Welcome to your daily roundup of Donald Trump campaign news, otherwise known as the reason ten percent of all the people you know are currently digging fallout shelters in their backyards. Well, in somebody's backyard.
Today Donald Trump is preparing for tomorrow's very, very important immigration speech, the one that he put off last week so that he could get it exactly right. Trump whisperer Kellyanne Conway says Trump is "the most involved in the drafting," which may or may not be even one percent true, but we'll soon find out. The candidate does not do well reading other people's words off a teleprompter.
The speech comes at a critical time for Trump. Nobody has the foggiest idea what Trump's current immigration proposals actually are, or more to the point, the Trump campaign has been remarkably incapable of clarifying whether or not those policies have or haven't changed from Trump's earlier campaign demands for a complete border wall, summary deportation of 11 million people, and so on.
But deporting 11 million people isn't just a key issue for the Trump base; it's the foundation of his campaign. If he backpedals on that, he becomes a political traitor to his own most fervent (xenophobic) supporters. If he doesn't pull back from his harshest rhetoric, however, he's cooked with non-xenophobic voters. There's only one possible winning scenario, and it's the tightrope the campaign has been walking for two weeks: explain the "policy" in such ambiguous terms that both sides are convinced you're with them. This is what they've tried, and it's only gotten them into hot water. Will Donald Trump, master orator, be able to thread the needle in a way all his more experienced campaign surrogates have not?
Let's watch. While we're waiting, however, we must in the meantime suffer through another day of strange, strange Donald Trump news.
• As the presidential debates near, Donald Trump has reportedly been "especially resistant" to holding the practice (or "mock") debates past candidates have often used to hone their arguments and responses to likely lines of attack. Assisting Trump are, according to news reports, fired Fox News chief Roger Ailes and toxic radio personality Laura Ingraham. He's also wary of preparing for the debate "too much": "I know who I am, and it got me here." Imagine here a first-time Olympic diver, new to the whole sport of diving but pretty sure he has the basics because he's watched it on television a few times, peering down into the pool below. "Do you want to maybe take a practice dive or two before trying it in front of the entire world?" "Nah, I'm good."
• Giving perhaps dangerous insight into what Clinton might do to get under Trump's skin during those debates, Trump's hostility towards even the slightest suggestion he might be hiding something about his alleged $10 billion net worth continues to be remarkable. It's also yet another example of Trump handling professional questioning by professional questioners with a verbal fountain of non sequiturs and bluster, a trait which is likely giving his remaining handlers heartburn as they contemplate how the debates might go.
• If you thought the vein of "Trump building his fortune using undocumented foreign workers" news had been mined out, think again: Mother Jones discovered a pattern in Trump Model Management of using undocumented fashion models lured into New York fashion work only to be paid a pittance after steep "rent" charges levied against them by Trump's agency. Trump's argument for using imported, badly paid construction workers to build his buildings was that there were simply no American workers available; can't wait to hear the campaign argue that Trump had to use undocumented fashion models because there's just such a dearth of American models wanting to work in the New York fashion industry.
• Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway: “Republican presidential nominees usually aren’t bold enough to go into communities of color and take the case right to them, and compete for all ears and compete for all votes. They’ve been afraid to do that. So, Mr. Trump deserves credit for at least taking the case directly to the people.” It should again be noted here that Trump has done less of that bold outreach than any Republican candidate since Nixon, refusing even to meet with top groups such as the NAACP and giving his "black outreach" speeches to nearly all-white audiences in nearly all-white suburbs and cities, thus rendering Conway's statement a sublime example of campaign gibberish.
• The Trump campaign is making a concerted effort to appear less hostile to black Americans by ramping up the attacks on ... immigrants, of course.
• Make Slovenia Great Again: Clinton's ad buys against Trump continue, this time with a spot featuring Trump's history of outsourcing. Clinton ads are also targeting Trump in, of all places, Utah; Trump promises to expand the Republican electoral map, however, are rapidly collapsing.
• As Trump-Clinton polls stabilize following the two party conventions, Republicans are increasingly resigned to a Trump loss, the only remaining question being how many other Republicans are swept up in anti-Trump voter sentiment. In any event, they're already strategizing how to sabotage a Clinton presidency as best they can. (The alternative would be governing, and there are few remaining voices in the current shell of a party who even so much as pay lip service to that.)
• Trump on the now-omnipresent use of the word "bitch" to refer to Hillary Clinton on pro-Trump paraphernalia and in Trump rally crowds: "No, I don't like that. I have not seen it, though."
• Critics and comedians alike continue to point out that paying ex-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski for Trump "analysis" even as Lewandowski continues to speak to and collect consulting pay from the candidate is an ethical and journalistic tire fire, and CNN continues to very publicly not care. (The storytellers say that middle N once stood for News, in the before-times, but I say the storytellers are pulling our legs.)
• Pastor Mark Burns, by far the best known black Donald Trump surrogate Who Is Not Ben Carson, apologized for tweeting a conservative cartoon featuring Hillary Clinton in blackface, saying it was not "his intention" to "offend" or "anger" people. Because tweeting images of somebody in blackface often works out just fine?
• Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway argued against women in the military because of the physiological weakness of women: "If we were physiologically as strong as men, rape would not exist. You would be able to defend yourself and fight him off."
• A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that 31 percent of Trump supporters favor building a Muslim-deterring border wall ... in the Atlantic Ocean.