Welcome back to our regularly scheduled roundup of the day's Trump campaign news. We skipped yesterday because Donald Trump drained our will to live, but are back today thanks to an almost certainly unhealthy combination of coffee and cough medicine.
Today was the big reveal of Donald Trump's Real Medical Results, if you presume "Real" to be a one-page statement provided from the reality television star's personal doctor to television doctor Dr. Oz, "Medical" to mean Dr. Oz then interviewing Trump about the contents of that one-page statement, and "Results" to mean you're not allowed to look at any of it anyway so don't bother.
Let's pause here. No, let's full-stop on this one. Currently, the national press corps is having a very public freakout, to use the technical term, about candidate "transparency." The prime indicator of "transparency" is, apparently, the holy Press Conference; in the meantime, Donald Trump not only has not released a financial statement on just where he gets his money or where he has stashed it, which really is the minimal requirement we've settled upon in modern times for ensuring that the nation isn't electing someone to the presidency who is either a mob boss or in hock up to his eyebrows to a foreign government waiting to cash in some of those chips, but even his response to inquiries as to his current health are met with:
- A one-page statement.
- A medically-themed "interview" with fellow television personality Dr. Oz.
He's laughing at you. He's openly mocking you, press corps. That is clear, right? He's treating the entire presidential race as a spot of reality television starring himself; even when he has much-valued Press Conferences, he simply looks you in the eyes and lies about most of the things he said during one of the previous Press Conferences. You and your profession alike aren't even real to him. You're just extras there to fill out the scenery.
Sheesh. On to the rest of the day's bigly news.
• The not-reality-television news of the day: A sweeping new look at Trump's foreign financial dealings from Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald. Among the key findings: Trump's primary dealmaking in the last decade has not been in real estate, but in licensing his name to other developers, and—more critically—Trump's holdings are a rat's nest of interconnected ties to foreign groups and governments that would lead to myriad conflicts of interest if he gained office. The Clinton campaign responded with a 20-post tweetstorm on those conflicts of interest.
• Also concerning: Trump's overseas business relationships were not revealed in the candidate's FEC filings. Nor has the campaign been able to nail down exactly how much Donald Trump has allegedly contributed to his own campaign.
• New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says his office has "been looking into" possible improprieties in how the charitable Trump Foundation has used its funds. Schneiderman was the target of a $100,000 donation from the Trump Foundation to the conservative Citizens United Foundation in order to help finance a lawsuit against Schneiderman, who sought to force nonprofits to disclose their donors, during the same time period the attorney general was pursuing fraud claims against Trump University.
• Vice presidential nominee Mike Pence bore the brunt of House and Senate Republican venting when his trip to Capitol Hill turned into a venue for lawmakers to complain about Trump's campaign statements and Pence's own inability to sufficiently distance himself from the racist right. If you are wondering why these same Republicans are unwilling to complain about the Trump campaign's alarming behavior and stances publicly, it is because they are rudderless cowards.
• Asked to weigh in on North Carolina's anti-LGBT H2B measure, which has now resulted in the NCAA pulling championship games from the state, Pence stated that he and Trump both "believe that these decisions are best made at the state level." (Pence's support for a similarly anti-LGBT "religious freedom" law in his own state last year also resulted in boycott calls.)
• At the Values Voter Summit last weekend, Pence vowed that under a Trump administration, "the days of public funding for Planned Parenthood are over."
• Confusion still reigns at the highest levels of the Trump campaign: Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway insisted before Trump's Dr. Oz taping that the television doctor would not be asking about his medical reports despite earlier campaign claims to the contrary; the taping turned out to indeed include questioning about his medical reports. Did the campaign really change their minds twice, before the interview? Or were there battles inside the campaign over whether or not to go through with the televised stunt?
• Trump booster and part-time New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had another bad day yesterday, as a superior court judge ordered his personal emails searched for information relevant to the "Bridgegate" investigation. Christie had omitted those personal emails from previous document deliveries. And headlines like that are why Chris Christie did not get the vice presidential slot, despite trying very damn hard.
• Official un-official Trump adviser and former Fox News head Roger Ailes has also been having a bad week, with his alma mater voting to remove his name from the school's Roger Ailes Newsroom. Aides had donated $500,000 for renovation of the space.
• Bush-era Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to Trump as "a national disgrace and international pariah" in a leaked private email to his once-deputy press secretary. He also wrote that "the whole birther movement was racist."
• The Trump campaign’s newly touted family leave policy has serious gaps.
• ScienceDebate.org released the presidential candidates' responses to 20 posed science-related questions. Trump's response was uniquely unresponsive.
• Republican donors continue to flood House Republican races with cash in efforts to keep the House in Republican hands even if the party's presidential ticket collapses. Democrats, meanwhile, today released new Trump-themed ads targeting four of those Republican incumbents.
• Flint, Michigan mayor Karen Weaver asked Trump to cancel a rumored trip to the city's water plant, saying the staff "cannot afford the disruption of a last-minute visit." Trump visited anyway, staying about 15 minutes.
• Trump lied about how much he gave Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's dark money group during Walker's efforts to survive a recall election.
• A 69-year old protester was punched in the face by a Donald Trump supporter in Asheville, North Carolina, falling on her oxygen tank. There were a total of five arrests at the rally, with warrants issued for another two.