Welcome to your evening roundup of the day's, sigh, Donald Trump news.
As of today, Trump has not bowed out of the first presidential debate. If that doesn't change over the weekend then it will be held next Monday night. Even grading on a curve, pundits are generally expecting an embarrassment to the republic.
Aside from that? There was quite a bit of actual news today. As usual, not a stick of it appears to be good for the candidate himself, unless you count humiliating Ted Cruz as an electoral goal. On we go:
• News report:
U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials — including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president, according to multiple sources who have been briefed on the issue.
This raises the puzzling question over whether Donald Trump's next secret intelligence briefing will include the news that one of men he identified as an adviser is being investigated for extracurricular negotiations with Russian officials. And whether Trump will debrief that adviser on what intelligence officials know about it. (The Trump campaign is now saying Page has "no role" in the campaign, and has declined to clarify why Trump himself explicitly said otherwise.)
• News report: Trump’s “numerous connections to Russian interests” have resulted in business deals worth “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
• News report: Donald Trump appears to have lied under oath about his efforts to build a casino in Florida. Or lied onstage during a debate.
• News report: Donald Trump appears to have lied under oath about his connections to organized crime. Or lied to reporters afterwards.
• Trump updated his list of potential Supreme Court nominees to include rival Ted Cruz's most reliable BFF, Sen. Mike Lee. While Lee's office quickly dismissed the move, saying it "does not change Sen. Lee's mind about Trump in any way what so ever," Ted Cruz himself cited it as a key reason for the endorsement he provided Trump later in the day. Cruz had famously refused to provide that endorsement at the Republican National Convention, and has called Trump an “amoral”, “pathological liar.”
• In the run-up to the first presidential debate, Trump has retreated behind a firewall of Fox News interviews. The candidate has taped over 100 minutes of airtime on the network since Sept. 7th, while giving zero interviews to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN or MSNBC during the same period.
• Gov. Mike Pence's would-be replacement, Republican Lieutenant Governor Eric Holcomb, is going out of his way to not mention Pence in his own campaign ads. Apparently it's not just Donald Trump who downticket Republicans are running from.
• Donald Trump's director of African-American outreach continues the campaign's streak of saying things you'd previously only see in a third-world dictatorship or the pages of a comic book.
“Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”
• Policy watch: A RAND study estimates Trump's healthcare proposals would result in 20 million more uninsured Americans by 2018.
• Policy watch: Donald Trump's campaign vow to boost oil, gas and coal producers is at odds with the basic economics causing turmoil in those same industries.
• Policy watch: Donald Trump's anti-crime proposals are disproportionately targeted at minority groups.
• President Obama slammed Trump’s statement that the black American community is in “the worst shape” it’s “ever been”: “"I think even most 8-year-olds will tell you that whole slavery thing wasn't very good for black people. Jim Crow wasn't very good for black people.”
• The Trump campaign has become the first major-party presidential candidate this century to run no Spanish-language ads at all.
• The Clinton campaign continues to target Trump primarily via ads that use his own past statements against him. The latest highlights Trump's past insults of women.
• The NRA today continued its silence after Trump proposed a national "stop and frisk" program designed to take guns away.
• Trump's electoral chances are rapidly dwindling due to sub-40 percent poll numbers in a host of key battleground states.
• Trump’s troubles are also damaging the Trump business brand: “The Trump brand used to be one-dimensionally focused on success. It was simple and relevant to a large audience,” said Allen Adamson, the founder of business consulting firm BrandSimple. “Now it’s more complex and polarizing and relevant to a smaller market segment.”
• The most recent given by the Trump brood on why the candidate won't release his taxes: "There's a lot in a 12,000-page tax return that wouldn't make sense to open up."
• The Cincinnati Enquirer joins the ranks of longtime Republican-endorsing newspapers breaking with their history to endorse Trump’s Democratic opponent.
• CNN contributor and ex-Trump campaign chief Corey Lewandowski will reportedly continue to receive $20,000-per-month payments from the Trump campaign for the remainder of the year.
• Ted Cruz college roommate Craig Mazin, who has become an unofficial Twitter Cruzsplainer, Cruzsplains today's endorsement: “To understand why Ted is doing this, first make sure to begin every thought with ‘I am supposed to be President.’”