Here’s the big Newsweek piece from Kurt Eichenwald that’s been the buzz for 24 hours, just up:
HOW THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION'S FOREIGN BUSINESS TIES COULD UPEND U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY
Throughout this campaign, the Trump Organization, which pumps potentially hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump family’s bank accounts each year, has been largely ignored. As a private enterprise, its businesses, partners and investors are hidden from public view, even though they are the very people who could be enriched by—or will further enrich—Trump and his family if he wins the presidency.
A close examination by Newsweek of the Trump Organization, including confidential interviews with business executives and some of its international partners, reveals an enterprise with deep ties to global financiers, foreign politicians and even criminals, although there is no evidence the Trump Organization has engaged in any illegal activities. It also reveals a web of contractual entanglements that could not be just canceled. If Trump moves into the White House and his family continues to receive any benefit from the company, during or even after his presidency, almost every foreign policy decision he makes will raise serious conflicts of interest and ethical quagmires.
Read the whole thing. This what we’ve wanted from the press. The material is there.
Brian Beutler takes media to task for what they concentrate on instead:
The press is not a pro-democracy trade, it is a pro-media trade. By and large, it doesn’t act as a guardian of civic norms and liberal institutions—except when press freedoms and access itself are at stake. Much like an advocacy group or lobbying firm will reserve value judgments for issues that directly touch upon the things they’re invested in, reporters and media organizations are far more concerned with things like transparency, the treatment of reporters, and first-in-line access to information of public interest, than they are with other forms of democratic accountability.
That’s not a value set that’s well calibrated to gauging Trump’s unmatched, omnidirectional assault on our civil life. Trump can do and say outrageous things all the time, and those things get covered in a familiar “did he really say that?” fashion, but his individual controversies don’t usually get sustained negative coverage unless he is specifically undermining press freedom in some clear and simple way.
Even then, though, the press has no language for explicating which affronts to press freedom are more urgent and dangerous than others. All such affronts are generally lumped together in a way that makes it unclear whether the media thinks it’s worse that Trump blacklists outlets and wants to sue journalists into penury or that Clinton doesn’t like holding press conferences.
Read the whole thing.
Jonathan Chait:
The most important substantive problem facing political journalists of this era is asymmetrical polarization. Political journalism evolved during an era of loose parties, both of which hugged the center, and now faces an era in which one of those parties has veered sharply away from the center. Today’s Republican Party now resides within its own empirical alternative universe, almost entirely sealed off from any source of data, expertise, or information that might throw its ideological prior values into question. Donald Trump’s candidacy is the ne plus ultra of this trend, an outlier horrifying even to a great many conservatives who have been largely comfortable with their party’s direction until now. How can the news media appropriately cover Trump and his clearly flawed opponent without creating an indecipherable din of equivalent-sounding criticism, where one candidate’s evasive use of a private email server looms larger than the other’s promise to commit war crimes?
Josh Marshall/TPM on fair and balanced coverage:
Readers should realize this isn't as easy a matter to get around as it sounds. That weakness and the threats surrounding it are real. Mainstream media journalists simply lack the tool set to deal with a candidate like Trump. It is as much structural as tied to the individual shortcomings of any reporter. But it's no less damaging and real because it's driven by factors that are out of the hands of most individual reporters. I've heard some people not that, ironically, some of the best coverage of Trump's ties to white supremacists come from anti-Trump parts of the conservative press. They know the players and they're unbound by these rules. It's fair to say most are hostile to Trump and that yields and particularly intense scrutiny. But the upshot is what it is: they've produced better reporting on the topic than really any of the mainstream press.
What this debate all comes down to is that the imperative for balance and the imperative for accuracy and completeness, what's true and what's not are inevitably in tension. Precisely how it's solved or how that tension is dealt with is a very good debate to be having. (I would say the goal is not balance but fundamental fairness and honesty with readers and a constant effort to interrogate ones own biases.) But not to recognize the tension and not to see how some candidates push that tension to the point of crisis simply shows you're in denial or have a monumental lack of self-awareness about the journalistic craft. That pretty much captures Spayd's column.
About those deplorables; I don’t think the Republicans really understand what that’s doing and they are underestimating the Trump damage side. But Byron York does:
"Would you call him a deplorable?" Blitzer pressed. "You would call him that?"
"No, I don't — I'm not in the name-calling business, Wolf."
So Pence said of Duke: "We don't want his support, and we don't want the support of people who think like him." But that wasn't enough. Would he use Clinton's word? And when Pence didn't — well, look at the coverage that followed:
- Pence declines to call Duke 'deplorable' — Politico.
- Mike Pence refuses to call David Duke 'deplorable' — USA Today.
- Mike Pence declines to say whether David Duke is 'deplorable' because he 'is not in the name-calling business' — Washington Post.
- Mike Pence refuses to call David Duke 'deplorable' — Huffington Post.
- Mike Pence declines to call David Duke 'deplorable,' disavows support' — CNN.
- Mike Pence Denounces David Duke but Won't Call Him 'Deplorable' —ABC.
- Mike Pence refuses to describe former KKK leader David Duke as 'deplorable'; 'I'm not in the name-calling business' — New York Daily News.
And so on. Could Clinton have hoped for any better response? Donald Trump and his supporters could protest all they want. Mike Pence could make what in any other context would be accepted as a definitive statement — "We don't want [Duke's] support, and we don't want the support of people who think like him." It still didn't matter. Unless Pence adopted Clinton's exact word — and Clinton chose one that sticks in the brain and invites the question — Pence risked being aligned with Duke and others of his ilk.
And that is the brilliance of that clunky phrase "basket of deplorables."
Isaac Bailey:
Clinton was right: Trump HAS lifted up the deplorable
It is deplorable that the list of deplorable things done and said by the Republican nominee for president is so long it's hard and exhausting to try to remember them all.
It is deplorable that a sizable percentage of his supporters love him because of those awful things -- deplorable that they now feel it is OK to express those views in public. That is not excusable -- no matter how much economic pain they've contended with these past few decades.
But what's most deplorable is the knee-jerk pushback against anyone who dares point out this reality, as though exposing the deplorable is worse than the deplorable things themselves. Maybe the best way to avoid being labeled deplorable is to stop doing and saying and standing for deplorable things.
Stu Rothenberg:
Why Clinton’s narrow lead is bigger than it looks
So, the next time you see media reports that Florida or Ohio is “close” or that Pennsylvania is “tightening,” you should not be surprised. They are narrowly divided states where it is difficult for one party to blow out the other in a competitive federal election.
But being “close” isn’t the same thing as saying a state is a “toss up” or both candidates have the same chance of winning it.
And because of that, the Clinton-Trump race can be both “competitive” and even “close” in a state and nationally, but at the same time clearly favor one nominee – in this case Clinton.
Henry J Gomez/Cleveland.com:
For 15 years, my ethnic last name has appeared above all of my stories. Which means, for 15 years, some readers have judged me only by that ethnic last name.
I have heard their voice mails and read their emails. Smirked at their keyboard courage in the comments section. Told myself not to take the Twitter mentions too personally.
Call it bigotry. Call it racism. Call it xenophobia. As a writer – especially one who covers national politics – you chalk it up as coming with the territory, as hurtful and as menacing as it can be. This year, though, it is coming far more frequently. There is no mystery why.
Maybe you don't believe Donald Trump is a bigot. Or a racist. Or a xenophobe. But the Republican nominee for president certainly has won the support of people who are.
Forget for a moment Hillary Clinton's remark the other day that "half" of Trump's supporters belong to a "basket of deplorables." The Democrat later expressed regret for the broad generalization but stuck to her assertion that Trump offers a safe haven for the hateful.
There is no perfect way to quantify how many Trump fans fit the description.
The point is, these voters are out there. I know because I hear from them.
STAT:
An experts guide: How to evaluate health disclosures from Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have promised to disclose more details about their health soon, but it’s not clear what records they will or won’t release. There are no guidelines for disclosures when it comes to a candidate’s health, and as this race has shown so far, the campaigns can say what they want when they want.
STAT turned to physicians and scholars who have studied presidential health to ask what they would look for in the records to better assess the candidates’ health.
Here’s what they said:
A story with legs. David Fahrenthold is going to win a Pulitzer:
Searching for evidence of Trump’s personal giving
The Washington Post has contacted more than 250 charities with some ties to the GOP nominee in an effort to find proof of the millions he has said he donated to them. We’ve mostly been unsuccessful.
There’s a Bloomberg poll with good numbers (+5) for Trump:
It’s actually +7 for YouGov. No matter, take Amy’s advice. Bloomberg figured a 2004 style turnout. Bloomberg takes a close look at the Rust Belt (MI, PA, OH):
And/but Journal Sentinel looking at WI (and why Trump won’t win the state):
Turning out the base vital for Clinton, Trump
In some elections, the most interesting places to watch are not the swingy “purple” ones but the lopsided “red” and “blue” ones.
This is one of those elections.
And Waukesha and Dane counties are two of those plac