Welcome back to your daily roundup of the state of Donald Trump's half of the presidential race, also known as the death of the Republican Party, also known as at least two remaining months of American nightmare fuel. Tonight saw the MSNBC Commander-in-Chief Forum, a not-debate between the nominees from both major American political parties in which they were each asked to prove they love the country, the troops, the veterans, and so on.
And it was an insulting, vapid, moronic nothingburger with absolutely no redeeming newsworthiness whatsoever, so let's move on to the rest of the day's, sigh, Trump news.
• 2016, summed up in one headline: "Pence breaks with Trump, says Obama born in Hawaii". Because the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States still, to this day, refuses to admit that the current (black) president of the nation is in fact truly a natural-born American citizen and not, no-really-not-kidding-on-this-one, a secret African. The Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States still won't admit that, because—and we may have mentioned this before—the Republican Party is just one quivering blob of race-based conspiracy theories.
• Trump himself has taken a vow of silence on the matter: "I just don’t bother talking about it." Hopefully he'll find his voice again after the election is over, we've been waiting for the results of his "investigation" into the sitting president's American citizenship for years now.
• The majority of the Trumpian day was spent gearing up for the Commander-in-Chief Forum by convincing potential viewers that no, really, Donald Trump could totally run the strongest military force on the planet and that would not result at all in the sort of clusterfuck you would naturally expect it to be. Towards this end, Trump campaign-type person Kellyanne Conway was tasked with blasting recent anti-Trump commercials showing Donald Trump bragging "I love war" and similar sentiments: Conway declined to explain what Donald Trump might have meant by that, instead responding with Something Something Benghazi.
• Trump's new policy pitch, on the other hand: "Unlike my opponent, my foreign policy will emphasize diplomacy, not destruction." This would be a significant turnaround from his previous and very consistent foreign policy stance: Bomb (insert name of country here) and take their oil. He also reversed himself on whether or not he has, as previously claimed "a foolproof way" to defeat ISIS, instead stating that once elected he would give his "top generals" 30 days to come up with a plan for defeating the terrorist group.
• Trump this morning outlined a "national security plan" that was not so much a plan as a military shopping list; a larger Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps plus a "state of the art" Star Wars-esque missile defense system, all enabled by nixing the deficit hawk-demanded "sequester" (but only on military spending; the rest of it would, of course, stay in place.) This massive military buildup would then be paid for by unspecified "common sense reforms" and "unleashing American energy"—no word on how much cash either of those would take in, but Trump has never been known for being good with numbers—and by demanding other nations around the world "respectfully" pony up for some protection money.
• Trump claimed in a speech yesterday that a close-to-nuclear Iran was not "going to be much of a threat" until the Obama administration's nuclear deal. "Overnight, we've made them a power." This may be awkward, considering that the majority of his party have spent years loudly declaring that nation to be such a large nuclear threat as to require military action. Then again, consistency is the hobgoblin of little Trumps.
• Trump's $25,000 donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi during the period Pam Bondi was deciding whether her state would join in pursuing fraud charges against Trump University (she decided not to) continues to hover on the edges of the news cycle, primarily in the form of smaller news outlets browbeating or mocking larger outlets for their slowness to the story. While Trump now claims he's never spoken to Bondi, he hosted a 2014 fundraiser for her campaign at Mar-a-Lago—charging her only about three percent of what he charged the Republican Party for his own fundraiser at the same location earlier this year.
• Fundraising for Trump continues to lag far behind both that of opponent Clinton and the level Trump himself had assured Republicans of. Also of note: There seems to be no plan in place for turning those numbers around.
• While Trump fundraising continues to be anemic, however, Republican groups aren't being nearly so hesitant in their efforts to shore up a Senate majority severely endangered by his own struggling campaign. Republican donors may not be willing to prop up Trump, but they are handing money to Republican downticket races hand over fist—with the top two Senate Republican backing groups alone raising a whopping $100 million this cycle.
• A symptom of that Trump-Senate divide: Watching Republican Sen. Bob Corker repeatedly dodge the question of why he supports Donald Trump for the presidency could only be improved by a Sarah McLachlan song and a 1-800 number displayed at the end. God bless, Sen. Corker, and may you someday find an opinion willing to adopt you.
• Calling Trump "unstable" and citing Trump's "attitude towards minorities", the only black American to serve in George H.W. Bush's cabinet, former Health and Human Services secretary Louis Wade Sullivan, has endorsed Hillary Clinton. “Though my enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton is somewhat tempered, I certainly believe she is an infinitely better choice for president than Donald Trump.”
• After a scathing if far-too-defensive editorial mewing that Donald Trump was not a true Republican, the Dallas Morning News today endorsed Hillary Clinton for the presidency. This is notable primarily because the Texas paper is so devoutly Republican-leaning that they had endorsed every Republican presidential candidate since 1968.
• Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, wants the government to investigate reports that Trump Model Management sought and enabled the illegal employment of foreign workers. An investigation by Mother Jones found the New York company engaged in a pattern of using fashion models who did not have the necessary visas to work in the United States—models who were then charged above-market rates to stay in a company-provided residence.
• New theory: Donald Trump ran for president only as a publicity stunt to boost room prices for his new Washington D.C. hotel, which is situated on the inaugural parade route and which opens its doors for the first time this week. Want to book the Trump Townhouse for a prime spot watching the parade? It'll cost you $100,000 per night, minimum five night stay.
The odds are exceedingly good that the Trump International Hotel, a controversy-laced remodeling of the historic Old Post Office, will soon become prime meeting spot for the candidate now funded by Republican Party donors. The odds are also exceedingly good that Trump won't be offering those donors a discount.