Let’s begin today’s roundup with USA Today’s brutal editorial against Donald Trump:
In the 34-year history of USA TODAY, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. Instead, we’ve expressed opinions about the major issues and haven’t presumed to tell our readers, who have a variety of priorities and values, which choice is best for them. Because every presidential race is different, we revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now.
This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency. [...]
Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections.
Steven Shepard at Politico explains Trump’s terrible week:
For many insiders, Clinton’s good week was driven more by Trump's demeanor and behavior in the days after the debate — which included re-litigating his 19-year-old comments about the then-Miss Universe’s weight gain —as what happened on the stage at Hofstra University. [...]
“The debate helped to stop the hemorrhaging in the Clinton campaign's messaging and management when Trump went off-script and went back to the Trump of the primary debates,” said a Wisconsin Republican. “Clinton should send him a thank-you note.” [...]
“Any inroads Trump had made with suburban women is now gone after that debate,” said an Ohio Republican. “Also, I have to imagine the African-American community is getting more energized after his birther answer.”
Josh Hafner at USA Today:
Donald Trump's having a tough week with the ladies. After a disappointing debate against Hillary Clinton, a poll reported by NBC found Trump's performance left most likely women voters unsatisfied.
Then Trump spent recent days defending criticisms of Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe who said Trump called her "Miss Piggy" after she gained weight and "Miss Housekeeping" in an apparent reference to her Latino heritage.
Then, on Thursday, a report surfaced that Trump demanded unattractive women be fired from a Trump golf club in California.
At The Huffington Post, Christina Wilkie explains why Trump’s attacks on Clinton’s marriage will backfire:
As part of the couple’s divorce proceedings, Ivana Trump’s lawyers asked him under oath about his dealings with other women and whether he had been faithful to his wife.
Instead of answering, Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Over the course of five depositions that summer, he was asked approximately 100 questions related to marital infidelity. He pleaded the Fifth on 97 of them.
Here’s Timothy Egan’s take on Trump’s fat-shaming:
For someone who is fat, short-fingered and strange-looking, he is obsessed with looks. During his decades in the spotlight, he has bullied and shamed women for their weight. And more — he has had people fired, at his golf courses, for not being pretty enough, The Los Angeles Times reported this week.[...]
This fat-shaming episode by a man who wants to lead the country is deeply resonant because most Americans struggle with their weight. More than two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese. It’s a serious problem — life threatening, for many people — with multibillion dollar health care consequences.
Trump could express sympathy or offer some solutions. Instead, he stuffs his puffy face with junk food for the cameras, while making fun of anyone who isn’t a cover model. As for exercise, he burns most of his calories by giving speeches, he says. Seriously. Aerobic insults, the Trump diet.
Eugene Robinson:
The Clinton campaign had anticipated that raising the Machado incident would get a rise out of Trump. He helped focus a spotlight on one of the more unsavory facets of his personality: an ugly, unrepentant sexism that would have been inappropriate even in the “Mad Men” era — and is light-years beyond the pale today.
Trump’s surrogates are not helping. Newt Gingrich offered the defense that “you’re not supposed to gain 60 pounds during the year that you’re Miss Universe.” For Trump and Gingrich, both of whom have ample spare tires where their waists should be, to criticize anyone about his or her weight is ridiculous. Better to point fingers at each other rather than at Machado.
At The Boston Globe, Matt Viser explains how Trump’s bullying of women, overweight people, and others has put his campaign on the defensive:
Trump’s rude behavior directed at women, and some men, whom he deems overweight has been a major topic of the campaign this week after Hillary Clinton at Monday’s debate called attention to Trump’s history of such remarks. His campaign has been unable to formulate an effective response.
Deriding people for their appearance and weight is an example of Trump using his soapbox and trademark blunt style to belittle people with less power. Clinton and her allies, in a carefully choreographed assault, are stoking the narrative that such behavior makes him a mean-spirited boor, a character assault they hope will sway voters against him, especially suburban women.
James Stewart at The New York Times calls on Trump to at least release two figures related to his taxes:
So just give us this: your adjusted gross income and actual federal taxes paid for the last five years, certified by your accountants. That’s a total of 10 numbers, which would fit on a single page.
Those are numbers any taxpayer can understand. They wouldn’t tell the I.R.S. anything it doesn’t already know.
And while they wouldn’t answer many of the questions that have swirled around your finances, they would lay to rest once and for all the most basic question: How much, if anything, do you pay in federal taxes?
Katie Glueck at Politico dives into how Trump’s Putin defenses may hurt him in swing states:
But the Republican nominee’s frequent praise of Putin and talk of conditional American backing for NATO members under attack has alarmed voters with close family ties to Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and other Eastern European countries, raising the prospect that they’ll bolt the top of the GOP ticket in November. [...]
These voters, many of whom live in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, are deeply worried by an emboldened Moscow, and anxious over the possibility that the Baltic nations might be the next target of Russian adventurism. Trump’s lavish praise of Putin has exacerbated those concerns — leaving an opening that Clinton’s campaign is leveraging by emphasizing her willingness to get tough with Putin, and her unwavering support for NATO. Earlier this month, Clinton met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in New York — and her allies made sure to publicize the message that Trump snubbed him.
Over at The Washington Post, Aaron Blake calls out Trump for claiming Angela Merkel is his favorite world leader (after bashing Hillary for being “America’s Merkel”):
in an interview airing Thursday night, Trump pulled perhaps the biggest about-face of his campaign: Merkel, he said, was a world leader he admired. [...] It's almost like Trump was asked about a world leader he really liked, and Merkel was the first to come to mind — and then he immediately thought better of it. [...] That "catastrophic leader" "who is ruining Germany" and whom Trump continued to bash just a month and a half ago is now the person he labels a "really great world leader." He even used that same construction -- "really great leader" -- in February, before arguing that Merkel is the opposite.
To state the obvious: Those are statements that are impossible to reconcile with one another. They make no sense, when placed next to one another. Even as Trump qualified his answer in Thursday's interview by noting that Merkel's immigration policies were bad, it makes no sense for him to say she's still a "really great world leader."
On a final note, here’s how Trump’s apparent violation of the Cuba embargo is going over in Florida:
Revelations that Donald Trump’s hotel and casino company secretly spent money trying to do business in Cuba in violation of the U.S. trade embargo roiled Miami politics Thursday, forcing top Cuban-American Republicans to express concern about Trump’s dealings while maintaining that the allegation isn’t reason enough to disavow the presidential nominee yet.
Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts paid at least $68,000 to a consulting firm in late 1998 in an attempt to give Trump’s business a head start in Cuba if the U.S. loosened or lifted trade sanctions, according to a front-page Newsweek report titled “The Castro Connection.” The consulting firm, Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corp., later instructed the casino company to make the spending appear legal by saying it was for charity.