We begin today’s roundup with The Washington Post editorial board, which calls Donald Trump “Putin’s puppet”:
Experts differ on whether the Putin regime is trying to tip the election to Mr. Trump, as Ms. Clinton suggested, or merely to sow confusion and distrust about the integrity of U.S. democracy. But the leaks traced to Russia through the WikiLeaks website have been aimed at Ms. Clinton — most recently emails from her campaign chairman revealing excerpts from her private speeches on Wall Street. The timing of the WikiLeaks releases, clearly calculated to do maximum damage to the Democrats, confirms (again) that the website is not a crusader for transparency, but a willing political agent of the Kremlin.
Perhaps Mr. Trump knows nothing about all this, as he protested. But he has defended Mr. Putin and his crimes throughout his campaign. He brushed off the fact that journalists and other opponents of the Russian ruler have been murdered and claimed Russia had not invaded Ukraine. He has repeatedly called Mr. Putin a better leader than President Obama. [...]
Here’s what we don’t know: Does Mr. Trump propose this collaboration with a regime obsessed with thwarting and weakening American power out of ignorance and naivete, or because of personal and business interests he has not disclosed? Mr. Putin surely knows the answer to that question — but U.S. voters do not.
Over at Newsweek, Kurt Eichenwald is livid over Trump reading a Russian disinformation report which manipulated one of his articles and questions how it got into Trump’s hands:
This false story was only reported by the Russian controlled agency (a reference appeared in a Turkish publication, but it was nothing but a link to the Sputnik article). So how did Donald Trump end up advancing the same falsehood put out by Putin’s mouthpiece [...]
For now, though, Americans should be outraged. This totalitarian regime, engaged in what are arguably war crimes in Syria to protect their government puppet, is working to upend a democracy to the benefit of an American candidate who uttered positive comments just Sunday about the Kremlin's campaign on behalf of Bashar al-Assad. Trump’s arguments were an incomprehensible explication of the complex Syrian situation, which put him right on the side of the Iranians and Syrian,s who are fighting to preserve the government that is the primary conduit of weapons used against Israel.
So no, Mr. Putin, I’m not Sidney Blumenthal. And now that you have been exposed once again, get the hell out of our election. And Mr. Trump—you have some explaining to do.
Arren Samuelsohn at Politico:
Donald Trump still won’t acknowledge that Russia is trying to mess with the U.S. presidential election. But he’s pretty much the only Republican who hasn’t gotten the memo.
From Capitol Hill to the intelligence community and across a wide spectrum of policy and political experts surveyed by POLITICO, the GOP has no problem accepting the Obama administration’s assertion that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government ordered up the hacks into various U.S. political organizations, including the Democratic National Committee.
David Filipov and Andrew Roth at The Washington Post:
What Trump said: "I have no businesses there. I have no loans from Russia."
The inner workings: This is more complicated than whether Trump knows Putin. But there is all kinds of evidence, including statements from his advisers and family members that Trump has done business with Russia. Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008 that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” Alan Garten, general counsel of the Trump Organization, told our colleagues in May: "I have no doubt, as a company, I know we’ve looked at deals in Russia. And many of the former Russian republics.”
Max Boot at Foreign Policy:
Trump’s apologists tried to claim that he wasn’t threatening to jail former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for being his political opponent but, rather, for supposed “felonies committed in office.” But this is exactly the kind of thing that dictators always say; no one ever admits to jailing the opposition for political reasons. The essence of democracy is not to criminalize political differences. That’s something that Trump does not seem to understand. It seems appropriate, then, that during the rest of the debate — while desperately trying to deflect attention from the “pussygate” scandal that has crippled his campaign — Trump alternatively expressed his admiration for dictators and emulated their “Big Lie” techniques for winning and keeping power. If we needed any more evidence, the debate showed just what an unprincipled power-seeker Trump is — how he is willing to say or do anything, to cross any line, to violate any norm of civilized behavior, in order to feed his insatiable ego. He came across as the kind of unscrupulous demagogue that has imperiled other democracies and that the United States has not seen since the heyday of Huey Long and George Wallace.
Gideon Rachman at The Financial Times:
In some respects, Mr Trump has actually introduced some of the malign features of Russian and Chinese politics into the US. One of the strengths of the western democratic system is that a free press and open debate are meant to expose falsehoods. Yet Mr Trump sprays out lies like a skunk trying to repel its enemies. His method seems to be to create such confusion that the truth simply gets buried amid a mass of falsehoods. This is characteristic of the current Russian propaganda system described in an aptly titled book by Peter Pomerantsev: Nothing is True and Everything Is Possible. [...]
If Mrs Clinton makes it to the White House there will be relief across the west and a certain disappointment in Moscow and, perhaps, Beijing. But it will be very hard to erase the memory of this campaign. It has presented an image of a troubled, divided and deluded US to the rest of the world. As a result, it has already dealt a serious blow to the prestige and power of the west.
Max Fischer and Amanda Taub at The New York Times:
Political scientists who study troubled democracies abroad say this is a tactic typical of elected leaders who pull down their systems from within: former President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the fascist leaders of 1930s Europe.
Today’s United States, unlike the countries in those cases, has strong institutions and norms that prevent any president from going that far, these experts stress. But Mr. Trump’s threat to jail his opponent for her deletion of thousands of emails sent from a private server while she was secretary of state, they warned in interviews on Monday, would chip away at the things that make American democracy so resilient.
Mr. Trump’s comment was “a threat to the rule of law, a threat to the stability of our institutions, a threat to basic agreements that are necessary for democracy to function,” said Adrienne LeBas, a political scientist at American University.
“For those of us who work on authoritarian regimes and hybrid regimes,” she added, referring to a kind of government midway between democracy and dictatorship, such as Turkey, “this sort of thing is just eerily familiar.”
Turning to the GOP civil war, Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin provide a recap of yesterday’s disfunction:
Effectively conceding defeat for his party in the presidential race, Mr. Ryan said his most urgent task was ensuring that Hillary Clinton did not take the helm with Democratic control of the House and Senate, two lawmakers said. [...]
The reaction from hard-liners was swift and angry. Over the course of an hour, a stream of conservative lawmakers urged their colleagues not to give up on Mr. Trump and chided Mr. Ryan for what they described as surrendering prematurely in the presidential race. Mr. Trump’s campaign is reeling after a disastrous two weeks that culminated in the release on Friday of a 2005 recording in which he bragged about sexual assault.
And, on a final note, here’s Eugene Robinson on Trump’s campaign “death spiral”:
Trump’s poll numbers were already sliding before the “Access Hollywood” tape was revealed. During the debate he may have delighted the true believers who flock to his rallies. But he did nothing to change the fundamental dynamics of the race — or let principled Republicans continue to pretend he shares their values or ideals. House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) announced Monday that he will no longer campaign with or defend his party’s nominee. That could be the death knell the Trump campaign so richly deserves.