Welcome back to the daily roundup of the end of the republic, also known as the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
We start this week as we started last week: with Donald Trump's campaign attempting to explain their candidate's actual immigration policy, to very little avail. Mike Pence and Kellyanne Conway took to the airwaves to explain that (1) absolutely nothing had changed about Trump's immigration policy proposals and (2) that those policies will be substantially different from what Trump has previously said they were. Also, we have always been at war with Eastasia.
On this Wednesday, then, Donald Trump is scheduled to give another "immigration" speech outlining his not-new, not-old theories on what his policies might be. This takes the place of a speech last week that was cancelled because the precise wording of his policy, which is the same policy as ever but also different, was "still being modified." Won't that be fun. As for the rest of the day's news:
• Vice presidential pick Mike Pence waves off a question as to whether the Trump campaign still believes American-born children of undocumented immigrants are, in fact, American citizens: "I think the whole question of anchor babies, as it's known, the whole question of citizenship, of natural-born Americans is a subject for the future." So stripping children of citizenship is still on the table, apparently, but we won't be speaking of it until after something-something-something.
• Is the Trump promised border wall going to be a "virtual wall," or a "physical" one? It depends on who you ask. Seems the sort of thing you'd want to have pinned down by now.
• An alarming clue on how the would-be president makes, and changes, policy: "Trump tends to echo the words of whomever last spoke to him, making direct access to him even more valuable, the people said, requesting anonymity to talk about internal campaign discussions."
• Continuing with our theme of Donald Trump not quite being certain of what Donald Trump's policy positions are, Trump is debuting a new ad touting his tax reform plans. There's at least three separate problems with that. First: In a footnote, it refers to Paul Ryan's plan, not Donald Trump's, and Trump has been steering well clear of Paul Ryan's plan. Second: In another footnote it refers to a "Donald Trump's Tax Plan" that no longer exists; it was scrubbed from his campaign. Third: As far as anyone knows, Donald Trump does not currently have a tax plan at all, what with the aforementioned scrubbing. So this appears to be an ad cut by staff completely unaware of Trump's own policies, but still determined to make them sound good on the teevee.
• After being incessantly ridiculed for an alleged "outreach effort" to black voters that consisted of Donald Trump explaining how outreaching he was to overwhelmingly white audiences, the Donald Trump presidential campaign is very pleased to announce, at long last, that they have arranged for him to meet with an Actual Black Guy. The lucky winner will be televangelist Wayne T. Jackson, who during a televised interview next Saturday will be able to ask questions "relevant to the African American community."
• Trump outreach to black Americans continues, this time with a Trump tweet responding to the shooting death of NBA star Dwyane Wade's cousin, whose name Trump misspelled, with the assertion that the murder would give a reason "African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP." Because, after all, if a tragedy can't be converted into a reason for self-promotion, why bother with it at all? Outreach!
• Trump's outreach to everyone else continued with a condemnation of Anthony Weiner and praise of Clinton aide Huma Abedin's "wise decision" to separate from him, immediately followed with—stop us if you've heard this one before—a self-promoting conspiracy theory. "I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information." Does he know that Weiner was not actually a part of the campaign, or of the State Department either? Does he presume that Abedin was just naturally calling him to brief him on "highly classified information"—is that the sort of thing that happens, in the Trump family?
And why is a well-documented adulterer on his third marriage weighing in on somebody else's marriage woes at all? This may be the sort of thing silence was invented for.
• As we close in on the final two months of the campaign, stories of racism within Donald Trump's companies continue to be retold. Like the time Donald hired Roy Cohn, infamous Joe McCarthy lawyer, to defend his company from exceedingly well-documented charges of turning away black potential tenants in the 1970's.
• Former Grand Alpaca (or something, their self-granted titles have always been maudlin efforts) of the KKK David Duke has been placing robocalls touting himself and Donald Trump.
• If there were any "serious Republicans" at all who—in the imaginations of a punditry still convinced that "serious Republicans" are a thing—would not stand idly by while Donald Trump co-opted the rest of his party, one might have surmised ex-presidential candidate Sen. John McCain to be be high on that list. Nope. As far as speaking out against Trump, McCain says "There's no reason to do that". Also notably not distancing themselves: House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The only thing we can rightfully deduce from any of this is that Trumpism is indeed in alignment with "serious" Republican politicians and "serious" Republican policies. Which makes the whole "serious" construct a bit ... unserious.
• For example, "serious" immigration reform advocate Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who continues to support Trump despite Trump's furious anti-immigrant rhetoric, claims of Mexican "rapists", "deportation forces", religious tests, and so forth. So all of that is negotiable, then, in exchange for ... what? What's the thing Diaz-Balart is anticipating that makes all the rest of that forgivable?
• Among the once seemingly-invincible House Republicans now finding themselves in hotter water due to the Trump campaign's systemic alienation of voters: top Republican investibator Darrell Issa.
• A comprehensive timeline of when various Republicans who have dumped Trump dumped Trump.
• New campaign CEO Steve Bannon has views on many, many things. Like, for example, how progressives don't like conservative women because those women aren't "dykes that come from the Seven Sisters schools". Yup. That's the person Donald J. Trump picked to lead his entire presidential campaign. He only surrounds himself with the best people, you know.
• In a van down by the river? Campaign head Bannon's confusion about where exactly he himself lives continues; after reporters discovered that Bannon had registered to vote using the address of an abandoned house slated for demolition, Bannon changed his registration to the home address of a Breitbart reporter. There's no evidence Bannon has lived at that home either, and nobody involved is responding to questions about the new address. As a friendly reminder, registering to vote using an improper address is a felony. Also as a reminder, Bannon is reportedly a very wealthy man who probably does indeed have a home somewhere, but seems to have misplaced it.
• Conservative politics continues to be a haven for grifters.