Donald Trump tried once again to restart his campaign, a pivot that will last until tomorrow when he gets into a fight with a Twitter bot promising free iPads. There must be large amounts of standing water and shared drinking glasses in Trump headquarters, because campaign officials are coming down with nasty cases of chronic lying. And the Commission on Presidential Debates announced which polls it will use to choose participants, so all eyes will be on candidates struggling to garner 15 percent of the vote ― meaning Donald Trump. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Monday, August 15th, 2016:
TRUMP REBOOTS AGAIN -. “Donald J. Trump on Monday laid out his plan for combating global Islamic terrorism, invoking the Cold War era to try new approaches and accusing President Obama and Hillary Clinton of bungling the fight against terrorist threats. Calling for significant changes in how the United States defines its allies, he urged an end to “nation building” and recommended overhauling how the United States screened people coming into the country...Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s policy adviser, portrayed the terrorism address as a road map, with more detailed speeches to follow — much as was the case with the Republican presidential nominee’s speech last week on the economy...Mr. Trump said that ‘the time is overdue’ for better screening of extremists trying to enter the country, calling for ‘extreme vetting.’ He said only those who accept a “tolerant” view of American society would be admitted to the United States.” [NYT]
HARRY REID IS TROLL-IN-CHIEF - Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is so good at making trouble. Paige Lavender: “In a foreign policy speech Monday, Trump said people should take a test before being allowed to immigrate to the United States. ‘In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test,’ Trump said to a crowd in Youngstown, Ohio. ‘The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today. I call it extreme vetting.’ In a statement Monday morning, Reid called on Trump to take ‘the one test every immigrant has to pass to become a United States citizen.’ ‘He would almost certainly fail, given his general ignorance and weak grasp of basic facts about American history, principles and functioning of our government,’ Reid said.” [HuffPost]
TRUMP GOES THERE, PT. 495,101,232 - Can Hillary Clinton have a family, a career and a secret head injury that she is keeping from the public? Elise Foley: “A group of conspiracy-minded conservatives have been increasingly pushing the theory that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is hiding a serious physical or mental ailment from the American people. They have an ally in Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who took a jab at Clinton’s ‘mental and physical stamina’ during a speech on Monday. ‘Hillary Clinton lacks the judgment, as said by Bernie Sanders, stability, and temperament and the moral character to lead our nation,’ he said in Youngstown, Ohio. ‘Importantly, she also lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS and and all of the many adversaries we face, not only in terrorism but in trade and every other challenge we must confront to turn our great country around.’ His coded language comes amid growing insistence from some conservatives that Clinton is unhealthy, and years of suggestions that she is too old or otherwise physically incapable of being president. (Trump, it should be noted, is two years older than Clinton.)” [HuffPost]
MANAFORT UNDER SCRUTINY AMIDST UKRAINIAN PROBE - LOL at the percentage of this election revolving around interfering actions by Russia and Ukraine. David Wright: “Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has been named in an investigation by Ukrainian authorities looking at whether he and others received millions in illegal payments from Ukraine’s former pro-Russian ruling party, according to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. The probe is part of a wider investigation by the bureau into allegations of corruption and influence peddling against ex-president Viktor Yanukovich’s administration, for whom Manafort worked as a political consultant, before the leader’s violent ouster in 2014. The investigation is looking into “shadow accounting” and potentially illegal payments made by Yanukovich to Manafort and other Ukrainian election officials, according to Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption.” [CNN]
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DOES TRUMP ACTUALLY WANT THIS? Some GOP operatives don’t think so. Sam Stein: “What used to be a playful question tossed around by Republican operatives about Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is now being taken far more seriously: Is it possible that he is trying to lose? The notion, on the surface, seems preposterous. What politician would put himself through the crucible of a presidential campaign with the hope of falling short? But as Trump has stumbled badly on the trail and in the polls, and as his reaction to both has proven increasingly erratic, the theory of self-sabotage has gained traction among Trump critics. ‘I think he has psychologically collapsed and is both consciously and unconsciously looking for an exit,’ said Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP operative who rarely holds back in his disdain for Trump.” [HuffPost]
Huge success Reince Priebus thinking about re-upping as Republican National Committee chairman. Sure, why not?
CLINTON AND BIDEN MAKE PITCH TO WHITE WORKING CLASS VOTERS - Some Xanax for their economic anxiety and what not. “Vice President Biden excoriated Donald Trump as a dangerous and ill-informed bully on Monday as he urged a hometown crowd in this hard-luck former industrial center to back his friend and onetime political rival Hillary Clinton. ‘What Hillary is all about is making sure that every one of you can look your child, your grandchild, in the eye and say, ‘It’s going to be okay,’’ Biden said. ‘Think how many people don’t think they can say that anymore.’ Biden’s first campaign appearance on behalf of the Democratic nominee blended blue-collar outreach with stinging rebukes of Trump from a man who, Biden reminded the crowd, travels with his own copies of the nation’s nuclear weapons codes...An NBC-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll released last week found Trump leading by 16 percentage points among white registered voters without college degrees.” [WaPo]
POTUS DEBATE COMMISSION CHOOSES POLLS TO DECIDE PARTICIPANTS - Sadly, they won’t count Facebook followers or crowd size, as is the scientific way. Hadas Gold: “The polls will be those conducted by ABC-Washington Post, CBS-New York Times, CNN-Opinion Research Corporation, Fox News, and NBC-Wall Street Journal. The commission said they selected the five based on the “reliable frequency of polling and sample sizes used by the polling organization,” the “soundness of the survey methodology employed by the polling organization” and the ‘longevity and reputation of the polling organization.’ ...According to the five most recent polls by the five organizations chosen by the Commission, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson is at 9.8 percent while Green party candidate Jill Stein is at 4.67 percent. While there will be more polls and likely an increase in support after Labor Day, as it stands now neither Johnson nor Stein would make the stage.” [Politico]
Trump suspicious of media, numbers: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is accusing the media of ‘trying to rig this election’ in a new fundraising email. The email blast includes a survey of 30 questions about a “dishonest media” that Trump says were written by him. It is followed by a page to make donations to his campaign...The email includes a link to a survey titled ‘Mainstream Media Accountability Survey.’ It includes yes/no/no opinion answers to questions and statements such as: ‘Do you trust CNN to fairly report on our campaign?’” [The Hill]
GOOD NEWS! 9/11 NEVER HAPPENED - Katherine Krueger: “Speaking in Youngstown, Ohio ahead of Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York City on 9/11, declared that Islamic extremists hadn’t carried out any terror attacks on American soil before Barack Obama’s presidency. ‘Under those 8 years, before Obama came along, we didn’t have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the US,’ Giuliani told the crowd. ‘They all started when Clinton and Obama came into office.’” [Talking Points Memo]
OBAMA ALSO DID AFGHANISTAN, APPARENTLY - The commander-in-chief also hasn’t apologized for rigging all those explosives to the Challenger. Sam Stein: “A spokesperson for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has blamed President Barack Obama for invading Afghanistan ― a foreign policy decision he never made. ‘Remember we weren’t even in Afghanistan by this time,’ Katrina Pierson told CNN early Saturday, referencing the year 2011, when the U.S. withdrew from Iraq. ‘Barack Obama went into Afghanistan creating another problem.’ ‘That was Obama’s war,’ she declared later in the program, when asked to clarify if she meant Obama was responsible for its launch.” [HuffPost]
KATRINA PIERSON ALSO BRAVELY MAKING LIFE MORE DAGEROUS FOR OTHER PEOPLE - This ends with a bunch of people wearing American flag bananas punching their palms with their hands and cracking their necks as they menacingly approach the press pen. Michael Calderone” “Katrina Pierson, the national spokeswoman for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, baselessly claimed Monday that journalists have attacked supporters of the Republican nominee. During a Fox Business interview, Pierson defended Trump’s incessant complaints about news coverage by suggesting “voters want someone who is going to fight back.’ ‘They are tired of seeing left-wing reporters literally beat Trump supporters into submission, into supporting policies they don’t agree with,’ she said. There is no evidence reporters have “literally beat” Trump supporters, even as some of the nominee’s fans have recently become enraged at the press. Journalists, however, have faced violence while covering Trump.” [HuffPost]
Social Security old enough for Social Security: “Exactly 81 years ago on Sunday, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, creating the country’s first national pension program...Social Security is credited with reducing elderly poverty from 50 percent prior to its creation in 1935 to roughly 10 percent today. The program enjoys the rare distinction of enormous popularity with both Republicans and Democrats.” [HuffPost’s Daniel Marans]
BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’ a child’s amazing advice for the president.
ZIKA AT ISSUE IN DOWN BALLOT CAMPAIGNS - Though they aren’t literally attacking each other with Zika, despite the wording that follows. Jennifer Shutt: “Democratic Senate candidates in Iowa and Pennsylvania also are using Zika to attack Republicans over the slow pace of congressional action on money for vaccine development, mosquito spraying and more...Sen. Marco Rubio’s reelection campaign has focused heavily on the issue. He is one of the few Republicans in the country to call for funding the president’s original $1.9 billion emergency funding request, which did not include any offsetting budget cuts...In Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate for Senate, Katie McGinty, has slammed incumbent Republican Sen. Patrick J. Toomey over his Zika votes...In Iowa, Sen. Charles E. Grassley’s votes have been brought up by his Democratic rival Patty Judge. Grassley voted for the Blunt-Murray agreement as well as Cornyn’s proposal, but against Rubio and Nelson’s amendment.” [Roll Call]
TRUMP’S WORDS ARE CONFOUNDING ― LITERALLY - Daniel Libit: “The rhetorical challenges of Trump are not just those of substance — or the lack thereof, but of syntax — and the lack thereof. His unscripted speaking style, with its spasmodic, self-interrupting sentence structure, has increasingly come to overwhelm the human brains and tape recorders attempting to quote him. Trump is, simply put, a transcriptionist’s worst nightmare: severely unintelligible, and yet, incredibly important to understand…’Almost every time we have done a transcript of him there is something in there that makes you wonder what is going on,’ said Elizabeth Pennell, president of ASC Services, which produces verbatim political transcripts for Congressional Quarterly and many of the news networks…” [CNBC]
COMFORT FOOD
- Someone recreated Super Mario Bros. in Microsoft
- Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps recreate their famous
- Dick Van Dyke singing “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” in a Denny’s, because
TWITTERAMA
@timothypmurphy: If I did a podcast called the Donner Party Download, a Serial-style show about the Donner Party, would you listen
@ashleyfeinberg: I think it’s fucked up we make those horses dance
@igorbobic: well, at least Trump didn’t call it “severe” vetting
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