In today's roundup of Donald Trump campaign news and in the afterglow of that truly (ahem) astonishing debate performance by the fiery dirigible at the top of the ticket, we bear witness to the crack up of the Republican Party. Think we're overstating things? Nope.
• Fifteen current Republican senators say they're no longer supporting the Republican presidential nominee.
• Trump's Virginia campaign chair was fired this afternoon for organizing a loud pro-Trump protest outside the offices of the Republican National Committee. That's right, Trump's Virginia campaign head organized a protest outside the offices of his own party chair.
• Inside the building, the RNC went into "radio silence" through much of the day, emerging in the late afternoon to give a conference call affirming they would be continuing to support the candidate.
• In the face of disastrous new poll numbers, House Speaker Paul Ryan told House Republicans today he won't be working to defend Trump, but instead will focus on keeping the House. But he and other distancing Republicans now face a civil war with furious Trump voters accusing the party of sabotaging Trump.
• Trump responded to Paul Ryan's reluctant distancing with a slam against him; meanwhile, the House far-right is livid.
• Mike Pence spent the morning denying reports that he was dropping off the ticket ... while simultaneously stifling Republican fever dreams that Trump would withdraw and leave Pence the de facto nominee. This, after Donald Trump very publicly threw Pence under his campaign bus in last night's debate.
On to the rest of the post-debate news.
• The U.S. intelligence community joins the ranks of those infuriated with Trump—again—with a "senior" intelligence official confirming to NBC News that despite Trump's insistence that Russia may not have been involved with recent hacks of U.S. government and political organizations, Trump had indeed been directly told of that Russian involvement during his government-provided intelligence briefings. "To profess not to know at this point is willful misrepresentation."
A president who claims his own intelligence officials are probably misrepresenting things to him and only he has the right information? Yeah, that's just what we need. Again, I mean.
• The polls show Clinton to be the big winner of last night's debate. It wasn't close. That wasn't what Trump needed to recover from a disastrous weekend—but Trump turned in a performance that his deplorables liked very much, vastly complicating attempts by the rest of the party to extract themselves from him.
• The morning headlines were brutal.
• The Trump campaign wanted their four Clinton accusers to walk in with, and be seated with, the candidates’ families, thus setting up direct confrontation with Bill Clinton. The debate organizers rejected the notion and told them the women would be removed by security if the campaign tried.
• You weren't imagining things. Fact checkers found Trump's debate performance to be riddled with falsehoods. Trump even denied sending a tweet telling Americans to check out a detractor's "sex tape", after that still-undeleted tweet was the subject of much national debate and even more nausea.
• A big topic of discussion today: Trump's odd and aggressive physical posturing during the debate. He repeatedly stood close behind her like he was in line to board a bus but which many people took to be an attempt at physical intimidation. It didn't work, but it genuinely looked creepy.
• A bigger topic of discussion today: Trump's debate threat to jail his political opponent. In the hours after the debate, many pundits thought that the big takeaway from the evening. I'll admit to personal surprise at this—I expected it would pass without mention like so many other instances of Trump promising illegal, unconstitutional or un-American things. So here's a nod to those pundits.
• Mike Pence, however, called the Trump pledge to jail Clinton “one of the better moments of the debate.”
• And then, of course, there's Trump's continued non-apologies for his 2005 bragging about what everyone but Sen. Jeff Sessions can agree is clearly sexual assault. His debate response was to point out that at least he's not as bad as ISIS.
• Trump confirmed last evening that yes, he did use his near-billion-dollar 1995 loss to avoid paying taxes in future years. Real life billionaire Warren Buffet responded to a Trump reference to him in last evening's debate with a look at his own tax numbers and an invitation to Trump to release the same.
• A brave alpha male to the end, Trump spent much of last night's debate complaining that the moderators were against him and he wasn't getting enough time. You know: Leadership.
• Sen. Kelly Ayotte finally got off the fence, declaring that she was no longer supporting Trump. This lasted only a few hours before her confused campaign sent out emails promoting her support for Trump, so we may be revisiting this yet again tomorrow.
• Bill Clinton accuser Jaunita Broaddrick told reporters the Breitbart "news" site paid for her to attend the debate. That would be illegal.
• Trump ally Alex Jones took to his airwaves to confirm that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both literally possessed by demons. "There are dozens of videos and photos of Obama having flies land on him, indoors, at all times of year [...] Imagine how bad she smells, man? I'm told her and Obama just stink, stink, stink. [...] I've been told this by high up folks. They say listen, Obama and Hillary both smell like sulfur."
This is your once-again reminder that nobody in politics takes Alex Jones seriously ... except Donald Trump and his allies.
• A Psychology Today article looks at Trump's unwavering support from his base: "As long as Trump continues his fear mongering by constantly portraying Muslims and Mexican immigrants as imminent dangers, many conservative brains will involuntarily light up like light bulbs being controlled by a switch. Fear keeps his followers energized and focused on safety. And when you think you’ve found your protector, you become less concerned with remarks that would normally be seen as highly offensive."