Welcome back to your day's roundup of Donald Trump campaign news. Today Donald Trump, by his estimation, put years of race-baiting birtherism behind him with a once-sentence addendum to the malformed offspring of a Trump hotel grand opening and Trump presidential sales pitch. After which the event stage collapsed because even the laws of physics are tired of hearing about Donald J. Trump.
And there's still a month and a half to go.
Trump's no-questions-allowed acknowledgement that the key "issue" upon which he built a Republican political following was, in fact, flaming garbage was not the story of the day, however. The story of the day, according to nearly every news outlet in America, was how after announcing a "major announcement" to be made from Trump on one of the cornerstone bits of racism in his campaign, they had instead gotten tricked into running yet another commercial for Donald Trump's various business ventures under the campaign's promise that it would be newsworthy, only to find out that, lo and behold, he lied yet again. The print reporters started using the word lie in their resulting headlines. The press pool deleted their contextless footage of Donald Trump touring and bragging about his own newly opened hotel after no producers or reporters were allowed to accompany those cameras. The networks were ablaze with fury.
It's one thing to, for example, declare that most of the undocumented immigrants to America are probably drug dealers and racists. But telling the press you'll be holding a major press event and not following through? This will not stand.
There is evidence that Donald Trump's one-sentence statement declaring that well-shucks the sitting president of the United States is an American citizen may not have been a sincere effort to convince his basket of deplorables to drop the issue. He was introduced at the event by the Trump-endorsing retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, himself a nationally known proponent of birtherism. His surrogates afterwards were not entirely on the same page as Trump, merely opining that Obama was "probably" born in the United States. And, of course, Trump himself has a history of changing his mind after he makes declarative statements that no other person would even attempt to walk back, so that ought to be fun.
Donald Trump owes his current political career to his promotion of "birtherism." The implicitly racist supposition that the first black American president was not truly legitimate is what convinced America's various racist deplorables to climb into Trump's basket. It is what turned Donald Trump from a conceited reality television blowhard into a conceited reality television blowhard qualified to lead the conspiracy-obsessed Republican base.
On to the rest of the damn news.
• Donald Trump may have devoted all of thirty seconds to reversing himself on one of his signature issues, but not without attempting to blame opponent Hillary Clinton for being the true proponent of the racist theory. This, too, is a lie.
• Clinton, for her part, replied in a campaign tweetstorm calling Trump's actions "asinine". "Trump has spent years peddling a racist conspiracy aimed at undermining the first African American president. He can't just take it back." "The birther lie is what turned Trump from an ordinary reality TV star into a political figure. That origin story can't be unwritten."
• Also reacting with fury: the Congressional Black Caucus, who held their own press event to blast Trump as a "fraud" who attempted to "delegitimize" the president.
• Why did Trump hastily announce that a previously low-key "soft" opening of a new Trump hotel was going be the venue for a "major" announcement on his birtherism? As ploy to get cameras to the venue, certainly, but Trump had been getting pilloried in the press over his refusal to discuss the issue even after Mike Pence and campaign spokesperson Jason Miller had both stated Trump no longer believed the conspiracy theory, and for a new "outreach" to black voters that conspicuously omitted Trump's years of attacks on Obama.
• A "trillion-dollar lie:" The New York Times points out that in the span of a few hours Trump "backed away" from a proposed $1 trillion tax cut, after which his campaign "privately assured" a separate group that he "remained committed" to that cut, after which his campaign reassured to the first group that he had indeed nixed it. "The campaign’s conflicting accounts of its own proposal are particularly remarkable because the Republican presidential nominee and his advisers have taken months to refine the details."
• A timeline of events clearly show that Florida Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi reached out to Donald Trump for a campaign donation during the period her office was considering whether to pursue legal action against Trump University for defrauding students. Trump wrote a check for $25,000; one month later Bondi announced that her office was dropping the investigation.
• After declaring to Matt Lauer last week that he says "great things about" Russian leader Vladimir Putin because Putin "says great things about me," Trump last night reversed course on the Tonight Show, telling host Jimmy Fallon "I don't like him. I don't dislike him. [...] And it's not going to matter what he says about me."
• Trump today announced Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser would chair his "Pro-life Coalition." The Susan B. Anthony List is a hard-right anti-abortion group; Dannenfelser was herself part of an anti-abortion coalition that had previously condemned Trump for his treatment of women.
• Donald Trump on who should play the role of Hillary Clinton during his debate preparations: "I don't know. I just hope it's a very good-looking person."
• In news that may or may not be related to the above, Donald Trump again praised the "amazing experience" of ex-Fox News head Roger Ailes, who was fired from the network after an investigation of sexual harassment claims and who is now advising Trump in preparation for those debates. "He's certainly been very successful at what he does."
• A messaging problem for the hotel owner turned nationalist candidate: Almost nothing in Donald Trump's new hotel rooms was made in America. Trump's hotel business has slumped badly since Trump announced his candidacy.
• Donald Trump had previously promised to release his tax returns if President Obama released his birth certificate. He still hasn't. He also promised to give $5 million to charity if Obama's place of birth was proved to his satisfaction: He hasn't done that either.
• While the Trumps have suggested that Donald will place his assets in a "blind trust" during the period of his would-be presidency, they also assert that Trump's family will still be running that "blind trust." Upon reporter inquiry as to whether that would really constitute a "blind trust", Donald Trump Jr. dismissed the question. "We're not going to discuss those things. We're just not—it doesn't matter."
• The largest police union in America formally endorsed Donald Trump today.