As the Democratic National Convention kicks off and the presidential campaign’s home stretch begins, President Donald Trump is losing his reelection bid against Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The former vice president has had a big national poll lead throughout the campaign, he has the edge in key battleground states, and Trump’s campaign is buying ads to preserve his hold on once sure-thing red states like Georgia and North Carolina. With the election only 78 days away, Trump’s supporters are scrambling for ways to make up ground with voters who have seen the economy devastated by a deadly pandemic that has resulted in more than 200,000 deaths under his watch. 

As the time necessary to mount a comeback slips away and new polls show the president trailing by double-digits, Fox’s pro-Trump propagandists have found a new reason for hope: The Trump superfans who display their support by participating in colorful boat parades.

This fixation on boat enthusiasts doesn’t make much sense -- as The Washington Post’s Philip Bump pointed out, the Republican slant of the boating community makes it “the equivalent of driving through an upscale neighborhood where every other house sports a Trump-Pence sign.” 

But for months, Trump and his campaign have been touting the “beautiful ’boaters’” on social media, in press releases, and on the stump, citing them as evidence of Trump’s purported enthusiasm advantage. This obsession appears to have roots in an effort by Trump aides to keep their boss happy as the country and his reelection hopes crumble around him -- The Daily Beast reported in July that the president “has delighted in advisers showing him boater photos and videos that have bubbled up on social media.”

Now the president’s personal propaganda channel is giving him the boater coverage he craves, telling its audience that Trump’s support from that demographic is a reason to doubt the polls -- and that it may even herald his victory in the fall.

Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy opened a Friday segment on the presidential race by acknowledging that the network’s new poll showed Biden steadily leading Trump by a 49-42 margin. But discussion soon turned to the possibility that Trump supporters may be hiding their true preferences in pollster calls and conversations with their neighbors. “I’m not sure how much stake we can put in all of these polls, if people are really being truthful,” Ainsley Earhardt concluded.

The group then pivoted to discuss what they considered a better sign for the president’s reelection, what Doocy termed the “Trump flotillas.” “I never remember a president with a flotilla. He’s got one in almost every body of water it seems,” Brian Kilmeade commented. “It’s unbelievable, I’ve never seen anything like it,” replied Doocy. “And those are the people that aren’t ashamed or aren’t afraid to say who they’re voting for, but some people would never put a Trump sign in their front yard or on their door because they’re scared of the repercussions,” Earhardt chimed in. 

That afternoon on Outnumbered, Kilmeade suggested that there must be a “silent Trump vote” concealed by the polls. “I don't know any candidate that has more flotillas than Trump,” he added. “From Florida to Long Island to Rhode Island, there are people who go out on the open seas with other Trump supporters just to not get harassed and have a good time to put up their flag.”

The Fox & Friends crew aren’t alone in using the boat parades to deflect from bad polls. On Saturday night, Fox host Jeanine Pirro asked why Trump isn’t “winning by 20 points, not that I believe the polls.” Contributor Dan Bongino replied, “You don’t know he isn’t, and based on the boat flotilla they had down here in Florida the other day,” he is. “There was a boat flotilla down here in Florida, I mean, it was like from here to Cuba it was so long,” Bongino added.

Fox & Friends Weekend also devoted multiple segments to applauding an effort by pro-Trump activists in Florida to break the Guinness record for largest boat parade. “This is a not-so-silent majority, and this is what's going to get the president reelected,” Women for Trump national co-Chair Pam Bondi, a longtime network regular, told the hosts on Saturday. “These are families on every single boat, and they are not scared to be out there supporting President Trump and his great agenda.” 

On Sunday morning, after the show trumpeted the activists’ success in breaking the record, co-host Pete Hegseth cheered that “the Spanish Armada’s got nothing on Trump supporters down there” (the Spanish Armada, deployed by King Philip II of Spain in an attempt to invade England in 1588, was famously unsuccessful and “is now remembered as one of history’s great military blunders”). “I’d like to see what a Biden boat parade would look like,” he added.

And Trump himself highlighted the Florida boat parade during his Fox & Friends interview Monday:

The boat parades have become a regular feature for the right-wing media’s most fervent Trumpists, who are straining to find some good news to feed their audiences as the president fails to close the gap with Biden in the polls. Some are even criticizing the press for failing to devote significant time and attention to the president’s offshore support.

The situation is reminiscent of the 2012 election, when right-wing media became convinced that deliberately skewed polls were to blame for Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s poor showings, claiming that he would eventually defeat President Barack Obama in a “landslide.” The result was that the conservative press and its audience were stunned by Romney’s defeat. 

Fox was ground zero for this delusion through the election and beyond -- during the network’s 2012 Election Night coverage, the on-air talent disputed the number-crunching Fox News Decision Desk’s call of Ohio for Obama.

Eight years later, the only thing the network has learned is to set its siren song to a nautical theme. And no one in the White House appears to be interested in keeping the Fox-obsessed president lashed to the mast and away from the remote.