Donald’s Meltdown

Here’s something to reflect upon — the men surrounding Donald Trump who are urging him to campaign on Bill Clinton’s marital infidelities include Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and Roger Ailes.

And no, you can’t make this shit up. Go ahead and clean the spewed coffee off your monitor if you need to.

I read that Trump was up half the night last night tweeting trash about Alicia Machado and advising America to see her “sex tape.” Telling the American people to watch a sex tape has to be a first for a U.S. presidential candidate. The Clinton campaign already is using the tweetstorm against him.

The Alicia Machado saga really was a brilliant move on Clinton’s part. Not only can’t Trump let it go — four days on, and he’s still ranting over something he could have put to rest easily Monday night — but Clinton had Machado in the audience Monday night and also had a video about Machado in the can and ready to be released as soon as the debates were over.

And Trump can’t let it go. Josh Marshall is calling it “Khan 2.0.”

This morning NBC News got a leaked version of the ‘talking points’ the Trump campaign is giving surrogates discussing Alicia Machado. They almost perfectly mirror Trump’s stages of denial dealing with the Khans. Machado is “vicious”, “desperate”, her charges are “baseless and unsubstantiated”, Clinton is a fake feminist, and what about Monica? Any halfway competent campaign would realize the ‘talking points’ on this issue are quite simple: Don’t talk about it! The ‘charges’ against Trump are nothing more than things he said on video. There are no charges. Just quotes. There is nothing in dispute. It’s just showing people what he said.

But ‘not talking about it’ assumes, actually requires you can get Trump to stop talking about it – especially, stop talking about how overweight she was or what a stand up guy he was for trying to get her to lose weight.

I can just see President Trump — Los Angeles could be on fire, and he’d be up all night tweeting because somebody insulted his hair.

See also Joan Walsh.

The Washington Post reports that the Trump Foundations lacks the proper certification for a charity that solicits money. I liked this part:

Experts on charity law said they were surprised that Trump’s foundation — given its connections to a wealthy man and his complex corporation — did not register to solicit funds.

“He’s a billionaire who acts like a thousandaire,” said James J. Fishman, a professor at Pace University’s law school in White Plains, N.Y. He said Trump’s foundation seemed to have made errors, including the lack of proper registration, that were more common among very small family foundations.

“You wouldn’t expect somebody who’s supposed to be sophisticated, and brags about his business prowess, would run his foundation like this,” Fishman said.

It’s possible that a court could order  him to return any money he had solicited, which could include $1.67 million solicited this year “for veterans.” He also has a habit of telling people who owe him money to give it to the Foundation instead of him, ostensibly as a way to avoid paying taxes on income. That would probably qualify as “soliciting.”

Howard Stern has spoken out and said Trump expressed support for the Iraq War in 2002.

Fivethirtyeight shows that Clinton definitely got a p0st-debate bounce. The next debate will be Sunday, October 9, in St. Louis. Stay tuned.