Welcome back to your evening roundup of Donald Trump campaign news. In answer to historian queries: Yes, we do plan on etching these into stone or metal tablets so that a record of humanity’s last days will endure even after the coming apocalypse, but it’s proving to be a bit more work than expected. Send chisels?
The last 24 hours have been banner times for the Trump clan. They saw Donald Trump Jr. explaining to an interviewer that his father's tax return is "12,000" pages long, and that it won't be released because "every person in the country" would be “asking questions that would detract from" the Trump message. He opined that the media is in the bag for Hillary Clinton, but if a Republican lied on the campaign trail (heaven forfend) the media would be “warming up the gas chambers” for that person. And his staff abruptly cut off an interview after the interviewer questioned why Donald Trump Jr., a putative director of the Trump Foundation charity, did not know that $20,000 of his own charity’s funds were appropriated for a large now-missing oil painting of his dad.
“No, I don’t know anything about that,” responded Trump Jr.
“So how come you didn’t know –,” asked WTAE.
“Alright, that’s it –,” a voice off-camera then immediately cuts in. “We have to move on to the next one.”
Not to be outdone by her brother, Ivanka Trump also cut an interview short after a question about her father's past comments on the "inconvenience" posed by pregnancies to American business was perceived as too much "negativity" on the part of the rude interviewer. She was also caught fibbing about whether Trump Organization itself offers employees paid maternity leave: She said it does. It doesn't.
As for pa himself, he spent his post-Dr. Oz day opining on his own "stamina." And here you thought this campaign wouldn't be about the issues.
• Vice presidential nominee Mike Pence continues to act as chief explainer of what the manchild at the top of the ticket really means to say. Today he dismissed Trump's longtime claims that President Obama is not a true American citizen as "issues of the past," saying “Donald Trump and I both accept that the president was born in the United States of America.” Donald Trump, however, has publicly made no such reversal, answering reporter queries by brusquely declaring that he doesn't "talk about it" anymore. Has Pence vetted this new claim with his running mate, or is he making campaign policy on his own?
• Very rich person Peter Thiel is telling friends that Donald Trump has agreed to nominate him to the Supreme Court. Thiel is best known as the financier of multiple lawsuits intended to bankrupt and shutter news site Gawker.com, an effort that proved successful earlier this year, and for his public musings that freedom and democracy are no longer “compatible.”
• Trump's trip to Flint, Michigan, ended on multiple sour notes after the pastor of an African-American church Trump visited had to both ask her audience to stop heckling Trump and herself interrupt Trump to ask him to "not make a political speech." Trump responded this morning by calling the pastor "a nervous mess" in a morning Fox News call-in, agreeing with the Fox host that she may have been out to "sabotage" Trump. Capping the whole visit off, however: The New York Times repeating Trump's untrue version of events, uncorrected.
• Post-convention-bounce polling continues to show the Trump campaign behind in the electoral count by a large margin. A "gusher of money" from Republican outside groups, however, are “forcing Democrats to shift their campaign tactics” in efforts to take back the Senate.
• Mostly circus animals, some filler: Trump today pledged to reduce food regulation and food "inspection overkill.” In our day we got E. coli and liked it, kids. It was how we separated the strong from the weak.
• A review of Trump's economic plan shows that it would cost 4 million American jobs and worsen climate change.
• House Speaker Paul Ryan continues to maintain that Donald Trump should release his tax returns. “I released mine. I think he should release his. I'll leave it to him when to do it.”
• The Washington Post has compiled a list of the various reasons Trump and surrogates have given for not releasing those returns.
• The Dr. Oz show edited out an "awkward" portion of the Donald Trump interview in which Trump asserted he kisses his daughter Ivanka “every chance he gets.”
• Even the comedians are tired of Trump, with late night host Jimmy Kimmel groaning that would love to "ease up" on Trump coverage in his own show, but Trump “makes it impossible.”