ON THE RECORD. . .
“There’s real nihilism in the Trump campaign right now, just determined to do anything and say anything to make this the most disgusting final weeks in a presidential campaign ever,” --Steve Schmidt, who was a senior adviser to John McCain’s campaign in 2008. 10/12/16
STERN: “Can you imagine the sex with this troubled teen?”
TRUMP: “Yeah, you’re probably right. She’s probably deeply troubled and therefore great in bed. How come the deeply troubled women, you know, deeply, deeply troubled, they’re always the best in bed?” --Donald Trump and Howard Stern discuss 18 year old Lindsey Lohann. 2004
“‘Wow! Just think — in a couple of years, I’ll be dating you.'” -- Trump, then 46 to two 14 year old girls in a youth choir singing Christmas carols at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. 1992
“It was so odd, because I’d go to talk to somebody and I would just feel this presence behind me, and you know, I thought, 'Whoa this is really weird.'" -- Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump who bizarrely followed her around the stage during the 2nd presidential debate, telling Ellen Degeneres in a show that aired Friday that he "literally stalked" her.
Calling reality-TV star Khloé Kardashian “fat piglet” and wondering, “What is this? We can’t even get the hot one (Kim Kardashian)?”-- Donald Trump.
“I will tell you that if the Republican Party does not evolve, the Republican Party is going to die.” — Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) 9/15/16
“Donald Trump needs to condemn these illegal hacks and denounce Russian efforts to intervene in our election. Why is Trump protecting Putin by lying about Russia’s role in these hacks? What did his campaign know and when did they know it? Why won’t he condemn this? With less than a month until Election Day, these are the questions we need answered — and soon.” -- Clinton campaign spokesman Glen Caplin 10/15/16
“If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it. We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take. . . . I would do whatever I can for my country.” -- Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor at a Trump rally in Cincinnati, 10/15/16
6:51 a.m.: "100% fabricated and made-up charges, pushed strongly by the media and the Clinton Campaign, may poison the minds of the American Voter. FIX!" ... 7:45 a.m.: "This election is being rigged by the media pushing false and unsubstantiated charges, and outright lies, in order to elect Crooked Hillary!" ... 8:23 a.m.:"Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted and should be in jail. Instead she is running for president in what looks like a rigged election". -- Donald Trump @realDonaldTrump Saturday AM Tweet Storm
Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election! -- Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
“It’s like that scene inTitanic, where they know the ship is going down, and the conductor decides there’s nothing to do but keep the orchestra playing.” -- Aavik roy, a disaffected Republican on the Trump campaign.
“It’s splitting right before your eyes. It’s happening now. There is a civil war in the party that is going on right now. The question is whether, after the election, the party will be able to repair itself; or cease to exist; or continue to exist in some diminished way.” — GOP strategist Rick Tyler 10/17/16
"So you're telling me that the candidate that snorted his way through the first two debate is accusing the other candidate of taking drugs?" -- White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Donald Trump's suggestion that the candidates take a drug test before the final debate.
“You start whining before the game’s even over? If, whenever things are going bad for you and you lose, you start blaming somebody else? You don’t have what it takes to do this job.” — President Obama on Donald Trump’s claim that the election is rigged. 10/18/16
“As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process and I will not indulge it. Further, I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks: Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us.” --Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on the hacked emails released by Wikileaks
IN THIS ISSUE
1. The Borowitz Report: Clinton Hoping To Guarantee Victory By Inviting Trump To Debate
2. The Best Quotes From Michelle Obama’s Speech About Trump
3. What WikiLeaks Tells Us About Hillary Clinton
4. The DAILY GRILL
5. From MEDIA MATTERS (They watch Fox News so you don't have to)
6. From the Late Shows
7. Political Ads/Statements
8. All the assault and harassment allegations against Donald Trump - A comprehensive timeline
9. Trump’s Cult Like Following in Florida
10. Benchmark Politics National Election Probability Model
11. Group’s Tactic on Hillary Clinton: Sue Her Again and Again
12. The World According to Trump
13. Trump Rallies Become Menacing for Reporters
14. Audit Finds Trump Didn't Donate To 9/11 Charity After Attacks As Promised
15. Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes 1979-2016
16. Trump’s Shameful Allegations
17. Most Republicans Think Election Could Be Stolen
18. Donald Trump’s Deplorables Wage a War on Muslims
19. Late Night Jokes for Dems
1. Sarah Posner And David Neiwert: How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream
2. Olivia Nuzzi:Trump Dragged Hillary, and All of Us, Down
3. Charles M. Blow: Donald Trump, Unshackled and Unhinged
4. Washington Post Editorial: Hillary Clinton for president
5. Jonathan Chait: Donald Trump’s Locker Room Is the Entire World
6. Ryan Lizza: Trump Gets Ready To Be A Bad Loser
7. Meghan Daum: Clinton the resilient shows she's tougher than Trump the bully
8. Charles Krauthammer: It’s not the ‘locker room’ talk. It’s the ‘lock her up’ talk.
9. A.B. Stoddard: Donald Trump, Anarchist-in-Chief?
10. Molly Ball: Trump Goes to War
11. L.V. Anderson: Forget This “Hillary Is Unlikable” Stuff. Hillary Is Downright Inspiring.
12. Paul Krugman: The Clinton Agenda
13. Jonathan Chait: Donald Trump Finally Went There and Called Hillary Clinton Ugly
14. Chris Cillizza: An unshackled Trump. An unmoored campaign lurching to the finish line.
15. Des Moines Register's endorsement: Clinton a vote for American values
16. Sarah Posner and David Neiwert: How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream
17. Philip Rucker and Robert Costa: Inside Donald Trump’s echo chamber of conspiracies, grievances and vitriol
18. Tim Miller: Donald Trump Is on a Presidential Death March We’ve Never Seen Before
| FYI |
1. The Borowitz Report: Clinton Hoping To Guarantee Victory By Inviting Trump To Debate
In what is being denounced by Republicans as an “outrageous dirty trick,” Hillary Clinton is seeking to seal a victory in the third Presidential debate by inviting Donald Trump to attend.
The attention-grabbing invitation, which was widely seen as retaliation for the Trump campaign’s decision to invite President Obama’s estranged half brother, Malik, to the televised forum, sparked howls of protest from Republicans, who charged that Clinton was trying to gain an unfair advantage in the contest.
But Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, defended the controversial invitation. “If they’re going to have Malik at the debate, then we’re going to have Donald Trump,” he said. “Two can play this game.”
Earlier: Hillary Clinton is “plotting to rig the election by getting more votes than I do,” Donald J. Trump warned his supporters on Friday.
But, in a sign that Trump does not intend to take Clinton’s scheme to get more votes lying down, he ended his remarks with an ominous threat. “If, on Election Day, Hillary Clinton has more votes than I do, I will sue everyone who voted for her,” he said. Read more at http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/
2. The Best Quotes From Michelle Obama’s Speech About Trump
On Donald Trump’s behavior: “This is not how adults behave, this is not how decent human beings behave, and it’s certainly not how someone who wants to be president of the United States behaves,” she continued. “This wasn’t just -room talk. This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior, and actually joking about kissing and groping women.”
On her own reaction to the accusations: “Last week we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. I can’t believe I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women. I have to tell you that I — I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted.”
On the phrase “locker-room talk”: “Strong men, those who are role models, know that they don’t have to tear women down to lift themselves up. To dismiss this as locker-room talk is an insult to decent men everywhere.”
On Trump’s fitness for office: “If we have a president who routinely degrades women — who brags about sexually assaulting women — then how can we maintain our moral authority in the world? How can we continue to be a beacon of justice and human dignity?”
On women’s power to influence the election: “We simply cannot endure this or expose our children to this any longer,” she said. “Now is the time for all of us to stand up and say enough is enough. This has got to stop right now.” More at http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/10/michelle-obamas-new-hampshire-speech-took-on-trumps-sexism.html
3. What WikiLeaks Tells Us About Hillary Clinton
In the midst of our bountiful October harvest of Trump grotesqueries, the Russians and Julian Assange organized a WikiLeaks dump of private emails from the Clinton campaign. These revealed a shocking and scandalous fact about the former Secretary of State: she is a politician. Indeed, the documents represent one of the most reassuring moments of this calamitous campaign. The overwhelming impression is of the candidate’s and her staff’s competence and sanity–and something more: a refreshing sense of reality about the vagaries of politics.
Some on the left will find Clinton’s attempts to flatter and find common ground with her Wall Street audiences offensive–her willingness to take money for these speeches was a big mistake–but if you look at the content of the talks, Clinton is essentially warning the bankers about the public’s belief that they have behaved badly, while calling for more “transparency” and reform, a message her audiences may not have wanted to hear.
Here’s a final outrage: Clinton told executives at Xerox that she wanted a “moderate” Democratic Party. Indeed, she wanted “two sensible, moderate, pragmatic political parties.” Wow. How crazy is that? 10/13/16 http://time.com/4529399/why-the-russian-hacks-of-hillary-clintons-campaign-should-reassure-us-all/
4. The DAILY GRILL
“I’m going to vote for Donald Trump because I believe he’s the best qualified to be president of the United States," -- Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. vowing to vote for Donald Trump regardless of whether mounting allegations of sexual misconduct against the Republican nominee prove to be true.
VERSUS
“Any faculty or staff member at Liberty would be terminated for such comments, and yet when Donald Trump makes them, President Falwell rushes eagerly to his defense – taking the name ‘Liberty University” with him. It is not enough to criticize these kinds of comments,” the students continued. “We must make clear to the world that while everyone is a sinner and everyone can be forgiven, a man who constantly and proudly speaks evil does not deserve our support for the nation’s highest office.” -- Statement by Students at Liberty University criticizing Falwell Jr. for tying the university’s name to a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women.
Donald Trump said he “absolutely destroyed” Hillary Clinton in the last debate, citing “every online poll, even Time magazine,” a news outlet that is “not exactly in love with me.”
VERSUS
“A Time magazine spokeswoman confirmed that Time‘s web site did not conduct a ‘who won?’ survey after the debate.”
“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary – but also at many polling places – SAD.” -- Donald Trump, on Twitter.
VERSUS
“We will absolutely accept the result of the election.” — Gov. Mike Pence. 10/16/15
5. From MEDIA MATTERS (They watch Fox News so you don't have to)
Donald Trump Suggests You Can't Believe PeopleReporter's Allegation He Sexually Assaulted Her Because She's Ugly -- Donald Trump: "You Take A Look. Look At Her. Look At Her Words. You Tell Me What You Think. I Don't Think So." http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/10/13/donald-trump-suggests-you-cant-believe-people-reporters-allegation-he-sexually-assaulted-her-because/213818
CNN Has A Trump Surrogate Problem - The Network Is Paying Professional Trump Supporters To Derail Negative Segments About Trump http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/14/video-cnn-has-trump-surrogate-problem/213824
Sean Hannity: “So Sad” Clinton And The Press Would “Use” The “Phony Women” Accusing Trump Of Sexual Assault - Hannity: "It's So Sad That They Would Even Use Women This Way" http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/10/14/sean-hannity-so-sad-clinton-and-press-would-use-phony-women-accusing-trump-sexual-assault/213850
Trump Ally Stone Warns That Obama And "Globalists" Could Start "World War" To "Retain Power" - Stone: "This Is War As A Pretext For Stealing This Election "http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/10/14/trump-ally-roger-stone-warns-obama-and-globalists-could-start-world-war-retain-power/213849
“Trump Manages To Channel Goebbels”: White Nationalists Cheer Nominee’s Conspiratorial Speech Packed With Anti-Semitic Themes. http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/14/trump-manages-channel-goebbels-white-nationalists-cheer-nominee-s-conspiratorial-speech-packed-anti/213844
6. From the Late Shows
SNL Cold Open: Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton Town Hall Debate
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Republican Reactions to Trump's Lewd Remarks
Late Night with Seth Meyers: New Bombshell Allegations Against Trump: A Closer Look
Family Guy: Peter On The Trump Bus
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Melania Trump Blames Everyone But Donald For His Locker Room Talk
7. Political Ads/Statements
Russia first | The Briefing
8. All the assault and harassment allegations against Donald Trump - A comprehensive timeline.
9. Trump’s Cult Like Following in Florida
There's been some surprise that the bottom hasn't fallen out on Trump even more than it already has this week. Here are some findings that explain why Trump's not seeing a greater decline in support:
- 84% of Trump voters think that Hillary Clinton should be in prison, to only 6% who disagree with that notion.
- 40% of Trump voters agree with Alex Jones that Clinton is a demon to only 42% who dismiss that idea.
-75% of Trump voters say they think that he respects women to only 9% who don't believe he does.
- 38% of Trump voters in Florida think the country is inherently better off with a man as President,
- 75% of Trump supporters think that if Hillary Clinton wins the election it will be because it was rigged for her, to only 15% who believe a Clinton win would be because she received more votes.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/10/clintons-florida-lead-continues-to-grow.html
10. Benchmark Politics National Election Probability Model
Probability of Victory: Clinton 91%, Trump 9%
Electoral Votes: Clinton 346, Trump 192
Benchmark Politics predictive model includes county-level demographic, economic, and polling data to make accurate predictions about national elections. Benchmark was the most accurate forecaster of the 2016 Democratic primaries. The probability bar above uses our proprietary model to predict the national race. The map below provides state and county spreads. 10/13/16 http://benchmark.shareblue.com/
11. Group’s Tactic on Hillary Clinton: Sue Her Again and Again
If the 2016 election has brought forward a new generation of Clinton antagonists — WikiLeaks, Breitbart, Russia — it has also reintroduced America to an old one.
Judicial Watch was one of the Clintons’ original tormentors, a charter member of what Mrs. Clinton famously called a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to destroy her and her husband by seizing on any potential scandal.
Judicial Watch’s strategy is simple: Carpet-bomb the federal courts with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. A vast majority are dismissed. But Judicial Watch caught a break last year, when revelations about Mrs. Clinton’s private email server prompted two judges to reopen two of the group’s cases connected to her tenure as secretary of state.
The lawsuits have since led to the release of hundreds of Mrs. Clinton’s emails — which have, in turn, spurred dozens of news releases and fund-raising letters from Judicial Watch that hype the significance of these documents, while putting them in the least flattering light possible for Mrs. Clinton.
As for Mrs. Clinton, she can expect to remain in the group’s sights whether she wins or loses. “Everyone wants to move on,” Mr. Fitton said. “We don’t move on.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/politics/judicial-watch-hillary-clinton.html
12. The World According to Trump
“Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors.” — Mr. Trump at a rally on Thursday in West Palm Beach, Fla.
“Honestly, she should be locked up. She should be. Should be locked up.” — Mr. Trump, in West Palm Beach
“She walks in front of me, she walks in front of me, you know. And when she walked in front of me, believe me I wasn’t impressed.” — Mr. Trump at a rally on Friday in Greensboro, N.C.
“Reporters at The New York Times are not journalists. They’re corporate lobbyists for Carlos Slim and Hillary Clinton.” — Mr. Trump on Friday in Greensboro
“Believe me: She would not be my first choice, that I can tell you.” — Mr. Trump on Friday in Greensboro
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/us/politics/trump-speech-highlights.html
13. Trump Rallies Become Menacing for Reporters
“Donald Trump’s rallies have never been the friendliest places for reporters. But lately, as Trump has come under increasing fire, an unwelcoming atmosphere for the press has turned into outright hostility,” the Washington Post reports.
“Reporters who cover Trump on the campaign trail say his supporters have become more surly and abusive in the past week, egged on by a candidate who has made demonizing journalists part of his stump speech.”
Trump says the election is rigged — and his supporters are furious. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-press-always-got-booed-at-trump-rallies-but-now-the-aggression-is-menacing/2016/10/14/6092ea34-922d-11e6-9c52-0b10449e33c4_story.html
14. Audit Finds Trump Didn't Donate To 9/11 Charity After Attacks As Promised
The New York City Comptroller’s Office found no evidence that Donald Trump donated to two 9/11 charities in the year after the attacks, despite Trump’s 2001 promise on-air to Howard Stern that he would donate $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund.
“My office has reviewed the donations made in the nearly 12 months following the attacks – and we didn’t find evidence that he contributed a single cent to the victims, our first responders, and to our city through the Twin Towers Fund,” the office of City Comptroller Scott Stringer, a Democrat, told ABC News Friday. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-911-charity-record
“They don’t get credit for, at the very last minute, when finally the guy they nominated and they endorsed and they supported is caught on tape saying things that no decent person would even think, much less say, much less brag about, much less laugh about or joke about, much less act on,” President Obama about the two-dozen Republicans who withdrew endorsements or called on Trump to drop out of the race after the video came out. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obama-republican-party-created-donald-trump-conspiracy-theories
15. Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes 1979-2016
Video: https://youtu.be/9NP0L1PG9ag
This animated visualization of the startling decline of Arctic Sea Ice shows the minimum volume reached every September since 1979, set on a map of New York with a 10km grid to give an idea of scale. It is clear that the trend of Arctic sea ice decline indicates that it'll soon be ice-free for an increasingly large part of the year, with consequences for the climate. https://thinkprogress.org/watch-the-arctic-death-spiral-in-this-amazing-video-b63486b99383#.bgotnaql3
16. Trump’s Shameful Allegations
And so it will end for Donald Trump with words that could be far more damaging than the insults or innuendo or labels or lies. Trump is closing with allegations of massive conspiracy, suggesting a corporate/media/international cabal to boost the Clintons that would be unprecedented in scope. Even if there's no evidence for any of it, Trump is now using words (and Tweets) that directly undermine faith in American democracy. By saying the election itself is "rigged," Trump is playing a dangerous game during a tense time. With each passing day, the possibility of a gracious loser, in keeping with American traditions of power transfer, diminishes with fresh allegations. 10/17/16 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/note-ruckus-rigging/story?id=42855545
17. Most Republicans Think Election Could Be Stolen
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that Donald Trump’s repeated warnings about a “rigged” election are having effect: 73% of Republicans think the election could be swiped from him. Just 17% of Democrats agree with the prospect of massive fraud at the ballot box. 10/17/16 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/poll-41-percent-of-voters-say-the-election-could-be-stolen-from-trump-229871#ixzz4NL8O8fRo
18. Donald Trump’s Deplorables Wage a War on Muslims
On Friday, three Kansas men, one a self-professed “big” Trump fan, who were allegedly part of a militia known as “The Crusaders” (as in Christian Crusaders) were arrested by the FBI for allegedly plotting to slaughter Muslim Somali immigrants in Garden City, Kansas.
If that wasn’t disturbing enough, on Friday a Muslim community center in Bayonne, New Jersey, was defaced with the words “Donald Trump” and vile graffiti like “Fuck Allah” and “Fuck Arabs.” (The Muslim community center is actually a testament to interfaith alliances in New Jersey, as it operates in the basement of a Catholic elementary school, but that didn’t matter to this apparent Trump supporter.)
And then on Saturday, a mosque in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was defaced with the word “Trump” spray-painted in big letters. It appears that the word “Trump” is becoming a modern day swastika. 10/17/16 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/17/donald-trump-s-deplorables-wage-a-war-on-muslims.html
19. Late Night Jokes for Dems
"Some very prominent Republican donors are reported to be asking for their money back. Because if there's one thing Donald Trump is known for, it's giving money back." –Jimmy Kimmel
"Asking Donald Trump for your money back is like asking Chris Christie for a bite of his cheeseburger, it isn't going to happen. You'll have to pry it out of his cold, tiny hands." –Jimmy Kimmel
"A new national poll found that Democrats now have a significant lead over Republicans in the congressional races. Republicans said, 'And there's only one man to blame for this,' and Donald Trump said, 'Exactly: Billy Bush.'" –Jimmy Fallon
"Trump is still under fire for the lewd and offensive tape that was released last week which he referred to as 'locker-room talk.' Well now pro athletes are speaking out against this, saying that's not how they speak in the locker room. While Tim Tebow said, 'I don't even like to say 'Billy Bush!'" –Jimmy Fallon
"Donald Trump lashed out at a number of Republicans on Twitter today, the ones who have been distancing themselves from him. He called Speaker of the House Paul Ryan a weak and ineffective leader. He called John McCain foul-mouthed. He also tweeted, 'It so is nice the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to.' This is how he's been behaving with shackles ON?" –Jimmy Kimmel
"Donald Trump tweeted earlier today, quote, 'It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to.' What shackles are you talking about? The only thing that ever shackled you was the 140-character limit on Twitter." –Seth Meyers
| OPINION |
1. Sarah Posner And David Neiwert: How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream
The first warning sign that something new was brewing came in June 2015, as Donald Trump joined the crowded field vying for the Republican presidential nomination. In the extravagant lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, he announced he would build a wall to keep out Mexican criminals and "rapists."
"I urge all readers of this site to do whatever they can to make Donald Trump President," wrote Andrew Anglin, publisher of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, 12 days later. Anglin, a 32-year-old skinhead who wears an Aryan "Black Sun"tattoo on his chest and riffs about the inferior "biological nature" of black people, hailed Trump as "the only candidate who is even talking about anything at all that matters."
Rachel Pendergraft, a national organizer for the Knights Party, the successor to David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who endorsed Trump last December, said her organization has seen an increase in membership due to Trump. "White people are realizing they are becoming strangers in their own country and they do not have a major political voice speaking for them," she told us. "Trump is one example of the alternative-right candidate Knights Party members and supporters have been looking for. And we feel that through continued grassroots mobilization, more candidates will arise who will speak out for white Christian America."
"Don't underestimate the power of the presidency to legitimize marginalized people and deviant movements. If Barack Obama can legitimize gay marriage and transsexuals, Donald Trump can legitimize the Alt-Right." 10/14/16 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/donald-trump-hate-groups-neo-nazi-white-supremacist-racism
2. Olivia Nuzzi: Trump Dragged Hillary, and All of Us, Down
Donald Trump, the person responsible for this race to the gutter, would have you believe that he cares very deeply for Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Kathleen Shelton, women who’ve accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of rape, sexual assault, or representing a rapist in court. He does his best to look concerned when discussing them, but he just ends up looking like Zoolander. He cares about them only insofar as they can increase his chances of winning over female voters (they can’t, but he doesn’t know that) by making Clinton out to be the enabler and gleeful co-conspirator of her husband, a criminal rapist.
There’s been a lot of talk about normalizing during this election. Trump has normalized racism, sexism, ism ism ism. But it doesn’t feel normal that, with 25 days until Election Day, the big debate is not about the economy or health-care or the environment or even some stupid social wedge issue, but about which candidate is more of a personal, physical danger to women.
It’s the National Enquirer-ization of American politics, brought to you by the creator of Trump Steaks. Meanwhile, survivors of sexual assault are left to wonder how they became ammo in the grossest political brawl in modern American history. 10/13/16 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/13/trump-dragged-hillary-and-all-of-us-down.html
3. Charles M. Blow: Donald Trump, Unshackled and Unhinged
Donald Trump tweeted this week that his “shackles have been taken off.” The rest of us need to buckle up.
Trump is lashing out like a man with nothing left to lose. If he is going down, he’s threatening to take the entire ecosystem with him.
He’s lashing out at the Republican establishment — especially Ryan and McCain — in a striking and seemingly unprecedented intraparty feud just weeks ahead of the election.
None of this seems like an effective strategy to broaden his base and actually win in November. This feels like Trump having a temper tantrum. This feels like a campaign in its death throes.
Trump isn’t a competent opponent. He’s a maladroit savage spiraling out of control. 10/13/16 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/opinion/donald-trump-unshackled-and-unhinged.html
4. Washington Post Editorial: Hillary Clinton for president
IN THE gloom and ugliness of this political season, one encouraging truth is often overlooked: There is a well-qualified, well-prepared candidate on the ballot. Hillary Clinton has the potential to be an excellent president of the United States, and we endorse her without hesitation.
In a moment, we will explain our confidence. But first, allow us to anticipate a likely question: No, we are not making this endorsement simply because Ms. Clinton’s chief opponent is dreadful.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is dreadful, that is true — uniquely unqualified as a presidential candidate. If we believed that Ms. Clinton were the lesser of two evils, we might well urge you to vote for her anyway — that is how strongly we feel about Mr. Trump. But we would also tell you that was our judgment.
Ms. Clinton, in other words, is dogged, resilient, purposeful and smart. Unlike Mr. Clinton or Mr. Bush when they ascended, she knows Washington; unlike Mr. Obama when he ascended, she has executive experience. She does not let her feelings get in the way of the job at hand. She is well positioned to get something done.
On the other hand, Mr. Trump has shown himself to be bigoted, ignorant, deceitful, narcissistic, vengeful, petty, misogynistic, fiscally reckless, intellectually lazy, contemptuous of democracy and enamored of America’s enemies. As president, he would pose a grave danger to the nation and the world.
We believe that Ms. Clinton will prove a worthy example to girls who celebrate the election of America’s first female president. We believe, too, that anyone who votes for her will be able to look back, four years from now, with pride in that decision. 10/13/16 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/hillary-clinton-for-president/2016/10/12/665f9698-8caf-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html
5. Jonathan Chait: Donald Trump’s Locker Room Is the Entire World
When Donald Trump mentioned in his presidential announcement speech last summer that Mexico was “sending rapists,” he made the prevention of sexual assault a central rationale for his candidacy. He brought up a spate of sexual assaults committed by Muslim immigrants at a New Year’s Eve festival in Germany. (“Look at what happened in Germany, with the tremendous crime, with New Year’s Eve, and the rapes and all of the carnage that took place in Germany.”) And, when pressed by CNN’s Don Lemon at a debate last summer about his claims that Mexican immigrants were disproportionately committing rape, he insisted, “Somebody is doing the raping, Don, I mean, you know — I mean, somebody’s doing it. You think it’s women being raped, well, who is doing the raping? Who is doing the raping?”
Trump is doing the raping — or, at least, systematic sexual violations of women. He has been for a long time. Donald Trump is not merely a man who has passively absorbed the standards of a sexist culture. A misogynistic belief in sexual entitlement is a, and probably the, foundational element of his self-conception. Fame and riches are the means, and a limitless ability to access the body of any woman he desires is the end.
Trump’s serial abuse was a time bomb on his campaign that is now going off. Hillary Clinton’s campaign laid the foundation by using the first presidential debate to introduce his abuse of Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe. “He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them,” said Clinton, dropping a well-supported innuendo about the motive undergirding Trump’s fascination with this ritual. Then a recordingsurfaced in which Trump boasted of his habit of sexually assaulting women. At the next debate, Trump insisted he had never engaged in the behavior he had described on the tape. The denial set the stage for the wave of reportingnow crashing over his campaign, in which a series of women describe Trump carrying out his method. 10/12/16 http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/donald-trumps-locker-room-is-the-entire-world.html
6. Ryan Lizza: Trump Gets Ready To Be A Bad Loser
“It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning, declaring an official end to the Conway experiment—and to any discernible plan to win the election. Trump is now attacking Republican leaders who allegedly betrayed him as much as he’s attacking Clinton. Perhaps the temper tantrum will pass and Trump will refocus his campaign in the final days on issues that have some strategic value to him. But it’s more likely that Trump knows he can’t win and that he has decided that the last stretch of his campaign should be used to set the stage for the aftermath of his loss. In this scenario, what’s crucial for Trump is to be able to convince his hard-core supporters that he—and they—didn’t lose, but that the dreaded Republican establishment sabotaged the Trump campaign in the final weeks. This strategy is in keeping with the way Trump has always spun his greatest defeats, from his failures in Atlantic City to his loss in the Iowa caucuses. He either denies that he failed or he argues that he was cheated.
Trump is either victorious or victimized, but never a loser. This week marked the end of Trump trying to actually win, and the beginning of him plotting to explain why the election was stolen. 10/12/16 http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trump-gets-ready-to-be-a-bad-loser
7. Meghan Daum: Clinton the resilient shows she's tougher than Trump the bully
Three days later and I’m still basking in the glow of Hillary Clinton’s debate performance. With a level of composure seldom seen on live television, she was a model of sangfroid, perfectly calibrating her facial expressions even as Donald J. Trump called her disgraceful, said she had “tremendous hate in her heart” and threatened to jail her.
Even more impressive, this was minutes after Trump had held forth on Facebook with women who, decades ago, accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct and who now constitute the bulk of GOP candidate’s campaign arsenal. Three of those women later took seats in the same audience as Bill and Chelsea Clinton. This stunt was purely about humiliating Clinton, not advocating on behalf of victims, which Trump, in an appalling display of hypocrisy, pretended to be doing.
Anyone else would have had steam coming out her ears, if not her lunch making a backward trip up her esophagus, but Clinton was made of steel. When Trump began following her around the stage like a clumsy adolescent stalker, Clinton carried on as though he were nothing but, well, a clumsy adolescent.
It was a master class in composure and resilience. The harder Trump hit, the cooler Clinton got. And it wasn’t just about going high when others go low. It was about disarming a victimizer by steadfastly refusing to be a victim. And what a lesson for us all.
As Clinton has served her country for the last 30 years, she has also served as a symbol of the ups and downs of female advancement and struggle. Now that she’s Trump’s main punching bag, she represents the collective frustrations of women who feel they’ve been railroaded in various ways by men, like being talked over and “mansplained.”
Clinton, for all her flaws and complications, for all the ways you might think she’s the lesser of evils, may be exactly what we need right now. Changing society means picking battles, separating fact from emotion and leading from strength. This has been Clinton’s approach in the fight against Trump, and never more so than Sunday night. If she gets the opportunity to apply that strategy in the White House, maybe she can usher us out of the era of grievance into something more useful. If she can find grace in the face of Trump’s disgracefulness, there’s hope for the rest of us. 10/12/16 http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-daum-second-debate-clinton-cool-20161012-snap-story.html
8. Charles Krauthammer: It’s not the ‘locker room’ talk. It’s the ‘lock her up’ talk.
That Trump crashed because of a sex-talk tape is odd. It should have been a surprise to no one. His views on women have been on open display for years. And he’d offered a dazzling array of other reasons for disqualification: habitual mendacity, pathological narcissism, profound ignorance and an astonishing dearth of basic human empathy.
To which list Trump added in the second debate, and it had nothing to do with sex. It was his threat, if elected, to put Hillary Clinton in.
After appointing a special prosecutor, of course. The niceties must be observed. First, a fair trial, then a proper hanging. The day after the debate at a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump responded to chants of “lock her up” with “Lock her up is right.” Two days later, he told a rally in Lakeland, Fla., “She has to go to jail.”
What makes Trump’s promise to lock her up all the more alarming is that it’s not an isolated incident. This is not the first time he’s insinuated using the powers of the presidency against political enemies. He has threatened Amazon’s Jeffrey P. Bezos, owner of The Post, for using the newspaper “as a tool for political power against me and other people. . . . We can’t let him get away with it.”
Trump has gone after others with equal subtlety. “I hear,” he tweeted, “the Rickets [sic] family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $’s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!” And after National Review editor Rich Lowry made a particularly cutting remark about him on Fox News, Trump tweeted, “He should not be allowed on TV and the FCC should fine him!”
Trump also promises to “open up” libel laws to permit easier prosecution of those who attack him unfairly. Has he ever conceded any attack on him to be fair?
This election is not just about placing the nuclear codes in Trump’s hands. It’s also about handing him the instruments of civilian coercion, such as the IRS, the FBI, the FCC, the SEC. Think of what he could do to enforce the “fairness” he demands. Imagine giving over the vast power of the modern state to a man who says in advance that he will punish his critics and jail his opponent. 10/13/16 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-not-the-locker-room-talk-its-the-lock-her-up-talk/2016/10/13/9dd5fbea-9172-11e6-9c85-ac42097b8cc0_story.html?utm_term=.3199c7ca0888
9. A.B. Stoddard: Donald Trump, Anarchist-in-Chief?
Donald Trump is a real estate mogul, showman, crude trash talker and master media manipulator. To some he is a racist, misogynist, authoritarian, Russian appeaser and xenophobe. To many Republicans who believe he has destroyed their party, he is a hijacker and an arsonist. New allegations have raised questions about whether Trump is also a sexual predator and molester. But the time has come to set all of that aside and ask: Is the GOP nominee, running to be our next commander-in-chief, actually an anarchist?
There’s an apocalyptic tone to Trump’s closing argument. To lay advance blame for his possible defeat, he describes a conspiracy in which Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Paul Ryan, international banks and the media have plotted to bring him down in a stolen election. Trump’s rhetoric, just weeks from Election Day, has raised fears he may refuse to concede, stoke supporters’ anger and encourage unrest following the results, and therefore incite violence.
Trump is now characterizing a Clinton victory as an existential threat to America, saying that “the election of Hillary Clinton would lead, in my opinion, to the almost total destruction of our country as we know it.” Despite his own political troubles -- brought on most acutely by the “Access Hollywood” audio recording in which he boasted in vulgar terms about his predatory behavior with women, which was followed by allegations from four women that he groped them -- Trump is insisting that “there’s a whole sinister deal going on.” His desperate tone -- “If we don’t win this election, I don’t know what I'm going to do” -- invites more desperation from his fervent supporters.
Trump is no longer just undermining our system but openly attacking it. Republican Party officials and leaders supporting him have been silent in the face of his accusations. Perhaps they are waiting to see if Trump, should he lose, will concede and ask his voters to accept the outcome. But if they don’t speak up now, they are complicit in any damage. The morning of Nov. 9 could be too late. 10/14/16 http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/10/14/donald_trump_anarchist-in-chief_132066.html
10. Molly Ball: Trump Goes to War
OCALA, Florida—In Donald Trump's war of all against all, none shall be spared.
"I'm so angry at the Republicans," he says, eyes slitted in a mocking grimace. He's riffing off the leaked email that shows that allies of Hillary Clinton gave her a question in advance of a town hall broadcast by CNN in March. "I want to be fed information like Hillary gets," he complains, jabbing with his right forefinger. "The Republicans are not doing their job!"
The people are not sure how to react to this: Some laugh, others cheer, others boo. There are thousands of people here, sitting on bleachers and standing on the floor of a dirt-floored livestock arena, clad in a vast array of creative T-shirts. ("Deplorable Lives Matter," "She Wants the D," "Bomb the Shit out of ISIS," "We're Going to Need a Bigger Basket," "9/11 Was an Inside Job.")
"The leaders," Trump complains, are "not putting their weight behind the people." He had, in his view, won the last presidential debate, and yet the House speaker, Paul Ryan, had not called to congratulate him. "Wouldn't you think maybe Paul Ryan would call and say, 'Good going'?" Trump asks. "You'd think they would say, 'Good going, Don! Let's beat this crook! She's a crook! Let's beat her, we've got to stop it!’ No, he doesn't do that."
Like children picking sides in an acrimonious divorce, the Trump hordes know where their loyalty lies, and it's with Daddy. They lash out angrily at Trump's critics and thrill to his call to rain down consequences on the disloyal.
They do not believe the polls. A lot of things are new about this election, but the denial feels very familiar—it's the same bunkered insistence that had Mitt Romney convinced he was winning, against far less conclusive evidence, four years ago. "I don't listen to the polls. They're all biased," says Rick Johnson, 56, an electrician semi-retired on disability. "Look at the number of people coming to the rallies! This is a big majority of Americans!"
The world is a horror show, they tell me: ISIS taking over the Middle East, Syrians and Mexicans invading America, socialism on the march thanks to President Obama, and a trail of dead bodies in Clinton's sordid past, from the 1990s to Benghazi. Next to that, what are a few personal indiscretions, a nasty word here and there?
"The Republicans not standing behind Trump are not fit to shine his shoes," says Gail Stickle, 67, whose bright blonde hair is pinned atop her head, a gauzy red-white-and-blue scarf around her neck. "I totally supported the Bush family. Now I'm sick of them. They're career politicians. They don't care about our country, they only care about their jobs."
These are Trump's people. They are all he has left. They are sticking with him to the bitter end, and maybe after that, in the conflagration that envelops the Republican Party. 10/14/16 http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/trump-at-war/504068/
11. L.V. Anderson: Forget This “Hillary Is Unlikable” Stuff. Hillary Is Downright Inspiring.
Expectations for this election have become so warped that the primary conclusions media commentators took away from the second debate were that it had been an ugly, uninspiring affair and that Trump didn’t lose. Let’s set aside the absurdity that a man who brought up his own tax scandal unbidden, who threatened to jail his opponent, who betrayed his absolute ignorance of the nuances of the war in Syria, and whose best zinger amounted to recalling that Abraham Lincoln’s nickname was “Honest Abe” somehow fought to a draw with his opponent. Trump was as ugly and uninspiring as usual. But here’s what people haven’t been saying in the days since the debate: Hillary was inspiring as all get out.
Yes, I’m familiar with all the arguments against Hillary as inspirer-in-chief. She’s part of the establishment. She’s laden with potential conflicts of interest. Her judgment during the whole email thing was poor. She seems, to many observers, wooden and robotic. Fine. The fact remains that Hillary stood onstage and calmly and persuasively made the case for her candidacy while her looming, lurching, lunatic opponent attempted to humiliate her in front of the entire world. If Hillary can do that, then the rest of us can do whatever we put our minds to. 10/12/16 http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/10/12/forget_this_hillary_is_unlikeable_stuff_hillary_is_downright_inspiring.html
12. Paul Krugman: The Clinton Agenda
Until the last few days, the chances of flipping the House seemed low, even if, as now seems all but certain, Democratic candidates in total receive more votes than Republicans. Partly that’s because G.O.P.-controlled state governments have engaged in pervasive gerrymandering; partly it’s because minority voters, who overwhelmingly favor Democrats, are clustered in a relatively small number of urban districts.
But a sufficiently big Clinton victory could change that, especially if suburban women desert a G.O.P. that has turned into the gropers-owned party. And that would let her pursue a much more expansive agenda.
There’s not much mystery about what that agenda would be. I don’t know why so many pundits claim that Mrs. Clinton lacks a vision for America, when she has actually provided an unusual level of detail on her website and in speeches.
Broadly speaking, she would significantly strengthen the social safety net, especially for the very poor and children, with an emphasis on family-related issues like parental leave. Such programs would cost money, although not as much as critics claim; she proposes, credibly, to raise that money with higher taxes on top incomes, so that the overall effect would be to reduce inequality.
Democratic control of the House would also open the door for large-scale infrastructure investment. If that seems feasible, I know that many progressive economists — myself included — will urge Mrs. Clinton to go significantly bigger than she is currently proposing.
If all of this sounds to you like a second round of what President Obama did in 2009-2010, that’s because it is. And why not? Despite Republican obstruction, Mr. Obama has presided over a remarkable rise in the number of Americans with health insurance, a significant decline in poverty and the creation of more than 11 million private-sector jobs.
In any case, the bottom line is that if you’re thinking of staying home on Election Day because the outcome is assured, don’t. Barring the political equivalent of a meteor strike, Hillary Clinton will be our next president, but the size of her victory will determine what kind of president she can be. 10/14/16 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/opinion/the-clinton-agenda.html?ref=opinion
13. Jonathan Chait: Donald Trump Finally Went There and Called Hillary Clinton Ugly
If Donald Trump has accomplished anything, it is to exhaust our vocabulary of outrage. He’s a bigoted, abusive, authoritarian, racist figure who lies so far outside the normal range that he has broken the scale, making any new reading impossible. Every terrible thing simply feels like more of the same.
But in the last couple of days, Trump has sunk to new depths. In a speech yesterday, he charged, “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special-interest friends and her donors” — inflammatory anti-Semitic imagery reminiscent of Charles Coughlin. And then Friday, in possibly the most deranged misogynistic moment of the campaign, Trump insulted Hillary Clinton’s appearance, telling his audience, “when she walked in front of me, believe me, I wasn’t impressed.”
Trump has spent decades reducing all women to their appearance. At the same time, his presidential campaign has forced upon him certain disciplines, one them being the need to conceal this habit. During the primary, he dismissed Carly Fiorina — “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” – but, when confronted, backed down with an unconvincing denial. The denial indicated Trump’s awareness that this was a line he could not cross, a side of himself he could not show. 10/14/16 http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/trump-finally-went-there-and-called-hillary-clinton-ugly.html
14. Chris Cillizza: An unshackled Trump. An unmoored campaign lurching to the finish line.
Donald Trump is not really running a campaign for president anymore. Instead, he is involved in an extended revenge plot or is simply following the politics of grievance to its natural, unseemly end.
See, campaigns have a message. They have strategy and tactics. They show restraint and coordination.
Trump, in the 10 days since the release of a hot-mic tape of him making lewd and sexually suggestive comments about women, has done none of those things. Literally none.
This is end-stage Trumpism. He has proclaimed that the “shackles” holding him back earlier in the campaign are now off. Those shackles, of course, were the attempts by political professionals to transform the rebellion he led during the Republican primary fight into something resembling an actual campaign.
That hope — if ever it truly existed — is gone forever. It appears as though Trump’s minders have effectively given up, allowing the candidate to pursue his own score-settling and airing of grievances in these final weeks of the campaign. Taking that road may bring some satisfaction to Trump. But it has the potential to do catastrophic damage to the party he ostensibly leads as the GOP tries to hold its Senate and House majorities amid declining enthusiasm within its own ranks for its presidential nominee.
To care about that effect would mean that Trump was running a real campaign that grasped the idea that it’s about more than just the whims of a single candidate. He simply is not doing that. 10/16/16 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/an-unshackled-trump-an-unmoored-campaign-lurching-to-the-finish-line/2016/10/16/16e09b4c-93aa-11e6-ae9d-0030ac1899cd_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_mondayfix-1201pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
15. Des Moines Register's endorsement: Clinton a vote for American values
Trump mocks the disabled, denigrates prisoners of war, objectifies women, brags about his anatomy on national television and, if his own boastful comments are to be believed, indulges in criminal, predatory behavior. Then he looks at America and asserts, as he did in Nevada just two weeks ago, “I am a reflection of you.” It’s up to each of us, as voters, to disprove that statement and proclaim to the world, “We are better than that.”
With Trump on the Nov. 8 ballot, there is more at stake than important policy decisions on immigration, energy, the economy, education, climate change and foreign intervention. Democracy itself is threatened when its care is entrusted to individuals who are neither statesman nor thinkers and who would abuse the powers of their office to silence opposition and retaliate against their political opponents.
In 1938, Franklin Roosevelt warned that the only “real safeguard” of democracy is education. An uninformed — or a badly misinformed — electorate, he said, could spell an end to this great experiment of ours. “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely,” Roosevelt said.
On Election Day, all of us share the privilege and responsibility of protecting the principles on which this country was founded and for which so many others have died: justice, liberty, equality and opportunity for all. In this particular election, only one of the two major-party candidates stands prepared to honor America and uphold its highest ideals. 10/15/16 http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/endorsement/2016/10/15/registers-endorsement-clinton-vote-american-values/92009448/
16. Sarah Posner and David Neiwert: How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream
The first warning sign that something new was brewing came in June 2015, as Donald Trump joined the crowded field vying for the Republican presidential nomination. In the extravagant lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, he announced he would build a wall to keep out Mexican criminals and "rapists."
"I urge all readers of this site to do whatever they can to make Donald Trump President," wrote Andrew Anglin, publisher of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, 12 days later. Anglin, a 32-year-old skinhead who wears an Aryan "Black Sun"tattoo on his chest and riffs about the inferior "biological nature" of black people, hailed Trump as "the only candidate who is even talking about anything at all that matters."
This neo-Nazi seal of approval initially seemed like an aberration. But two months later, when Trump released his immigration policy, far-right extremists saw a clear signal that Trump understood their core anger and fear about America being taken over by minorities and foreigners. Trump's plan to deport masses of undocumented immigrants and end birthright citizenship was radical and thrilling—"a revolution," in the words of influential white nationalist author Kevin MacDonald, "to restore a White America."
"The success of the Trump campaign just proves that our views resonate with millions," Rachel Pendergraft, a national organizer for the Knights Party, the successor to David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan told us. "They may not be ready for the Ku Klux Klan yet, but as anti-white hatred escalates, they will." 10/16/16 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/donald-trump-hate-groups-neo-nazi-white-supremacist-racism
17. Philip Rucker and Robert Costa: Inside Donald Trump’s echo chamber of conspiracies, grievances and vitriol
He is preaching to the converted. He is lashing out at anyone who is not completely loyal. He is detaching himself from and delegitimizing the institutions of American political life. And he is proclaiming conspiracies everywhere — in polls (rigged), in debate moderators (biased) and in the election itself (soon to be stolen).
In the presidential campaign’s home stretch, Donald Trump is fully inhabiting his own echo chamber. The Republican nominee has turned inward, increasingly isolated from the country’s mainstream and leaders of his own party, and determined to rouse his most fervent supporters with dire warnings that their populist movement could fall prey to dark and collusive forces.
This is a campaign right out of Breitbart, the incendiary conservative website run until recently by Stephen K. Bannon, now the Trump campaign’s chief executive — and it is an act of retaliation.
Many Republicans see the Trump campaign’s latest incarnation as a mirror into the psyche of their party’s restive base: pulsating with grievance and vitriol, unmoored from conservative orthodoxy, and deeply suspicious of the fast-changing culture and the consequences of globalization.10/15/16 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-donald-trumps-echo-chamber-of-conspiracies-grievances-and-vitriol/2016/10/16/1c3c6a72-921e-11e6-9c85-ac42097b8cc0_story.html
18. Tim Miller: Donald Trump Is on a Presidential Death March We’ve Never Seen Before
Donald Trump is going to lose this election. His campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, is going to lose this election. Even if they would never admit it, they know Donald Trump will never be president. Trump and Conway are on the political death march. (This, to be clear for the Trump fans, is a political metaphor, not an actual death wish.)
This is the part of a losing campaign that exposes the true character of all those involved. So it should come as no shock that Donald Trump and his staff are failing this test in the most shameful and divisive manner imaginable.
Trump knows he’s on a death march, which is why he has reverted to his purest id over the past few days. Belittling women whom he is alleged to have sexually assaulted, concocting racist conspiracy theories about the global elites and minority communities rigging the election, and proffering bombastic lies about his opponent that he knows cable news can’t help but cover. 10/17/16 https://theringer.com/donald-trump-is-on-a-presidential-death-march-weve-never-seen-before-2a23da0e8af4#.7k0e8rbze
