It is day one million and five in the neverending slog that is the Donald Trump campaign for the presidency. It seems only yesterday that "The Donald" slowly descended from his golden tower escalator to enter the race, slowly, majestically, like the larva of some otherworldly insect peeking out from the solid gold multistory apple that it had made its home. And then a bunch of other things happened and, long story short, some say the living will envy the dead.
On with, and you may want to take one last deep breath here, today's Donald Trump news.
• Today's big new revelation about Donald Trump was the news that he violated U.S. law by conducting business in Cuba during the American trade embargo. The campaign excuses were immediate and numerous, with campaign manager first confirming that yes he did do that, but only a little and golly it sure was a long time ago, then a more official set of campaign talking points that also did not deny that Trump did indeed violate the law but instead (1) insulted the reporter reporting it, (2) repeated the point that golly it was sure a long time ago, and (3) something something Clinton bad.
So here's where we're at. The Republican candidate for president isn't denying that he violated American laws against doing business in Castro's Cuba, and all of Republicandom is currently engaged in a brief moment of silence until someone comes up with a plausible-sounding reason why Republicans are anti-Cuban-embargo now. Just another day in Trumpland.
It really isn't even decent fodder for comedy anymore; there doesn't seem to be a single area of Trump's financial dealings untainted by a Trump push to be just as crooked as he thought he could possibly get away with, and then just be a little more crooked than that. He appears to have escaped from a rough draft of a Sinclair Lewis book.
• Among the news in Donald Trump's lifetime accomplishments in repulsiveness, today's feature entries include footage of Trump endorsing the theories of eugenics—presuming himself, of course, to be the uberboob all of human genetics has worked towards ...
• ... along with a look at Trump's repeated demands that female restaurant employees at his golf club who he deemed "not pretty enough" or "too fat" be fired and replaced with more attractive ones ...
• ... along with audio of Trump and Howard Stern relating the advice Trump gave Stern at Trump's second wedding, to Marla Maples: "You know I am getting remarried, but Howard, vagina is expensive."
We will now take a brief break so that the last of our readers can finish their collective dry heaves after reading those last few entries. That's all right, there's no hurry. Ready? All right, let's continue.
• The Trump campaign is now putting out official talking points pushing surrogates to go in precisely the direction Trump hinted he would at the close of Monday’s debate: Attacking Hillary Clinton for her husband's affairs. This follows two days of Donald Trump and family publicly congratulating Trump for not doing that, which resets the clock on Donald Trump holding off from doing the worst thing he can think of for X many hours after he thinks it. No word yet on whether Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Ailes or Trump himself will lead the charge; perhaps it will be a team effort?
• "I never said I didn't pay taxes", Trump clarified in a Bill O'Reilly interview last night after Clinton speculated exactly that during Monday's debate. "I said, 'Well, that would make me smart,' because tax is a big payment. But a lot of people say, 'That's the kind of thinking that I want running this nation.'
There was a point not long ago in this nation when politicians and would-be politicians were dropping like flies after it was revealed that they didn't pay taxes on the wages given to their gardeners or nannies. There were big, important-sounding speeches and everything about how America couldn't possibly trust public office to anyone too cheap to even manage that. Not so, says New Modern Republican. We should only elect public leaders who have figured out how to dodge their taxes. And fat-shame pageant winners. And skirt the Cuban embargo. And whatever else you've got.
• While Trump attempted to downplay the 1970's federal lawsuit against his company for refusing to rent to black Americans, fact checkers are once again calling foul; a book by Washington Post reporters Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher called the suit "one of the most significant racial bias cases of the era."
• From an initial insistence that Trump "won" the debate, the Trump team has spent more recent days explaining why it wasn't Trump's fault if he lost. While manager Kellyanne Conway attempted to convince a very dubious Megyn Kelly that Clinton was terribly unfair to Trump over his misogynist remarks, El Crapo himself has gone for the less nuanced theory that the debate was "rigged".
We will now pause again because you just felt that nausea coming on again, didn't you? Yeah. This is our lives now.
• The New York attorney general's office has expanded their investigation of the Trump Foundation to include the newer charges against the group as a vehicle for "self-dealing" by Trump. The move comes after reports that Trump purchased paintings, a signed football helmet, and even a luxury vacation at donor's expense, as well as using donor money to settle lawsuits against his for-profit companies.
• On the new theory that Google is hiding anti-Clinton news from their search results just to spite Trump, which would be the stupidest thing the Trump campaign has come up with since five minutes before or since, "Trump didn't cite a source to back up his claim, but the most recent report alleging this came from Sputnik News, a Russian state-owned news agency." But golly, says shameless toady Jason Miller, it sure “makes you wonder.”
• In a recent classified intelligence briefing, Trump was indeed informed by government officials of the likely role of Russian intelligence services in the recent DNC hack. Just because we were wondering if that had come up.
• CNN will no longer have to disclose that one of their most prominent pro-Trump analysts continues to receive checks from the Trump campaign while doing that analysis, as the Trump campaign has decided to pay Corey Lewandowski the rest of the money he's been promised through the end of the year in advance. And yes, the move was meant to avoid the "distraction" of having to talk about it anymore.
• Female reporters covering Trump or Trump campaign events face a uniquely toxic environment: “My Twitter mentions are a bastion of people telling me not only, ‘You should be raped, you should be killed,’ but also, ‘Oh honey, oh sweetie, let’s leave this to the experts,’” the reporter said. “I think a lot of people have trouble with women as a voice of authority about someone who presents themselves to be as macho as Trump does.”