The Commentariat -- August 13, 2016

Afternoon Update:

Maureen Dowd argues that Hillary Clinton is the perfect Republican presidential nominee. Dowd bases her case on Clinton's foreign policy & her ties to Wall Street. -- CW

Gray Lady Outlines Why Donald Trump Must Never Be President. Alexander Burns & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: On June 20, Donald Trump's top advisors, including his children, staged an intervention to urge him to "end his freestyle digressions and insults," and & agreed to rein it in. "Nearly two months later, the effort to save Mr. Trump from himself has plainly failed. He has repeatedly signaled to his advisers and allies his willingness to change and adapt, but has grown only more volatile and prone to provocation since then.... In private, Mr. Trump's mood is often sullen and erratic, his associates say.... He is routinely preoccupied with perceived slights.... On Tuesday ... his brain trust ... again urged Mr. Trump to adjust his tone and comportment.... Mr. Trump ... responded receptively." Then he went out & suggested "Second Amendment people" off Hillary Clinton & a few liberal judges. ...

... CW: I've been watching a British series about an autistic child with a well-meaning but dysfunctional family. The little boy responds to coaching by acting out the way Donald Trump does. ...

... Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek reviews some of the whoppers Donald Trump has told in sworn depositions. "He never tries to make his lies or delusions or fantasies make sense. He just spews to explain away the inexplicable.... Trump ... [now blames] the media for applying the rules of grammar and sentence structure to him...." CW: Oddly, Eichenwald frames his column in the form of a letter to Paul Ryan, urging Ryan to dump Trump, as if Ryan himself had the personal integrity & love of country to do the right thing. (If he does, he's been hiding it for a long time.) Thanks to Akhilleus for the link.

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "The unraveling of Donald Trump's candidacy continues apace, a long and steady decline since the high point three months ago. If he were deliberately trying to avoid winning the election, he could hardly be doing a better job. The hole he has dug for himself is wide and deep.... Rather than looking at weaknesses in his support and trying to find ways to win a few percentage points among particular groups of voters, his words and behavior do the opposite." -- CW

Michael Weissenstein of the AP: "Fidel Castro thanked Cubans for their well-wishes on his 90th birthday on Saturday and criticized President Barack Obama in a lengthy letter published in state media." -- CW

*****

Presidential Race

Steve Eder of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, released a new batch of their own income tax returns on Friday, ratcheting up the pressure on her opponent, Donald J. Trump, to begin making public his own forms. The income taxes of Mrs. Clinton, along with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, showed an adjusted gross income of $10.6 million for 2015, revealing how during the campaign the Clintons have reined in their moneymaking efforts after many years of lucrative speeches, book deals and business endeavors. Mr. Kaine, the Virginia senator, and his wife, Anne Holton, reported income of $313,441 for 2015." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... CW: It's unlikely (tho not impossible) that the IRS is auditing Trump's 2015 returns, so he'll have to come up with another phony excuse for not releasing them. Plus, since he was running for president during 2015, he had time to make his returns "look good" in terms of actually paying some taxes, making real charitable contributions instead of pretending to, etc. If he won't even let the public see his taxes for a year he could have cooked them, then he should just drop out & go on to overseeing Trump TeeVee.

Michael Stratford of Politico: "Bill Clinton was paid more than $1 million in 2015 by Laureate Education, a global operator of for-profit colleges, according to tax returns released today by Hillary Clinton's campaign.... The new figure brings the former president's total compensation from Laureate to more than $17.5 million for his five-year role as an 'honorary chancellor.'... Clinton ended his position at Laureate in April 2015 after Hillary Clinton launched her bid for the White House.... In the United States, the company owns Walden University, a Minneapolis-based online school that the Education Department has placed on a list of colleges that officials are more closely monitoring because of concerns over its 'financial responsibility.'" CW: Bill is the Mike Huckabee of the Democratic party. It probably is not a coincidence that these two snakeoil salesmen were both governors of Arkansas.

Michelle Goldberg of Slate: "If you spend much time on right-wing media, you might have heard that Hillary Clinton suffers from seizures, dementia, Parkinson's disease, and possibly even tongue cancer. As David Weigel writes in the Washington Post, Sean Hannity has spent all week dredging up debunked rumors about Clinton's health.... Some of the same right-wing characters painting Clinton as a frail invalid are also accusing her of masterminding the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, who is said, without evidence, to be involved in last month's leak of DNC documents. (This is only the latest of the dozens of murders some attribute to the Clintons.)... The [Clinton-is-deathly-ill meme is] the speculation of desperate men hoping for a deus ex machina to save them from a Clinton presidency." -- CW

Tyler Pager of Politico: "Donald Trump sought to project a united front with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Friday night. Hours after the Trump campaign met with Republican Party officials, their nominee profusely praised Priebus at a rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania.... Priebus also tried to reassure voters of party unity at Trump's earlier rally in Erie, Pennsylvania." -- CW

Word Salad for the Second-Amendment People's Diet. The only way we can lose, in my opinion -- I really mean this, Pennsylvania is if cheating goes on and we have to call up law enforcement and we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everyone watching because if we get cheated out of this election, if we get cheated out of a win in Pennsylvania, which is such a vital state especially when I know what is happening here. She can't beat what's happening here. The only way they can beat it in my opinion, and I mean this 100 percent, if in certain sections of the state they cheat. -- Donald Trump, in Altoona, Pennsylvania, yesterday

Nolan McCaskill of Politico: "Trump had eased off the claim [that President Obama founded the Islamic State] Friday morning.... 'Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) "the founder" of ISIS, & MVP,' Trump tweeted. 'THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?' He seemed to revel in the uncertainty his tweet created, boasting ... later of pundits' inability to figure him out. 'I love watching these poor, pathetic people (pundits) on television working so hard and so seriously to try and figure me out. They can't!'.... But during an afternoon rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump said his initial remark wasn't 'that sarcastic, to be honest with you.'" CW: As he whirls into the vortex, perhaps the most astonishing thing is that Trump thinks this "Gaslight" stunt is clever gamesmanship. ...

... Philip Bump of the Washington Post on Trump's repeatedly claims that President Obama "founded" ISIS & Trump's insistence that he really meant it, only to follow up with a tweet mocking the media -- CNN in this case -- for being too dumb to know sarcasm when they heard it: "But it wasn't [sarcasm], as you know. Sarcasm is being ironic for the purposes of mockery. A guy trips and breaks his nose, and you say, 'Nicely done.' That's sarcasm. It is saying the opposite of what is expected, making it not a particularly sophisticated form of humor but a popular one." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... OR, as Master of Sarcasm Andy Borowitz reports, "'People who are worried about me having the nuclear-launch codes should stop worrying, O.K.?' Trump told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. 'If I ever used nuclear weapons, it would be really obvious that I was just being sarcastic.'" -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Latest Trump Threat. Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "Donald Trump on Thursday issued a threat to stop fundraising for the Republican Party after a report emerged that party officials could focus resources on down-ballot candidates." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

The $63-Million-Dollar Question. Bob Burnett in the Huffington Post: "Open Secrets uses FEC data to report that, at the end of June, the Trump campaign had $20m on hand. According to the latest Trump reports, they raised an additional $80 million in July and, early in August, had $37m on hand. If you do the math, that means Trump spent $63m in July. He didn't spend it on TV advertising." He didn't spend much on field operations. "How did Trump spend the money?... The end-of-June FEC report indicates that Trump had lent his campaign $50m. Although Trump promised to forgive this loan, NBC news reported that he never filed the papers to actually do this." -- CW

... Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "Years before he ran for the White House, Trump built his political brand by accusing President Obama of concealing his past.... But Trump has ensured that Americans know relatively little about him. He has refused to release many of the same documents that he demanded from Obama, including college transcripts and passport records. He has shirked the decades-old tradition of major nominees releasing their tax returns and other documentation to prove their readiness and fitness for office. And he has yet to release records showing why he received a medical deferment during the Vietnam War and whether he has actually donated the millions of dollars he claims to have given to charity.... Trump, in building a wall around his records, is setting a new standard for secrecy for modern-day candidates." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Washington Post Editors: Unlike Hillary Clinton & most recent presidential candidates, Donald Trump has refused to release the names of his bundlers. "These are the people who solicit large numbers of often medium-size checks and hand them over to campaigns.... Mr. Trump might not want to draw attention to the special interests now backing him, and some of his bundlers might (understandably) be embarrassed to be outed.... Mr. Trump's refusal to meet essential standards of transparency expresses contempt for the democratic process and erodes crucial norms." -- CW

Keith Alexander & Robert O'Harrow of the Washington Post: "... during a deposition he gave in a lawsuit stemming from a dispute over his soon-to-open Washington luxury hotel..., [Donald Trump] seemed to brag about the impact his campaign has had on his brand. 'You know people have said there's never been anything like this,' he said. 'I've tapped into something. And I've tapped into illegal immigration.... But, you know, when you get more votes than anybody in the history of the party, history of the party by far, more than Ronald Reagan, more than Richard Nixon, more than Dwight D. Eisenhower who won the Second World War, you know, that's pretty mainstream, when you think about it." -- CW

We've got an un-indicted felon as his opponent [i.e., Hillary Clinton] and you're talking about [Khizr] Khan, about him [i.e., Donald Trumpus] making a remark about this man. All right, I don't care if he's a Gold Star parent. He certainly doesn't deserve that title, OK, if he's as anti-American as he's illustrated in his speeches and in his discussion. I mean, if he's a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or supporting, you know, the ISIS-type of attitude against America, there's no reason for Donald Trump to have to honor this man. -- Carl Paladino, co-chair for Donald Trump's campaign in New York, & professional hatemonger, on Don Imus's radio show

Patrick Healy of the New York Times: ".. in the last two weeks, instead of attracting a surge of new admirers [as he predicted], Mr. Trump has been hemorrhaging support among loyal Republicans, anti-establishment independents, Clinton-loathing Democrats and others, according to polls and 30 interviews with a cross-section of voters." -- CW

Max Ehrenfreund & Jeff Guo of the Washington Post: "According to [a] new analysis [by Gallup], those who view Trump favorably have not been disproportionately affected by foreign trade or immigration.... The results suggest that his supporters, on average, do not have lower incomes than other Americans, nor are they more likely to be unemployed." But they come from areas with depressed economies & "abnormally high death rates.... The places where Trump is popular are places where people have been unhealthy for a long time.... Those who view Trump favorably are more likely to be found in white enclaves -- racially isolated Zip codes...." CW: So according to this study, Trump's supporters are selfish, narrow-minded white people. What a surprise (that's sarcasm).

Senate Races

Boo-Fucking-Hoo. Nolan McCaskill: "Mitch McConnell may not be leading the Senate majority next Congress, the Kentucky Republican acknowledged Thursday, hinting of the down-ballot effect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump could have on Senate races." -- CW

Other News & Views

They spend a lot of time, these Republicans, spending a lot of energy trying to separate themselves from Donald Trump. But as long as they're holding a Supreme Court seat open for him, they're his minions. They're his enablers. We're going to ensure that every American knows that as long as Senate Republicans are fighting to let Trump shape the Supreme Court for a generation or more, there's no daylight between them and Trump. -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid ...

... Charles Pierce: "Garland is preposterously qualified. The Republicans look like obstructionist idiots. Worse for them, Garland is probably the best candidate they're likely to get out of either the current Democratic administration, or out of what is looking increasingly like the next one.... Reid ... [is] dangling that nomination out there as a way for his Republican colleagues to distance themselves from the vulgar talking yam that their party nominated for president." -- CW ...

... CW: Nobody is more responsible for stonewalling Garland than Chuck Grassley, the notorious chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who refuses to hold hearings on Garland's nomination & is holding up lower-court nominations. So ...

... Mark Hensch of the Hill: "Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says the Senate's efficiency is flourishing under GOP leadership. 'Republicans and Democrats can work together. Bipartisanship has allowed us to make progress on good ideas from senators on both sides of the aisle,' he said Saturday in the GOP's weekly address." CW: They really have no shame.

Smoking Gun: "After disappearing for a couple of weeks, the hacker 'Guccifer 2.0' returned late [Friday] afternoon to provide a new headache for Democrats. In a post to his WordPress blog, the vandal -- who previously provided nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee e-mails to Wikileaks -- uploaded an Excel file that includes the cell phone numbers and private e-mail addresses of nearly every Democratic member of the House of Representatives. The Excel file also includes similar contact information for hundreds of congressional staff members (chiefs of staff, press secretaries, legislative directors, schedulers) and campaign personnel." -- CW

Josh Rogin of the Washington Post: "Trump campaign surrogates are fueling a conspiracy theory that a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer was connected to the hacking of the DNC, a theory being pushed by WikiLeaks and the Russian state-controlled press. There's a big problem, however, with the theory: it doesn't make any sense when compared to all the available evidence.... On Thursday, Trump ally Newt Gingrich also endorsed the [Julian] Assange conspiracy theory that [Seth] Rich's death was somehow connected to the DNC hack.... The original conspiracy theory can be traced back to a notoriously unreliable conspiracy website that based its theory on an alleged Russian intelligence agency report about a Clinton 'hit team' that somehow lured Rich into a trap...." -- CW

Sarah Ferris of the Hill: "A federal judge is halting a Ohio law that would have defunded Planned Parenthood starting this year, a major decision that will be closely watched by other states with similar measures. Judge Michael Barrett ruled Friday that Ohio's health department could not defund Planned Parenthood because the group's patients could face 'irreparable injury.'...." CW: Barrett is a Bush II appointee.

** Devin Hughes & Evan DeFilippis, in Think Progress: John Lott, "the NRA's favorite 'academic' is a fraud.... A little over a decade ago, he was disgraced and his career was in tatters. Not only was Lott's assertion that more guns leads to more safety formally repudiated by a National Research Council panel, but he had also been caught pushing studies with severe statistical errors on numerous occasions. An investigation uncovered that he had almost certainly fabricated an entire survey on defensive gun use. And a blogger revealed that Mary Rosh, an online commentator claiming to be a former student of Lott's who would frequently post about how amazing he was, was in fact John Lott himself.... [Yet] In the past few years, Lott and his organization have been cited by dozens of media outlets as an authority on gun violence statistics, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Politifact, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and many others." CW: Read on. The stunts Lott has pulled are astounding.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the Washington Post: "The head of the Islamic State's branch in Afghanistan, a former Pakistani Taliban member named Hafiz Saeed Khan, was killed in a U.S. airstrike last month, the Pentagon announced Friday. The July 26 strike took place in the Achin district of Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province, said Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Gordon Trowbridge in a statement." -- CW

Beyond the Beltway

Tina Sfondeles of the Chicago Sun-Times: Illinois "Gov. Bruce Rauner [R] on Friday vetoed a bill that would have automatically registered drivers to become voters when they get a driver's license, saying there were some 'corrections' to be made to the bill before he could approve it." CW: Rauner says he's worried about voter fraud. What a surprise. ...

... Alice Ollstein of Think Progress: "The non-partisan watchdog group Common Cause Illinois estimates the policy could help add two million new voters to the states rolls. In a statement Thursday, the group's lead organizer Trevor Gervais accused the governor of 'playing politics with something as important as voting rights.' 'He wants to delay implementation until 2019, after the next gubernatorial election,' Gervais said. Because the Illinois state legislature passed the measure with an overwhelming majority in early June, they can now vote to override the veto. If they do, the state will launch a program in 2018...." -- CW

Daniel Victor of the New York Times: "A federal judge on Friday overturned the murder and sexual assault convictions of Brendan Dassey, one of the defendants whose case was the subject of the wildly popular Netflix documentary series, 'Making a Murderer.'" -- CW

The Commentariat -- August 12, 2016

Afternoon Update:

Steve Eder of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, released a new batch of their own income tax returns on Friday, ratcheting up the pressure on her opponent, Donald J. Trump, to begin making public his own forms. The income taxes of Mrs. Clinton, along with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, showed an adjusted gross income of $10.6 million for 2015, revealing how during the campaign the Clintons have reined in their moneymaking efforts after many years of lucrative speeches, book deals and business endeavors. Mr. Kaine, the Virginia senator, and his wife, Anne Holton, reported income of $313,441 for 2015." ...

... CW: It's unlikely (tho not impossible) that the IRS is auditing Trump's 2015 returns, so he'll have to come up with another phony excuse for not releasing them. Plus, since he was running for president during 2015, he had plenty of time to make his returns "look good" by actually paying some taxes, making real charitable contributions instead of pretending to, etc. If he won't even let the public see his taxes for a year he could have cooked them, then he should just drop out & go on to overseeing Trump TeeVee. ...

... Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "Years before he ran for the White House, Trump built his political brand by accusing President Obama of concealing his past.... But Trump has ensured that Americans know relatively little about him. He has refused to release many of the same documents that he demanded from Obama, including college transcripts and passport records. He has shirked the decades-old tradition of major nominees releasing their tax returns and other documentation to prove their readiness and fitness for office. And he has yet to release records showing why he received a medical deferment during the Vietnam War and whether he has actually donated the millions of dollars he claims to have given to charity.... Trump, in building a wall around his records, is setting a new standard for secrecy for modern-day candidates." -- CW

Latest Trump Threat. Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "Donald Trump on Thursday issued a threat to stop fundraising for the Republican Party after a report emerged that party officials could focus resources on down-ballot candidates." -- CW

Philip Bump of the Washington Post on Trump's repeated claims that President Obama "founded" ISIS & Trump's insistence that he really meant it, only to follow up with a tweet mocking the media -- CNN in this case -- for being too dumb to know sarcasm when they heard it: "But it wasn't [sarcasm].... Sarcasm is being ironic for the purposes of mockery. A guy trips and breaks his nose, and you say, 'Nicely done.' That's sarcasm. It is saying the opposite of what is expected, making it not a particularly sophisticated form of humor but a popular one." -- CW...

... OR, as Master of Sarcasm Andy Borowitz reports, "'People who are worried about me having the nuclear-launch codes should stop worrying, O.K.?' Trump told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. 'If I ever used nuclear weapons, it would be really obvious that I was just being sarcastic.'" -- CW

*****

Dear Do-Nothing Congress: Julie Davis of the New York Times: "The Obama administration on Thursday said it was shifting $81 million away from biomedical research and antipoverty and health care programs to pay for the development of a Zika vaccine, resorting to extraordinary measures because Congress has failed to approve new funding to combat the virus. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, told members of Congress in a letter that without the diverted funds, the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority would run out of money to confront the mosquito-borne illness by the end of the month. That would force the development of a vaccine to stop at a critical time, as locally acquired cases of Zika infection increase in Miami." -- CW

Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont led a chorus of critics after the Drug Enforcement Administration declined to allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes -- the latest example of fast-changing politics in the war on drugs. 'People can argue about the pluses and minuses of marijuana, but everyone knows it's not a killer drug like heroin,' Sanders wrote in a tweet, after the DEA announced that marijuana would remain a Schedule I drug with 'no currently accepted medical use in the United States.'... In July, when delegates met to firm up the Democratic platform, pro-Sanders delegates won language in favor of de-scheduling marijuana. That plank, passed by a single vote, marked the most significant statement in favor of legal marijuana since the start of the war on drugs." -- CW

Adam Shell of USA Today: "Stocks rallied and the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all hit new closing highs Thursday, bolstered by a strong earnings report from department store Macy's, fresh data showing the labor market remains solid and a rebound in oil prices. It's the first time all three major market gauges have set new closing marks on the same day since 1999 -- specifically, New Year's Eve of that year."

Rachel Abrams & Sapna Maheshwari of the New York Times: "Macy's, the country's largest department store, said on Thursday that it would close 100 stores, saying they were more valuable as real estate properties. Walmart, the world's largest retailer, announced on Monday that it would buy a small online rival for more than $3 billion.... Other retailers have taken aggressive action, too, trying to turn their fortunes around. Billions of dollars have been poured into e-commerce efforts. Stores have turned to sharp discounting, temporarily lifting sales but hurting profits and upsetting partners.... People continue to spend. In the spring, household spending rose at an annualized rate of 4.2 percent, driving overall economic growth. But more and more, they now want bargains and convenience -- in stores and online --- and know how to find them." -- CW

Danielle Paquette of the Washington Post: As a U.S. Justice Department investigation & report revealed, Baltimore police "officers frequently dismissed or mishandled sexual assault complaints. They often neglected to interview suspects or send DNA evidence to laboratories. Between 2010 and 2014, authorities tested rape kits in just 15 percent of adult-victim sexual assault cases. The Justice Department concluded that 'gender bias' had infected investigations. 'In their interviews with women reporting sexual assault,' investigators wrote, 'BPD officers ask women questions such as "Why are you messing up that guy's life?"' Meanwhile, just 17 percent of sexual assault reports in 2015 ended with an arrest. More than half of the reports made to the department languished as open cases." -- CW: Given the department's rampant mistreatment of African-Americans, its rampant mistreatment of women scarcely comes as a surprise. ...

... Mark Holden & Ronal Serpas, in a Washington Post op-ed: "There has been a surge of assertions about rising crime recently. At the Republican convention in July, GOP nominee Donald Trump said, 'Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration's rollback of criminal enforcement.'... As two strong conservatives, let us set the record straight. These statements on rising murders are highly misleading. The truth is that Americans are still experiencing hard-won historic lows in crime.... While we must work to address the issues driving this unacceptable localized violence [in Baltimore, Chicago & D.C.], it is not the norm.... If we care about law and order and changing the dire conditions in cities where violent crime is a perpetuating cycle, we need to rely on facts, not fear." CW: Holden is the top Koch Industries lawyer, so it appears this is the (mild) way the Koch boys seek to undermine Trump. Perhaps they'll step it up in coming months.

Michael Riley of Bloomberg: "Weeks before the Democratic convention was upended by 20,000 leaked e-mails released through WikiLeaks, another little-known website began posting the secrets of a top NATO general, billionaire George Soros' philanthropy and a Chicago-based Clinton campaign volunteer. Security experts now say that site, DCLeaks.com ... shows the marks of the same Russian intelligence outfit that targeted the Democratic political organizations." -- CW

Presidential Race

Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "In her first full-throttled rejection of Donald J. Trump's economic agenda, Hillary Clinton sharply criticized her opponent for advancing policies that she said would lift the ultra wealthy and cast middle-class and working Americans further into financial distress. Presenting a contrast between two starkly different economic visions during a major economic speech in Detroit, Mrs. Clinton called parts of Mr. Trump's tax plan a discount to benefit his ultra-wealthy peers and relatives. Faulting Mr. Trump for promising deep tax cuts for the wealthy and a gentler approach to financial regulation, she portrayed his proposals as reflective of traditional Republican thinking that would exacerbate the gap between rich and poor." CW: Possibly, Clinton drew these contrasts because they're, you know, true, as opposed to the supply-side baloney Trump's people gave him to read. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... John Wagner & Jim Tankersley of the Washington Post: "Hillary Clinton on Thursday sought to undermine the central premise of Republican Donald Trump's presidential campaign -- that he would bring relief to economically beleaguered Americans -- by casting him as a fraud and claiming that his proposals would help 'only millionaires like himself.' Clinton used what was nominally described as an economic speech to press her case that Trump's proposals and actions run counter to his campaign promises to lift workers and energize the economy."

On other campaigns, we would have to scrounge for crumbs. Here, it's a fire hose. He can set himself on fire at breakfast, kill a nun at lunch and waterboard a puppy in the afternoon. And that doesn't even get us to prime time. -- Unnamed Hillary Clinton Staffer, on campaigning against Donald Trump

Trump's Campaign Strategy. Allegra Kirkland of TPM: "'I don't know that we need to get out the vote,'... [Trump said on Fox 'News' last night]. 'I think people that really want to vote, they're gonna just get up and vote for Trump. And we're going to make America great again.' The Trump campaign has yet to develop on-the-ground support in critical battleground states as election day draws nearer and Hillary Clinton's poll numbers in those states rise." CW: The theory that Trump does not want to be POTUS is looking more plausible by the day.

Tom Hamburger & Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump urged evangelical Christians to rally behind him in a speech [in Orlando, Florida,] Thursday.... Trump tried to draw a direct distinction between himself and Mitt Romney..., who would have become the nation's first Mormon president. Echoing some post-2012 analysis suggesting that Romney's religion led some evangelicals to stay home, Trump said 'religion didn't get out and vote' for the former governor, 'whatever the reason.'... Trump stressed his difficulties in the country's only majority-Mormon state -- making an apparent play for support by noting that he has a 'tremendous problem' in Utah." CW Translation: I'm a real Christian & Romney isn't. ...

And lo, did the philistine come before them. And they beheld his mane of brightest gold, and were swayed. -- Gospel of Paul (Waldman) 1:4 ...

      ... Eric Kleefield of the New Republic figures Trump is just trying to hand the Mormon vote to Clinton. -- CW ...

... David Smith of the Guardian: "Donald Trump insinuated that Hillary Clinton lacks mental stamina at a rally where he twice couldn't tell what day of the week it was.... 'By the way, is there any place to be that's better than a Friday night in Florida at a Trump rally? No place.' A few supporters shouted, 'It's Thursday!' Later he said: 'We joke. It's Friday night and we're having fun.' More supporters yelled, 'It's Thursday!' but he appeared to assume it was more cheering. In another, perhaps more deliberate lapse, Trump claimed: 'This place is incredible. We've got 2,000 people outside trying to get in.' In fact there were still hundreds of empty places in the 8,000-seat arena in Kissimmee, near Orlando." CW: Trump isn't as distracted as Smith implies; he just hasn't finalized how the days of the week will shake out when he adds Trumpday. ...

... Marc Caputo, et al., of Politico: "Donald Trump's campaign and top Republican Party officials plan what one person called a 'come to Jesus' meeting on Friday [CW: or whatever day of the week it is] in Orlando to discuss the Republican nominee's struggling campaign, according to multiple sources familiar with the scheduled sit-down. Though a campaign source dismissed it as a 'typical' gathering, others described it as a more serious meeting, with one calling it an 'emergency meeting.'" CW: Will there be fisticuffs? It's Florida, so maybe somebody will wave a gun around (see the North Carolina campaign story, linked below). Also, I thought the Orlando "come to Jesus" meeting was Thursday with those evangelicals, where Trump speculated on his chances of getting into heaven. ...

... Brian Beutler beats back the widely-held GOP assumption that Hillary Clinton would lose badly to any of the other GOP presidential candidates. (I'm assuming here they don't mean Ben Carson.) ...

     ... CW: Still, the biggest headache for liberals would be Trump's abdicating the nomination gracefully and soon, bringing along his base to support whatever mostly-unvetted, trickle-down, misogynist whom Republican elders decided to anoint. While Trump's doing anything magnanimously seems unlikely, it's not outside the realm of possibilities, especially if GOP leaders make him an attractive offer. I do think Trump might quit before November, & the best hope for the Republic is that he'll do it Trumpelthinskin-style.

Oh, Crap. There Goes Another Constitutional Amendment. Patricia Mazzai of the Miami Herald: "A President Donald Trump might push for Americans accused of terrorism to be tried in military tribunal at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the Republican nominee told the Miami Herald on Thursday." ...

     ... CW: Mazzei writes, "Under current federal law, it’s illegal to try U.S. citizens at military commissions. Changing the law would require an act of Congress." I'm no Constitutional scholar, but as far as I can tell, Congress does not have the power to militarize civilian courts. Under the Sixth Amendment, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law...." ...

     ... Update. Steve M. corrects me: "... the Supreme Court has said that it would be constitutional to change the law in a way that subjects U.S. citizens to detention and tribunals, as Adam Serwer noted in 2011: 'There is no bar to this nation's holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant," Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said during [a] floor speech defending the detention provisions Tuesday.'... Levin was referring to 2004's Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Yaser Esam Hamdi, a US national captured during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, could be held in military detention but not without habeas review.'... So a lot of D.C. politicians have walked up to that line." CW Note: U.S. forces captured Hamdi in Afghanistan, allegedly fighting on the side of the Taliban; that is, he was an actual "enemy combatant." That is qualitatively different from a U.S. citizen committing a terrorist act in, say, Chicago. The justices' opinions in Hamdi seem to support that differentiation. In any event, the plurality opinion does not give Congress the right to try U.S. civilians in military courts but rather addresses Fifth Amendment due process rights (the Court decided Hamdi had them). ...

     ... Josh Israel of Think Progress has more on this, which supports my contention that Donald Trump's self-described love for the Constitution apparently does not include the Sixth Amendment.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump, reaffirming his contention that President Obama was effectively a 'founder' of the Islamic State terrorist group, said Thursday that he intended to stick by his unorthodox campaign style, even if it meant taking 'a very, very nice long vacation' after Nov. 8.... It was a rare instance in which Mr. Trump has conceded that his approach might not work.... 'You meant that he [Obama] created the vacuum, he lost the peace,' [conservative radio host Hugh] Hewitt suggested... No, I meant he's the founder of ISIS. I do,' Mr. Trump said.... 'But he's not sympathetic to them,' Mr. Hewitt replied.... 'He hates them. He's trying to kill them.' 'I don't care,' Mr. Trump replied. 'He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, O.K.?'" -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... The story has been updated, with Nick Corasaniti added to the byline. The new lede: "Facing one of the toughest stretches of his presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump on Thursday acknowledged in unusually candid terms that he faced daunting hurdles in crucial states, as he swung wildly at Hillary Clinton to try to blunt her questions about his fitness to serve in the Oval Office." --

... Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly explains the clever strategy here: "What do you do when you want to distract people from the fact that you just suggested that your political opponent could be assassinated? You call the current POTUS a terrorist, of course." -- CW ...

... Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Part of what motivates Trump to make [such] questionable statements is that he feeds off the approval of his base.... It was almost Pavlovian, watching Trump ride the wave of applause as he said, over and over, that the U.S. president had founded [ISIS].... Politicians always pander to their bases, but it rarely looks like this.... The militant group, which started referring to itself as the Islamic State three years ago, was formed in 2002 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to the Mapping Militants project at Stanford University." CW: Once again we learn that Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama had an amazing reach. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... CW: As Bump reports on the exchange with Hewitt, Hewitt asked Trump, "By using the term 'founder,' they're hitting you on this again. Mistake?" Trump replied, 'No, it's no mistake. Everyone's liking it. I think they're liking it." In other words, it doesn't bother Trump that the majority of the electorate is repelled by his lies; all that matters is the cheers from his audience of troglodytes. It's a sickness. So, congratulations, Republicans. Are you listening, Reince? ...

... Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "First, Trump completely botches the history of ISIS: The group was founded in 1999 and really grew up after the US invasion of Iraq. If any US president could be blamed for ISIS's 'founding,' it would be George W. Bush, not Barack Obama. Second, Trump is, intentionally or not, validating conspiracy theories about America's relationship with ISIS. It's a terribly irresponsible thing to say -- and illustrates one of the many reasons Trump would make an awful president.... The real sources of ISIS's recent growth were the Syrian civil war and political sectarianism in Iraq, neither of which was within the power of United States to prevent." -- CW ...

... CW: Perhaps the most telling part of the Hewitt-Trump conversation is where Hewitt tries to talk Trump off the ledge by pointing out that President Obama is hardly ISIS's BFF:

Hewitt: But he's not sympathetic to them. He hates them. He's trying to kill them.

Trump: I don't care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that, that was the founding of ISIS, O.K.?

Trump's refusal to even entertain obvious facts is -- both in language & message -- stunningly childish & petulant. It's the sort of response you would expect from a troubled six-year-old having a temper tantrum. It should preclude any normal person's voting for him & cause Republican officials to finally realize & deal with the fact that their peeps have nominated a madman.

... The Schoolyard Bully's Guide to Political Campaigning. David Graham of the Atlantic: "Accusing Obama of treason, or of founding ISIS, are however neatly of a piece with Trump's baseless insistence that Obama is not American and was born abroad -- just new ways to portray him as an alien other. Ironically, Trump himself has been labeled an other, completely alien to the existing U.S. political system and its norms. It stands to reason that he'd mirror such attacks: When Trump is criticized, his go-to rhetorical turn is 'I'm rubber, you're glue,' which is why ever since Clinton labeled Trump unfit for office because of his 'temperament,' Trump has made criticizing her own temperament a centerpiece of his stump speech, using the word repeatedly." -- CW ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post annotates the full CNBC interview Trump gave yesterday. "National Republicans should be terrified, Blake writes. CW: His annotations seem both accurate & amusing. ...

... ** He Was for It (for Years) Before He Was Against It. Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Donald Trump has said repeatedly ... that President Obama 'founded ISIS'.... 'He was the founder of ISIS, absolutely,' Trump said on CNBC on Thursday. 'The way he removed our troops -- you shouldn't have gone in. I was against the war in Iraq. Totally against it. (Trump was not against the war as he has repeatedly claimed.) 'The way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, OK?' Trump later said. But lost in Trump's immediate comments is that, for years, he pushed passionately and forcefully for the same immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. In interview after interview in the later 2000s, Trump said American forces should be removed from Iraq." Kaczynski provides multiple public statements Trump made over the years urging rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. -- CW

... New York Times Editors: "When Mr. Trump fans racist rage against the president, suggests that gun owners take up arms against Mrs. Clinton, or speaks darkly of a 'rigged' election, he is not trying to woo Republican skeptics, independents or undecided voters. He is appealing to the mob.... His behavior this week raises a more disturbing scenario. Perhaps he has given up on winning through civil means and does not care about the consequences of his campaign of incitement." -- CW ...

... Caitlin MacNeal of TPM: On Thursday, Trump's running mate mike pence tried to clean up Trump's comment about President Obama's being the "founder of Isis." CW: At one point during his tap dance, pence said, "Everybody in this country knows exactly what Donald Trump means, whether it be on that or other issues. He's a plainspoken man." Which makes the update below all the richer. ...

... Update. You had to know this was coming (even if mike pence didn't). Jessie Hellmann of the Hill: "For the second time in less than a month, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is writing off a statement many found offensive -- this time, that President Obama was the 'founder' of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) -- as 'sarcasm.'... 'Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) 'the founder' of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?' [Trump tweeted]." CW: Yup, it's definitely the media's fault for reporting Trump means what he says when Trump says something repeatedly and insists numerous times that he means what he says. In a week or two, Trump will deny he ever said President Obama was the founder of ISIS, & the media are at fault again for lying about him.

NEW. Marc Fisher & Michael Kranish have another excerpt from the book Trump Revealed in today's Washington Post, but it doesn't, ah, reveal much. -- CW ...

... NEW. AND Jason Horowitz of the New York Times has a long piece on Fred Trump & on his influence on his son Donnie. CW: Maybe the Times is dumping this stuff now in case Donnie, in the near future, goes on to more trivial pursuits.

Jeet Heer of the New Republic: "While Trump makes little sense as a mainstream candidate vying for office, his incendiary words are perfectly appropriate if his goal is to make a name for himself in the world of sensationalistic television, an avenue he very well may pursue with Trump TV after the election ends." -- CW

** A Huge Lie about Childcare. You know, it's not expensive for a company to do it. You need one person or two people, and you need some blocks, and you need some swings and some toys. It's not an expensive thing, and I do it all over. And I get great people because of it. Because it's a problem with a lot of other companies. -- Donald Trump, Iowa, November 2015 ...

... Jill Colvin & Catherine Lucey of the AP: "When Donald Trump vowed this week to make child care more accessible and affordable, it was just the second time during his White House campaign that he's talked about an issue that affects millions of working Americans with young children. The first came months ago in Iowa, when ... [Trump] touted his own record as a business owner during a candidate Q&A, telling voters he provided on-site child-care service for his employees. There is no evidence, however, that any such programs exist.... The two programs Trump cited -- 'Trump Kids' and 'Trumpeteers' -- are programs catering to patrons of Trump's hotels and golf club. They are not for Trump's employees, according to staff at Trump's hotels and clubs across the country." -- CW ...

... Emily Crockett of Vox: "It's a rather tone-deaf screw-up from Trump, who has (very) recently turned child care into a major policy proposal for his campaign. It doesn't help that the child care policy he is now proposing also helps well-off Americans substantially more than low-income families...." -- CW

James Stewart of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump has paid ... perhaps even zero federal income tax in some years. Indeed, that's the expectation of numerous real estate and tax professionals I've interviewed.... That's because Mr. Trump, as a prominent and active developer, can take advantage of some of the most generous tax breaks in the federal tax code to reduce his reported income to near zero, or even report a loss.... Mr. Trump has said in the past that highly paid corporate executives 'get away with murder' on their taxes while boasting that he pays as little as the law allows.... Mr. Trump ... has not released [his tax returns]. One obvious potential reason is that he reports little or no taxable income, and thus pays very little to support the government he wants to run.... This may also explain why Mr. Trump has not disclosed many large charitable contributions, because the charitable deduction would be of scant value if he has little or no taxable income."...

     ... CW: Many Americans pay taxes at a higher rate than does Mitt Romney, but I wouldn't be surprised if millions of us also paid more in actual dollars than Donald Trump does.

** Paul Krugman: "... right now, when it matters, [Republican party leaders like Paul Ryan,] have decided that lower tax rates on the rich are sufficient payment for betraying American ideals and putting the republic as we know it in danger." Read the whole column. -- CW ...

... Danielle Allen of the Washington Post: "With every morally reprehensible, politically dangerous and socially damaging attack [Donald] Trump makes on decency, constitutionalism and individual people, [Paul] Ryan produces yet another talk bubble of coddling enablement. Ryan is about to write himself into history as one of those who were asleep at the switch at a pivotal moment of American political decline." -- CW

Anna Palmer of Politico: "More than 70 Republicans have signed an open letter to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus urging him to stop spending any money to help Donald Trump win in November and shift those contributions to Senate and House races.... Former Sen. Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire and former Reps. Chris Shays of Connecticut, Tom Coleman of Missouri and Vin Weber of Minnesota are among the Republicans lending their name to the letter. Close to 20 of the co-signers are former RNC staffers...." -- CW

Sean Sullivan & Sarah Larimer of the Washington Post: "A former staffer for Donald Trump's campaign alleged in a lawsuit this week that a top [Trump] aide in North Carolina pulled out a gun while the pair traveled together in February and held the loaded firearm to the staffer's kneecap.... [The plaintiff, Vincent] Bordini, reported the incident to other Trump staffers, the lawsuit claims, but [Earl] Phillip[, Trump's North Carolina state director, who allegedly threatened Bordini with a loaded gun,] wasn't fired or suspended." CW: As should be obvious by now, not all of the nut jobs Trump attracts are the ones who show up at public rallies.

Beyond the Beltway

Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "On Wednesday, a three-judge panel struck down the [Republican-drawn North Carolina] state legislative maps as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.... The loss of these maps is still a blow to Republicans. In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won North Carolina's electoral votes by only a two-point margin over President Obama. Yet the state legislative maps proved so favorable to Republicans that the GOP captured a supermajority of both houses of the state legislature.... By packing African-Americans into relatively few districts, the state minimized black voters' ability to influence elections in other parts of the state, and prevented them from forming coalitions with non-black voters...." -- CW

The Commentariat -- August 11, 2016

Afternoon Update:

Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "In her first full-throttled rejection of Donald J. Trump’s economic agenda, Hillary Clinton sharply criticized her opponent for advancing policies that she said would lift the ultra wealthy and cast middle-class and working Americans further into financial distress. Presenting a contrast between two starkly different economic visions during a major economic speech in Detroit, Mrs. Clinton called parts of Mr. Trump's tax plan a discount to benefit his ultra-wealthy peers and relatives. Faulting Mr. Trump for promising deep tax cuts for the wealthy and a gentler approach to financial regulation, she portrayed his proposals as reflective of traditional Republican thinking that would exacerbate the gap between rich and poor." CW: Possibly, Clinton drew these contrasts because they're, you know, true, as opposed to the supply-side baloney Trump's people gave him to read.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump, reaffirming his contention that President Obama was effectively a 'founder' of the Islamic State terrorist group, said Thursday that he intended to stick by his unorthodox campaign style, even if it meant taking 'a very, very nice long vacation' after Nov. 8.... It was a rare instance in which Mr. Trump has conceded that his approach might not work.... 'You meant that he [Obama] created the vacuum, he lost the peace,' [conservative radio host Hugh] Hewitt suggested... No, I meant he's the founder of ISIS. I do,' Mr. Trump said.... 'But he's not sympathetic to them,' Mr. Hewitt replied.... 'He hates them. He's trying to kill them.' 'I don't care,' Mr. Trump replied. 'He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, O.K.?'" -- CW ...

... Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Part of what motivates Trump to make [such] questionable statements is that he feeds off the approval of his base.... It was almost Pavlovian, watching Trump ride the wave of applause as he said, over and over, that the U.S. president had founded [ISIS].... Politicians always pander to their bases, but it rarely looks like this.... The militant group, which started referring to itself as the Islamic State three years ago, was formed in 2002 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to the Mapping Militants project at Stanford University." CW: Once again we discover Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama had an amazing reach. ...

... CW: As Bump reports on the exchange with Hewitt, Hewitt asked Trump, "By using the term 'founder,' they're hitting you on this again. Mistake?" Trump replied, 'No, it's no mistake. Everyone's liking it. I think they're liking it." In other words, it doesn't bother Trump that the majority of the electorate is repelled by his lies; all that matters is the cheers from his audience of troglodytes. It's a sickness. So, congratulations, Republicans. Are you listening, Reince?

*****

Presidential Race

Toby Eckert of Politico: "Hillary Clinton plans to set up a stark contrast Thursday between her tax plan and Donald Trump's, portraying her Republican rival's proposal as one that would 'only benefit millionaires like himself,' according to Clinton's campaign. At the same time, Clinton -- in a speech in Warren Mich. -- will tout her own tax plan and other economic proposals as a boon to the middle class." -- CW

Lauren Gambino & Ciara McCarthy of the Guardian: "Hillary Clinton denounced Donald Trump's suggestion that gun owners could stop her from appointing liberal supreme court justices, pointing to it as the latest evidence of behavior by him unbefitting of a presidential candidate. At a rally in CW

Eric Lipton & Steve Eder of the New York Times: A spokesman for a Clinton Foundation donor explains that the donor was trying to contact the State Department to give them information, not to garner a favor, as conservatives have charged in response to a new release of some Clinton-era State Department e-mails. -- CW

Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: Hillary Clinton's campaign has begun "exploring whether former secretaries of state, such as Henry Kissinger, might back her. That, liberals warned, would be a step too far. And the prospect fed a perception that, with a contentious primary behind her, the Democratic nominee has returned to her old, hawkish ways and is again taking progressives for granted." ...

     ... CW: See also my blogpost "Six Degrees of Stupid." According to Weigel's reporting, even Noam Chomsky agrees with me. And, I, BTW, agree with Glenn Greenwald: "I don't think Clinton will change her foreign policy because she's receiving endorsements from Bush, Reagan and Nixon foreign policy officials.... I think she;s receiving those endorsements because they like what her foreign policy will be. That;s what worries me." (Emphasis added.) ...

... AND The Undeciders. Gail Collins explains voting to senators (and Charles Pierce): "... it's very strange to hear elected officials embracing various versions of a don't-vote strategy. Nobody knows better than they do that politics is a world of imperfect choices.... There are only three things you can do when it comes time to elect a president. You can stay home and punt; you can choose between the two major party candidates; or you can cop out by doing something that looks like voting but has no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the race. That includes strategies about writing in the name of a retired general, leaving the top line blank, or voting for a third-party candidate who has as much chance of winning as the YouTube Keyboard Cat." -- CW

Eric Lichtblau & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "A Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic politicians was bigger than it first appeared and breached the private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups, officials with knowledge of the case said Wednesday. The widening scope of the attack has prompted the F.B.I. to broaden its investigation, and agents have begun notifying a long list of Democratic officials that the Russians may have breached their personal accounts.... Organizations like the Democratic Governors' Association may also have been affected.... American intelligence agencies have said they have 'high confidence' that the attack was the work of Russian intelligence agencies." -- CW ...

... Katherine Krueger of TPM: "In recent months, Wikileaks' Twitter feed has been awash in posts maligning ... [Hillary Clinton] and promoting polls that purportedly show Donald Trump sliding to an easy victory over Clinton. But with the organization's $20,000 reward ... for information about the murder of a Democratic National Committee staffer..., Wikileaks waded further into the internet's vast, anti-Clinton fever swamps, which have pushed the bonkers conspiracy theory that DNC staffer Seth Rich was killed for crossing the Clintons. Police have said Rich, 27, was shot twice in the back as part of an attempted robbery while walking to his home in northwest Washington, D.C. in the early hours of July 10. But nothing was found missing from his person, which fired up the internet conspiracy machine." -- CW ...

... Max Rosenthal of Mother Jones: "The July 12 shooting of Seth Rich, a 27-year-old staffer at the Democratic National Committee, was likely a robbery gone wrong, according to Washington, DC, police. But to the dismay of Rich's family, his death has become fodder for dark anti-Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories that have been circulated widely on social media and amplified by longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone.... Stone, a longtime Republican strategist and close ally of Trump, has used the death to promote the right-wing 'Clinton body count' theory that claims the Clintons have been responsible for numerous political murders dating back to the 1980s." CW: So how long will it be before Trump himself tweets that "people are saying" Hillary Clinton's hitmen murdered Seth Rich? He did it to the father of primary opponent Ted Cruz (more than once), so he is not above doing it to his general election rival.

AND Steve M. provides background on this startling Breitbart report: "The executive director of a physicians' organization questions how the mainstream media can ignore signs of what could be a traumatic brain injury in the Democrat nominee for president." CW: But, hey, the few little caveats Steve raises aside, I'm all worried that Hillary slipped on some icy steps in February because her brain is "unhinged" or something.

More Deranged Musings of a Despicable Man. Margaret Hartmann: "At a rally in Florida on Wednesday [Donald Trump] accused President Obama of being the 'founder of ISIS,' while downgrading 'crooked Hillary Clinton' to 'co-founder.' It's quite the demotion, since last Wednesday Trump said his opponent should receive an award from the terrorist group 'as the founder of ISIS.'... 'He's the founder of ISIS. He's the founder of ISIS. He's the founder. He founded ISIS,' adding, 'I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.'... He also revived his suggestion that the commander-in-chief, who authorized 11,000 U.S. air strikes against ISIS in the past two years, harbors a secret affinity for the terrorists. 'In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama,' Trump said, offering no further explanation. Later while discussing the situation in Crimea -- which he just learned was annexed by Russia in 2014 -- Trump ... sa[id] it took place 'during the administration of Barack Hussein Obama.'" More on Trump's Florida rally below. ...

... Steve M.: "Trump isn't breaking new ground here -- this kind of talk has long been acceptable on the right.... The only new twist with Trump is that yesterday he threw in some birtherist Muslim-baiting.... These are just standard-issue GOP smears. They're just getting a higher profile now." Steve provides plenty of evidence. -- CW

** William Kennedy Smith & Jean Kennedy Smith in a Washington Post op-ed, contrast Bobby Kennedy's extemporaneous Indianapolis speech on the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered with Donald Trump's "thinly veiled reference or 'joke' about the possibility of political assassination." CW: Feel free to weep for a country in which millions of voters intend to select a presidential candidate who would encourage the assassins of John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy & Martin Luther King, Jr. Because that is where we live. ...

... Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "Ronald Reagan's daughter, Patti Davis, was among the many Americans outraged by Donald Trump's threat that gun owners should do something to stop his opponent from nominating liberal judges. Davis ... reminded the Republican presidential nominee that her father had been shot and wounded ... by a would-be assassin who was inspired by an unwitting celebrity.... Davis said Trump's words were ... heard by Americans who are mentally disturbed or looking for permission to commit acts of political violence." -- CW ...

If someone else had said that said outside the hall, he'd be in the back of a police wagon now with the Secret Service questioning him.... You're not just responsible for what you say. You are responsible for what people hear. -- Gen. Michael Hayden, Ret., former CIA Director ...

... ** Paul Waldman: "If you're arguing to your angry, heavily armed supporters, who already think the federal government is tyrannical, that there's a conspiracy afoot to steal the election and that your opponent will be sending jackbooted government thugs to confiscate their guns, you don't get to pretend that when you say that the 'Second Amendment people' might be able to stop the next president's judges from subverting their gun rights that it's all innocent and you would never contemplate something as irresponsible as encouraging violence.... It doesn't matter whether Trump really believes that people should use their guns against the federal government if it enacts policies they don't like. What matters is that he's encouraging them to think they should, just like he's encouraging them not to accept the results of the election if their favored candidate doesn't win. That's what so malignant...." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... ** Tami Luhby and Jim Sciutto of CNN: Secret Service chatted with Trump: "A US Secret Service official confirms to CNN that the USSS has spoken to the Trump campaign regarding his Second Amendment comments. 'There has been more than one conversation' on the topic, the official told CNN. The campaign told USSS Donald Trump did not intend to incite violence. 'No such meeting or conversation ever happened,' Trump tweeted in response to CNN's report." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Akhilleus: Of course, given the virulent antipathy so many Secret Service agents have for the president and Hillary Clinton, it's likely that the conversation drifted into "Gee, Mr. Trump, we're with you all the way. We'd like to shoot the bitch too, but you just can't say it out loud, dude, okay?" ...

     ... CW BTW: I disagree with Akhilleus' assessment. While there is ample evidence the Secret Service employs way too many dummkopfs, I'd like to think that, as a whole, the agency takes seriously its main job of protecting the president, presidential candidates & their families.

     ... Update. Alana Wise of Reuters: "A federal official on Wednesday said the U.S. Secret Service had not formally spoken with Republican Donald Trump's presidential campaign regarding his suggestion a day earlier that gun rights activists could stop Democratic rival Hillary Clinton from curtailing their access to firearms.... Earlier CNN had reported that there had been multiple conversations between the campaign and the agency." -- CW

... Washington Post Editors: "DONALD TRUMP'S latest on-stage outrage was really two. The one that got the attention this week was his apparent suggestion that 'Second Amendment people' rise in an armed insurrection against the federal government if Hillary Clinton wins the election. The second was his premise for the claim: that 'Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment.' The addition of 'essentially' does not render this absurd statement any less absurd. Ms. Clinton plays up her opposition to the National Rifle Association, but her positions are, if anything, too modest.... The country should be looking for measures that reduce gun deaths without significantly curbing legitimate gun use. That goal does not seem to interest the NRA -- or the lobby's latest mouthpiece, Mr. Trump." ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post spells out the obvious: "After journalists quickly interpreted the comment as suggesting or joking about a call to arms, Trump's campaign was just as quick to offer its first defense -- that he was talking about gun-rights supporters voting.... But there's a big problem with it. Trump made the 'Second Amendment' remark as he was already talking about a situation in which Clinton was the president. He said, 'If [Hillary Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks.' There's 'nothing you can do' in this situation because Trump is talking about a time in which the 2016 election has already passed and Clinton is president.... During the election, there's something pretty obvious you can do: Prevent her from becoming president in the first place." -- CW ...

... Tyler Cherry & Cat Duffy of Media Matters: "Conservative media figures attempted to downplay and justify ... Donald Trump's comments about 'Second Amendment people'..., blaming 'the Clinton spin machine,' claiming his comments were taken 'out of context,' and equating his 'joke' to previous statements made by other politicians." Cherry & Duffy provede a nice rundown of some of the laughable interpretations Trump apologists have dreamed up. CW: My favorite: "What Trump Meant Was 'File An Amicus Brief' With The Supreme Court." Yup, "amicus brief" were the first words that popped into my head when I first read Trump's threat. ...

... You People Are Picking on a Poor, Dimwitted Populist. Dara Lind of Vox makes an astonishing defense of Trump's threat: Trump is really a populist, she writes, and he makes his most outrageous remarks when he's "trying to speak conservative," a language, or set of tropes, which he hasn't mastered. For instance, she asks, "What the hell is a 'Second Amendment person'? It's not a phrase gun rights supporters typically use to describe themselves. As often as not, it's used by gun control advocates to characterize their opponents as wackos." -- CW ...

... Nick Corasaniti & Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "With Mr. Trump increasingly isolated and hobbled by controversies of his own making, the ... [National Rifle Association] has emerged as one of his remaining stalwart allies in the Republican coalition: the institution on the right most aggressively committed to his candidacy, except for the Republican National Committee itself. The association has spent millions of dollars on television commercials for Mr. Trump, even as other Republican groups have kept their checkbooks closed and Mr. Trump's campaign has not run any ads of its own.... And on Tuesday, when Mr. Trump roiled the presidential race anew with a ... his critics interpreted it as a suggestion that 'Second Amendment people' could attack Hillary Clinton or the judges she would appoint if elected president -- the association rushed to defend his remark as no more than an attempt to rally gun enthusiasts to vote in November." CW: See Akhilleus's comment on the NRA in yesterday's thread to better appreciate the NRA's hypocrisy.

This would be hilarious if Trump weren't such a sick, lying fuck:

... Watch the video. When Trump asks "How many people here know me?" Mark Foley is the first to raise his hand. Foley, some of you will recall, resigned his Congressional seat in disgrace after sending suggestive messages to Congressional pages. His name has come up in the news more recently because his transgressions occurred while another pedophile, Denny Hastert was Speaker. Immediately after the Trump rally, Foley told Thomas Roberts of NBC News, in a text message, that Trump has "been a friend of mine for 30 years and one of my biggest contributors." Clearly, Trump (or his staff) invited Foley to sit in a prominent position at the rally. As Adam Kelsey of ABC News explained (also linked yesterday), Clinton did not invite Seddique Mateen, the father of the Orlando mass killer to attend her rally, as Trump claims in yet another of his stream of bald-faced lies. Moreover, Mateen did not have one of the best seats in the house; as a Republican presidential campaign advance staffer told Kelsey, Mateen was part of what people in his biz call the "'tapestry' -- an area where a diverse group would be seated to reflect wide-ranging support for the candidate. He got the same vetting everyone in the cheap seats gets at a public rally. ...

     ... Update. Anthony Man of the Orlando Sun Sentinel: "Foley got a prime seat, ensuring he'd appear just over Trump's shoulder in TV pictures by arriving hours early, just as he did during State of the Union addresses while he was in Congress. He would arrive early on the House floor to get an aisle seat where he was often seen on TV." CW: Maybe so. But I still suspect the campaign invited Foley to sit behind Trump, just as they did the black guy seated next to Foley, making that poor dupe "Trump's African-American" for a Day.

David Fahrenthold & Robert O'Harrow of the Washington Post: After Donald Trump "sued a reporter, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump's net worth[, t]he reporter's attorneys ... brought Trump in for a deposition [in December 2007].... The lawyers confronted the mogul with his past statements -- and with his company's internal documents, which often showed those statements had been incorrect or invented.... Trump ...was vulnerable -- cornered, out-prepared and under oath. Thirty times, they caught him.... That deposition -- 170 transcribed pages -- offers extraordinary insights into Trump's relationship with the truth. Trump's falsehoods were unstrategic -- needless, highly specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, in his mind, because he saw the situation more positively than others did.... In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump's case against [the book's author Timothy] O'Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too." -- CW: Read to the end. Trump's admitted "justification" for bringing the suit is as despicable as all his lies. ...

... Statements Treasonous, Mendacious, Murderous from the Mouth of Trump. Who's to Blame? Why, the Media, Natch! Rem Reider of USA Today: "Time after time, after Trump creates widespread fallout with his latest outrage, whose fault is it? Yep, the media. Remember the flap over a Trump tweet that many considered anti-Semitic, featuring a Star of David, $100 bills and Hillary Clinton? That wasn't on him. 'Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star,' he tweeted. That time he said Sen. John McCain wasn't a war hero? The media's fault. His racist remarks about the judge in the Trump U. case? The media again. The ejection of the crying baby? You guessed it." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Akhilleus: The Party of Personal Responsibility has another winner!

Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "A Bloomberg poll released Wednesday found that 61 percent of likely voters say that they are 'less impressed' with Donald Trump's business expertise based on what they've learned about him over the course of the campaign. About 31 percent say they're 'more impressed.'... Foot traffic to Trump businesses, including his hotels and golf courses, appears to have fallen significantly during the campaign." ...

... CW: Wouldn't it be a shame if Trump lost a bundle because of his self-promotional presidential run? However, as today's first commenter suggests, Donald may have figured out a way to make up any losses: abscond with the campaign chest. He could say he was giving the money to charity; he has the script to that ruse down pat. ...

... CW: I was a'wondering why so many people are "less impressed" with Trump's business creds when I ran across this post by Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed. Kaczynski re-posts old ads for Trump Institute that put the "sleaze" in "sleazy." Kaczynski references the New York Times report about Trump Institute which "was run by a couple who had run afoul of regulators in dozens of states and had been dogged by accusations of deceptive business practices and fraud for decades. Similar complaints soon emerged about the Trump Institute." ...

Trump Tall Tales keep piling up. This one is also a scream: Trump turns evidence of one of his many failed businesses into a fable about saving Marines.

The Trump campaign has confirmed to Hannity.com that Mr. Trump did indeed send his plane to make two trips from North Carolina to Miami, Florida to transport over 200 Gulf War Marines back home. -- quote in article titled '200 Stranded Marines Needed A Plane Ride Home, Here's How Donald Trump Responded,' Sean Hannity Show website, May 19, 2016

... it's clear that Trump had nothing to do with the dispatch of the jet to Camp Lejeune. The aircraft that ferried the troops was part of the Trump Shuttle fleet, at a time when Trump barely had control over the airline and was frantically trying to negotiate deals with bankers to prevent the collapse of his business empire. Trump Shuttle had a contract with the military and this flight home was part of that contract. Simple as that. Sean Hannity needs to correct this article, if not pull it down. The Trump campaign earns Four Pinocchios for confirming a story that is easily debunked. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post

Everybody Out! Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana suggested in a radio interview on Monday that Donald J. Trump's proposed ban on Muslims from entering the country could be broadened to include other religions, not just Muslims.... Mr. Pence, seeming to go beyond even the policy proposed by Mr. Trump, did not rule out barring immigrants from other religions, if they were coming from nations or territories that support terrorism.... Since initially proposing a Muslim ban in December, in response to the terror attack in San Bernardino, Calif., Mr. Trump has repeatedly tried to tweak and modify his position, often muddling just what his actual proposed policy would be." -- CW

Alex Altman of Time: After Donald Trump refused to endorse Reince Priebus's friend Paul Ryan, the RNC chair threatened to effectively dump Trump, "according to two Republican officials briefed on the [phone] call [between Priebus & Trump]. Priebus told Trump that internal GOP polling suggested he was on track to lose the election. And if Trump didn't turn around his campaign over the coming weeks, the Republican National Committee would consider redirecting party resources and machinery to House and Senate races. Trump denies the exchange ever took place.... There is no doubt that the possibility Republicans will all but abandon Trump now haunts his struggling campaign.... Republicans waiting for the long-promised presidential pivot seemed like characters in a Beckett play, trapped in Trump's theater of the absurd." -- CW

Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Katy Tur of NBC News reveals in Marie Claire what it's like to cover Donald Trump. There are some good parts, none of which can be attributed to Trump. -- CW

Presidential Race Trivia

Not exactly the Kennedy compound at Hyannis.

... Helena Andrews-Dyer of the Washington Post: "... when news came that ... [Bernie Sanders] bought a $575,000 vacation home for his family, the hypocrisy police were ready to pounce in all caps. The Sanders family's 'new waterfront crib has four bedrooms and 500 feet of Lake Champlain beachfront,' according to the Vermont newspaper Seven Days, which broke the news on Monday.... Bernie-files and Bern-outs alike soon cried foul on social media and in headlines about the senator's third home (the Sanderses also have homes in Washington and Burlington) because apparently socialism and diversified real estate portfolios don't mix. ...

... CW: Actually, it doesn't look as if Bernie bought the vacation home. Kim LaCapria of Snopes: Jane "O'Meara Sanders[, Bernie's wife] said that she had inherited a vacation home in Maine, but the family was unable to make use of it due to its distance from their primary residence in Vermont, so she sold it and used the proceeds to finance the purchase of a more suitable vacation home in North Hero[, Vermont]." So, no, dipturds, Sanders did not finance the purchase with campaign funds, which would, of course, be against the law. ...

... For more photos of the place, go here.

Other News & Views

Catherine Saint Louis & Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "The Obama administration is planning to remove a major roadblock to marijuana research, officials said Wednesday, potentially spurring broad scientific study of a drug that is being used to treat dozens of diseases in states across the nation despite little rigorous evidence of its effectiveness.... For years, the University of Mississippi has been the only institution authorized to grow the drug for use in medical studies. This restriction has so limited the supply of marijuana federally approved for research purposes that scientists said it could often take years to obtain it and in some cases it was impossible to get. But soon the Drug Enforcement Administration will allow other universities to apply to grow marijuana, three government officials said." -- CW ...

... BUT. Carrie Johnson of NPR: "The Obama administration has denied a bid by two Democratic governors to reconsider how it treats marijuana under federal drug control laws, keeping the drug for now, at least, in the most restrictive category for U.S. law enforcement purposes. Drug Enforcement Administration chief Chuck Rosenberg says the decision is rooted in science. Rosenberg gave 'enormous weight' to conclusions by the Food and Drug Administration that marijuana has 'no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,' and by some measures, it remains highly vulnerable to abuse as the most commonly used illicit drug...." -- CW

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Katherine Krueger of TPM: "Arianna Huffington, who founded digital media juggernaut the Huffington Post 11 years ago, is stepping down from her post as editor-in-chief to focus on her global health and wellness startup. Huffington will leave the company in coming weeks to run Thrive Global, a company focused on working with employers to improve the well-being of their staffers...." ...

     ... CW: That's rich. One way employers could "improve the well-being of staffers" would be to, um pay them, a route to well-being to which the HuffPost is particularly averse. (But on philosophical grounds!) Also, maybe not lay off hundreds of paid employees. Look into these ideas, Arianna. You don't even have to pay me for the heads-up.

Beyond the Beltway

Tim Darragh of NJ.com: "A former aide to Gov. Chris Christie said in a text that the governor 'flat out lied' about senior staff members not being involved in the Bridgegate scandal, according to court filings released early Wednesday." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Matt Friedman & Ryan Hutchins of Politico do a better job of explaining the significance of the text exchange, which was a real-time critique of Christie's remarks during a press conference. A lawyer for one of the Bridgegates defendants filed a court brief alleging that the aide "deleted the texts after the Democrat-led Legislature began issuing subpoenas in the case, and never told lawmakers about them. The filing claims she 'testified under oath before the Legislature in a manner not consistent with the existence and deletion of those texts.'" See also Akhilleus's commentary in yesterday's thread. -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Surprise, Surprise! Juliet Linderman & Eric Tucker of the AP: Report on Baltimore Cops Vindicates Black Residents: "With startling statistics, a federal investigation of the Baltimore Police Department documents in 164 single-spaced pages what black residents have been saying for years: They are routinely singled out, roughed up or otherwise mistreated by officers, often for no reason...Among other findings: Blacks account for 63 percent of the city's population and roughly 84 percent of all police stops. From 2010 to 2015, officers stopped 34 black residents 20 times, and seven African-Americans 30 times or more...The direction often came from the top: In one instance, a police supervisor told a subordinate to 'make something up' after the officer protested an order to stop and question a group of young black men for no reason." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Akhilleus: Abject apologies forthcoming from Confederate politicians and winger pundits who blamed Baltimore's black community for all the problems they outlined and questioned their honesty about police interactions. Any day now...waiting, waiting.....waiting...

... Lynh Bui & Peter Hermann of the Washington Post: "Baltimore's top law enforcement and political leaders on Wednesday vowed a sweeping overhaul of the city Police Department after a searing rebuke of the agency's practices, which the Justice Department said regularly discriminated against black residents in poor communities. Officials promised improved community relations, a purge of race-based policing and a modernized department that better trains officers and holds them accountable. But they warned that reforming an agency entrenched in a culture of unconstitutional policing would be a slow process and could cost millions of dollars." -- CW ...

... ** Radley Balko of the Washington Post: "I've read a lot of Justice Department reports on local police agencies. This is one of the worst I've ever seen."

Regulation Works? Unpossible! Ryan Miller of USA Today: "While the earth continues to shudder more frequently than seven years ago beneath Oklahomans feet, the rate of earthquakes in the state in 2016 is down from last year. The state has been shaken by 448 magnitude-3.0 and greater quakes so far this year, down from the 558 it experienced in the same time frame in 2015.... Increased regulation on wastewater disposal related to oil and gas extraction could be one reason behind the decline, said Robert Williams, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey.... In March, a USGS report linked activities related to oil and gas extraction, notably wastewater disposal, to seismic activity. The report found that Oklahoma along with five other states -- Kansas, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Arkansas -- faced the highest potential for earthquake hazards." ...

     ... Akhilleus: Must be Obama's fault! Oh, wait....no...we didn't mean that...

Way Beyond

Rod Nordland of the New York Times: "Pro-government Libyan militias backed by American air power said Wednesday that they had seized the Islamic State's last stronghold in the country, in the seaside city of Surt. If confirmed, the capture would be a severe blow to the militant organization's expansion into North Africa, and extend the string of territorial retreats it has suffered this year in Syria and Iraq." -- CW