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August 1st, 2016: Trump, when asked in an interview with USA Today regarding what Trump would do if his daughter Ivanka were sexually harassed, he said he hoped she would "find a new career or a new place to work".
That night, speaking to a crowd in Pennsylvania, not content to just call her "Crooked Hillary", Trump flat out called Hillary Clinton "The Devil". He discussed Sen. Bernie Sanders "making a deal with her, a deal with the devil. She's the Devil."
Donald Trump also continued his feud with the Khans on Twitter, claiming Khizr Khan had "viciously attacked" him at the DNC. Meanwhile, Trump surrogates like Roger Stone and Al Baldasaro begin trying to save face for Trump in his battle with the Khan family, by smearing the hero and his family, saying that Humayan Khan was a terrorist, and Khizr Khan is a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhoood.
Then senior campaign advisor Ed Brookover is fired, reportedly because he started telling Trump he wasn't going to win the election. His campaign also begins trying to claim that they never asked for the GOP platform to be changed regarding foreign policy with Ukraine and Russia, but the fact that there were witnesses who already reported on it made that link of bunk go nowhere.
As poll numbers began to turn against Trump, at a town hall in Ohio, he began laying the seeds for unrest after his likely future election loss, saying the election was "rigged".
Trump finishes the day by showing he’s a blue collar billionaire and man of the people by getting on Twitter to show himself eating Kentucky Fried Chicken like an average joe… which seemed less credible because the photo was of him eating it on a private jet with a knife and fork. Oh, and it caused people to suggest Trump wanted to be the new KFC spokesman if they would change their photo to “tiny finger-lickin’ good”.
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August 2nd, 2016: At a rally in Columbus, Ohio, for the second time in a week, Trump goes on a tirade against a fire marshal, coming up with the conspiracy theory that he turned away thousands of his supporters from entering the building because the mayor of the city is a Democrat. It actually was because of fire code, and the Trump campaign was informed well in advance of arriving.
Meanwhile, at the White House, President Obama becomes the first sitting president to declare the nominee of the opposing party's presidential candidate "unfit to serve", and he rhetorically asked Republicans why they still endorse him. There is, amazingly, little push back from conservatives for this.
Where there was push back, though, was the fact that Trump gave an interview with the Washington Post where he seemed to suggest that he would not be endorsing the re-election campaigns of House Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. John McCain, and Sen. Kelly Ayotte.
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August 3rd, 2016: Well, a lot happened... where to start...Early in the morning, on MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough shared that he was told by an anonymous foreign policy adviser in the Trump campaign that during a one hour meeting with Donald Trump, he asked three separate times about nuclear weapons, asking why if "we have them, why not use them?"
The whole panel went to stunned silence. So did everyone watching at home.
Judge Gonzalo Curiel ruled that immediately after the 2016 election, Donald Trump would stand trial for fraud and racketeering in the Trump University case. He did not release Trump's video-recorded testimony, however, for fear it would taint the case.
Trump surrogate Katrina Pierson tried to blame President Obama for Humayan Khan's death... which would have been quite the feat since Khan died in 2004 when Obama was an Illinois State Senator.
Trump, early in the day, appeared at a campaign rally in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he said the United States has "got to stop being the stupid country being led by stupid people". Trump then said he had seen a "top secret video" that showed the United States paying a ransom to Iran for the release of U.S. hostages in January. His campaign, later in the day, would sheepishly admit that Trump had actually just watched footage of the hostages being released in Geneva, and had not seen any top secret cash exchange, which is probably good for their cause, because if Trump had, he would have just had blabbed out to the public something "top secret" immediately upon being told that secret. Trump then moved on to try and defend his proposed ban on Muslims entering country, saying that it would have prevented 9/11.
After he continued to ramble on incoherently, as he is noted for doing, at one point again referring to Sen. Elizabeth Warren by the bigoted nickname he likes to call her, "Pocahontas", and still wanted to rehash the time he mocked a reporter with a disability and how he said Megyn Kelly was too hard on him because she was, in his mind, menstruating or something.
In mid afternoon, Trump was campaigning in Ashburn, Virginia, asking for a show of who in the crowd worked for a factory that was failing and got no hands... because it was located over 300 miles away across the state. Trump then drew is attention to a crying baby, at first telling the mother to not worry and to stay, and a minute later, talking to her like an idiot, and telling her to "get that baby out of here". He... he actually did it. He was a d*** to a baby.
Then, inexplicably, with the controversy still hounding Trump for criticizing the Khan family, who pointed out that he dodged the draft in Vietnam... a veteran in the crowd offered Trump his Purple Heart medal in support. Trump accepted it, and then went on stage to boast of the gift, saying, "I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was easier." Military veterans' groups hit the roof, pointing out that if he wanted one so bad, he shouldn't have accepted five deferments , and served in Vietnam. And, even if he did, he still shouldn't WANT one, because you get them for being wounded or killed in combat.
Events began spiraling out of control for Trump fast enough that GOP insiders began calling for an "intervention" meeting with him, to try and salvage some hope of holding onto control of the House and Senate, and get him to stop embarrassing them. Some discussed trying to replace Trump on the ballot, but it would be too late to get Trump on the ballot in several key states.
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August 4th, 2016: At a campaign rally in Maine, Trump claims AGAIN that he saw a top secret video where the United States paid a $400 million ransom to Iran. This after his campaign has already admitted that no such video even exists.
At that rally, Trump kicked out protesters for daring to hold up pocket-sized copies of the Constitution at him, inspired by Khizr Khan.
Trump also chose to also blame increased crime in Maine on Somali immigrants.
Oh, and he also attacked a new minority and overseas ally, when he listed the Philippines as a country he would ban people from entering the United States from, due to concerns that they were a terrorist nation.
And, at the same time, Politico runs a report that based on the nude photos of Melania Trump run in the New York Times, it would seem that Melania's own personal history of not breaking any immigration laws by working illegally would be false, because she said she didn't come to the United States until 1996, but the photo shoot took place in 1995.
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August 5th, 2016: Trump finally admits on Twitter he never saw any top secret video featuring Iran being paid a $400 million ransom.
And, at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump finally caved and endorsed Paul Ryan and John McCain, by halfheartedly reading a written endorsement off a piece of paper.
At a rally later that night, Trump intimates that he would not come to Japan's aid if North Korea attacked them, because if the United States were attacked, "They would just sit home and watch Sony Television". Trump insists for the United States to come to Japan's aid they would "have to pay", which is yet another time he makes it sound like he would like to use the might of the U.S. Armed Forces like a protection racket.
Meanwhile, Rodrigo R. Duterte, a man who has often been referred to as “the Trump of the Philippines”, responded to Trump’s comments the previous day by challenging the Republican presidential nominee to a fistfight. Brilliant diplomacy by both men, right there. In the days that followed, lawmakers in the Philippines began discussing banning Donald Trump from entering their country for his offensive comments, and began voiding building contracts Trump had for real estate products in the island nation.
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August 7th, 2016: Trump goes on Twitter and blames his rash of gaffes upon… who else… the media, saying, “The media is going crazy. They totally distort so many things on purpose. Crimea, nuclear, "the baby" and so much more. Very dishonest!” The three gaffes he claims are being distorted are on video, sometimes from multiple cameras at once.
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August 8th, 2016: After laying low for the weekend, Trump returns to the campaign trail in Detroit, Michigan, where he finally gives a speech laying out his economic plan for the United States (hint: Tax breaks for billionaires like him). He is interrupted from reading these remarks 14 times by protesters, and may have been a bit rattled, as he incorrectly read his teleprompter, and clearly said “TITTIES” loudly instead of “cities” at one point.
This same day, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine wrote an opinion editorial in the New York Times explaining why she was not endorsing, nor voting for Donald Trump, and 50 Republican national security experts penned an open letter in the New York Times about what a danger to the union a Trump presidency would be.
Donald Trump responded to the latter criticism by saying they were “cultural elites” and that they were “politically motivated” in their assessment, which is amazing because these were members of the GOP who worked in presidencies from the Nixon administration, the Ford administration, the Reagan administration, and through both Bush administrations.
That afternoon, Trump went back on Twitter with a new conspiracy theory, which was linked to him by The Drudge Report… the execution of a nuclear scientist in Iran who was accused of their country of spying somehow occurred as a result of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server, writing ”Many people are saying that the Iranians killed the scientist who helped the U.S. because of Hillary Clinton's hacked emails.”Don’t think about that one two hard, because it makes positively zero sense.
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August 9th, 2016: Donald Trump campaigns in North Carolina, and is back to being off-teleprompter, and it shows. He again talks about the election being "rigged", before lying to the crowd that Hillary Clinton would "abolish" the Second Amendment with her Supreme Court appointees before seemingly ask for someone to prevent that through violent intervention:
“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Though the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know.”
This earns him a sit-down from the Secret Service, which he lies about later and claims did not happen. If there was any mystery as to what effect that might have on some of the more fanatical supporters, Christina Wilkie, present at the rally, reported on a man shouting, "KILL HER! KILL HER!"
And, Trump also continued trying to weasel out of the presidential debates, saying he would only participate if he could renegotiate the date, time, and conditions of the debate, like he got to in the GOP Primary debates to get "bigger ratings". Unfortunately, that showed a lack of understanding on that there's a Commission for Presidential Debates that doesn't organize them for television ratings or advertising revenue, and sets them up in the interests of fairness.
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August 10th, 2016: Early in the day, the Miami Herald runs a story about how Donald “good at business” Trump had a 23rd lien placed upon a Miami golf course he owned for failure to pay contractors who renovated the property, to the tune of $276,000.
At a late rally in Sunrise, Florida, Trump says that President Barack Obama "founded ISIS" saying that the groups actions are to "honor" him, and that Hillary Clinton the co-founder of the terror group. The New York Times noted, for bizarre optics, that disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley was sitting behind Trump at the time.
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August 11th, 2016: Donald Trump gives several interviews and speeches where he actually doubles down on his comments about President Obama and Hillary Clinton being "founders of ISIS", alternating saying either was the "Most Valuable Player" of ISIS. Several Republican news agencies scramble to help him spin his way out of it, asking him if he actually just was saying policies from Obama and Clinton helped create ISIS, but no, Trump was very clear… he “literally believes Barack Obama founded ISIS”.
Trump also gave an interview to the Miami Herald where he presented a brand spanking new, illegal, and highly unconstitutional idea... trying American terror suspects before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, and not in a court of law. Even the most hawkish members of Congress haven’t been calling for this.
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August 12th, 2016: After two days of insisting that President Obama and Hillary Clinton were "the founders of ISIS", and having commentators suggest Trump had gone completely insane, and that "he meant what he said"... Trump gets on Twitter to insult the collective media for not understanding "SARCASM", and started claiming he did not, in fact, mean what he said. Later that night, at a rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Trump again began fomenting fears over voter fraud, and for the first time suggesting his supporters become "poll-watchers” to prevent "cheating":
"The only way we can lose, in my opinion, I really mean this, Pennsylvania, is if cheating goes on. I really believe it. That’s the way we can lose the state, and we have to call up law enforcement and we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everybody watching. The only way they can beat it, in my opinion, and I mean this 100 percent, is if in certain sections of the state they cheat."
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August 13th, 2016: The morning starts of with Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson going on CNN to try and revise history again, this time by idiotically charging that President Obama made the decision to invade Afghanistan in 2009.
Trump himself, meanwhile, makes the bizarre decision to campaign in Connecticut, which is not a swing state, favored Hillary Clinton by double-digits in polls, and even if he could flip it is only worth 7 electoral votes. In a rambling speech, he told the crowd "I might lie to you" (quite the understatement) before reversing his stance and saying again that “President Obama is the founder of ISIS". He also began demonizing the media for being unfair to him, and mentioned Monica Lewinsky's stained dress.
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August 14th, 2016: A report surfaces that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is listed on multiple government documents found in Ukraine as having been paid more than $12 million by former pro-Russian Ukrainian strongman Viktor Yanukovych's regime from 2007-2012. One of the people who helped circulate the story on social media? Corey Lewandowski, the former Trump campaign manager, who hated Manafort.
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August 15th, 2016: Donald Trump accuses the policies of President Obama and Hillary Clinton of destabilizing the entire Middle East at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, and how they "launched" the Islamic State upon the world. And then, the fact-checkers came, and presented him with a dose of reality.
In the same speech, he also called for "extreme vetting" of immigrants, which sounds xenophobic as hell unless he just means that during the current immigration process, potential immigrants are given free Mountain Dew.
Trump, also started making statements to question whether Hillary Clinton was healthy enough to be president , playing into conspiracy theories that have long been featured on websites like The Drudge Report and Breitbart News, when he said she "lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS and all of the many adversaries we face".
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August 16th, 2016: Trump makes the questionable decision to campaign in Wisconsin, a state where he trails by well into the double digits in polls, at this point, and that no Republican has won since Reagan in the 1984 drubbing of Mondale. Bizarrely, Trump speaks in West Bend, 40 miles west of Milwaukee, where there were riots and protests after the police shooting that resulted in the death of an African American man. And Trump, whose polling numbers with African Americans were roughly 1% at this point, tried making the pitch that his policies would be better for the African American community by putting MORE police officers in urban population centers. There's tone deaf, and then there's just clueless.
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August 17th, 2016: After weeks of the media investigating connections between Donald Trump and Russia that frequently center on his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, Trump shakes up his campaign staff yet again (and with now only 12 weeks to the election) bringing Breitbart executive Stephen Bannon, and promoting Kellyanne Conway to a higher profile to the campaign so that Manafort would appear in the cable news cycle less.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, is supposed to begin getting classified intel briefings from U.S. intelligence, and after many weeks of critics calling for a change to a policy of telling presidential candidates classified information when it would be given to a man wih ties to Russian interests and a habit of blurting things out at a microphone irresponsiby. Without irony, less than a month after he described the National Enquirer as "a reliable source", Trump said he didn't trust the U.S. intelligence he would be privy to in a Fox News interview.
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August 18th, 2016: While Trump spoke in North Carolina from a teleprompter and didn't embarrass himself too much, the same cannot be said for many of his campaign staff and advisers. Paul Manafort, already being shuffled to the back row of Trump's campaign staff, was revealed to have run a covert influence group in Washington to support pro-Russian Ukraine,along with his deputy in the campaign, Rick Gates. The problem? They never disclosed their work as foreign agents as required under federal law.
If that wasn't bad enough, one of Trump's foreign policy advisers, Joseph Schmitz, was researched by the media, and they remembered his history of being a widely anti-Semitic and disgraced former employee of the Pentagon, who used to brag about firing Jews, and cast doubts on the Holocaust having happened because of "how the ovens were too small to kill 6 million Jews".
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August 19th, 2016: Paul Manafort officially resigns from the Trump campaign, completely on this morning, and may be under investigation for his work in a Pro-Russian lobbying firm.
Early in the day, against the wishes of Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, who tells both presidential candidates and the president to stay out for a few days, if not weeks because visiting the state for photo ops would do little but cause law enforcement to have to divest law enforcement resources into security details for those visiting, rather than continue rescue and recovery efforts... Donald Trump and Mike Pence ignore common sense and go anyway for a photo op. So what did Trump need to go "help" with relief efforts to do that distracted all those first responders? He passed out Play-Doh, always a must need in disaster survival kits. For a total of 49 seconds, or the time it would take for him to have a single photo taken.
Friday night, with Trump polling behind Hillary Clinton among African-American voters by a ratio of 92% to 2%, and getting 0% support among that demographic in key swing states Pennsylvania and Ohio, Donald Trump campaigns in Dimondale, Michigan and makes a desperate appeal to win the black vote by saying, “You’re living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. 58% of your youth in unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?” At least he didn't go with the "I double dog dare you" strategy.
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August 20th, 2016: A New York Times report comes out that Trump has debt totaling more than $650 million dollars, nearly double what he reported to the Federal Election Commission in financial disclosure forms. Some of the details are particularly troubling, such as the fact that while Trump constantly rails against the United States owing too much debt to China... that he himself has loans out and is indebted to the Bank of China, which is, yes, run by the Chinese government.
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August 21st, 2016: Donald Trump's third campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, goes on ABC's "This Week", and makes the outlandish statement that Trump doesn't "hurl personal insults". When asked later in the day about whether or not Trump's immigration policies will require a deportation force, she answers, "TBD..."
Cue a couple hours later...
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August 22nd, 2016: In the early hours of the morning, Trump goes on Twitter and starts attacking the hosts of MSNBC's Morning Joe, more singling out Mika Brzezinski as being "neurotic" and "not very bright". He then referred to Brzezinski and co-host Joe Scarborough as "clowns", while claiming they were a boyfriend and girlfriend and he would "blow the whistle" on them. Y'know, like back when he was threatening to "spill the beans" on Heidi Cruz.
Trump then went on Fox News to contradict his new campaign manager from the previous day and insist that he was still going to have mass deportations of illegal immigrants. He promised to deport so many that it would “make your head spin”. In the same interview, he also assured viewers that he knew how to curtail rising crime in Chicago “within a week”, saying that he would be “even more tough”, and had discussed policy with “very top police” in Chicago. Remember, the Chicago PD are already getting heat for running an illegal detention facility where illegal interrogations took place, and for police shootings of unarmed suspects that resulted in the deaths of citizens.
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August 23rd, 2016: The Chicago PD respond to Donald Trump’s claim that he’d spoken to “very top police” and deny the claim, saying it’s false and that Trump, nor anyone in his campaign had spoken to anyone in Chicago PD’s senior command.
Third stories also begin circulating regarding Trump campaign financing… the first that the minute Trump’s campaign ceased to be self-funded and was paid for by other donors, he quintupled the rent on the Trump Tower offices his campaign operates out of, to $170,000 a month. The second story was that Trump used $55,000 of his own campaign money to buy copies of his own book (which may be an illegal practice per the FEC). The third was about an Associated Press investigation of the social media counts of over 50 current, and former paid staffers of the Trump campaign that found… they make a lot of bigoted posts online. Among their comments included statements that Muslims are unfit to be U.S. citizens, racist jokes about Mexican accents, calls for Secretary of State John F. Kerry to be hanged and stated their readiness for a possible civil war. Maybe not shocking, that these are the people who can get through an interview to work for Trump.
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August 24th, 2016: Trump, speaking before a virtually all-white audience in Jackson, Mississippi, says that it’s actually Hillary Clinton who is a “bigot” who will do nothing for African-Americans or Hispanics. (You know when someone is out of line when you can see the eyes bug out of the heads of supporters right over their shoulder in shock, as was the case while Trump made his remark about Clinton.)
Appearing with Trump at the rally is British politician Nigel Farage, the xenophobic, anti-immigrant lunatic behind the Brexit vote that crippled the British economy after forcing the country out of the European Union. The duo actually seem to still think such ideas are good ones, in spite of the obvious instant negative impact.
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August 25th, 2016: Hillary Clinton speaks in Reno about Donald Trump’s links to the Alt-Right movement, including mentions of Breitbart News, and Alex Jones and InfoWars early in the day. This, of course, strikes a nerve, and Trump goes on a Tweet-storm on Twitter, saying that she was “fearmongering” and “race-baiting”, and later in the day, going on CNN where he denied knowing if the Alt-Right movement was even a thing in an interview with Anderson Cooper, who immediately pointed out it must be a thing, because Trump’s new senior campaign member, Steve Bannon, has identified Breitbart News as “the voice of the Alt-Right Movement”. Meanwhile, online, white supremacists proudly identify themselves as “Alt-Right”, and Trump as their candidate.
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August 26th, 2016: The day after Clinton’s speech tying Trump to the Alt-Right, and his long history of discrimination and racism, is met with deafening silence from other members of the GOP in his defense.
Meanwhile, NBC News tracked down Trump’s doctor, Dr. Harold Borstein, who admitted the gushing over-the-top note he wrote about Trump’s health was done in about five minutes while a limo from the Trump campaign waited to collect it. He admitted it was not reflective of Trump’s actual medical history.
Trump himself continued trading barbs with Hillary Clinton about how her policies were the “bigoted” ones, and only seemed to demonstrate he didn’t know what bigotry actually is. In the meantime, his campaign cancelled a schedule rally for Sept. 1st in Phoenix, the fourth rally that Trump cancelled in a week.
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August 27th, 2016: Trump, still trying to prove his silly claim that it’s Hillary Clinton and her policies that are “bigoted”, decides that it’s a good idea to exploit the death of Nykea Aldridge, the cousin of NBA star Dwyane Wade, as proof that he's better for African Americans, so he gets on Twitter to rant about it (without first giving any condolences towards the deceased, or her family).
Later in the day, Trump gets on Twitter, and does not to appear to be on the same page as the rest of his campaign, as he announces the Phoenix rally that was cancelled the previous day is still happening.
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August 28th, 2016: Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway goes on Fox News Sunday, and cannot defend her employer’s behavior in exploiting Nykea Aldridge’s death, only noting that a few hours after her death, Trump got around to offering condolences).
Meanwhile, Trump got back on Twitter to accuse Hillary Clinton of not releasing her full medical records, like he had, and suggesting all presidential candidates should do so. This is another bold attempt at pushing conspiracy theories about Clinton’s health, and a bizarre one, because Clinton had released more medical information that Trump did with the vague note from his gastroenterologist. Also, Clinton had met the long held standard to release her tax returns and Trump... still had not.
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August 29th, 2016: Trump, never a stranger to operating at the tabloid level, decides that upon hearing the news that after Anthony Weiner was caught sexting behind the back of his wife, Huma Abadein, a long-time Hillary Clinton aide, that he should exploit it for cheap points. But Donald Trump just can’t help but lie, and make a story somehow worse or more incriminating, so he chose to accuse Clinton of “compromising national security” by hiring a woman married to Anthony Weiner, that Hillary Clinton had. By the end of the day, Trump was, of course, hinting at the conspiracy theory that Abedin has secret ties to Islamic terror groups.
Less than an hour after the debate, while candidate Trump was trying to flee the building with his family and advisers (we could read “the body English” as he so advised to see he knew he was beat), he gave an interview to CNN’s Dana Bash, where she asked him about how he had said he was “smart” to have not paid income taxes. Trump denied he had ever said he thought it was smart to not pay income taxes. He had just done so, within the hour, in front of roughly 100 million American viewers.
Two days to election day.