest rivals — is pushing out a new experimental feature that controls a computer for you "by looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text."

• Why it matters: The tool, known as "computer use," uses regular prompts to complete tasks just like a human.

🔬 Zoom in: The hope is that it could complete mundane tasks for humans such as transferring information from a spreadsheet to an online form.

• Anthropic says the model "looks at screenshots of what's visible to the user, then counts how many pixels vertically or horizontally it needs to move a cursor in order to click in the correct place."
• It admits the tool is "at times cumbersome and error-prone" — and says it's "releasing computer use early for feedback from developers, and expect the capability to improve rapidly over time."

Between the lines: Anthropic is the latest company to focus on what's known as an AI agent.

• Microsoft on Monday announced its own series of semi-autonomous agents for business customers.
• Salesforce launched an effort to create generative AI bots capable of taking action on their own last month.

🎨 The big picture: Agents that can act autonomously (within confined boundaries) are the logical next evolution of generative AI, which has thus far largely been limited to providing information for humans to act on, Axios' Ina Fried writes.

• Giving autonomy to generative AI tools also vastly increases the potential for catastrophic risk.

Go deeper ... Watch Anthropic's explainer.

A severe E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounders killed one person and caused 10 hospitalizations, Axios' Kelly Tyko writes.

• At least 49 people fell ill — mostly in Colorado and nearby states, according to the CDC.

In a statement, McDonald's said it has "paused the distribution of all slivered onions in the impacted area. ... Across the McDonald's System, serving customers safely in every single restaurant, each and every day, is our top priority and something we'll never compromise on."

• Keep reading.

Dude Perfect — the sports and comedy brand best known on YouTube — is gearing up for a big expansion after raising over $100 million, new CEO Andrew Yaffe and co-founder Coby Cotton told Axios' Sara Fischer at our BFD dealmaker summit in Manhattan yesterday.

• The company will invest more in toys, gaming and new content around women's sports.

Watch the interview.

🚴‍♂️ Robin Arzón — Peloton's lead instructor — spelled out how she left corporate law to become a fitness instructor. Watch the interview.

• More BFD moments: America's women's sports victory ... Nasdaq CEO on regulation ... New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Eric Adams.