People who work in intelligence in the US – career experts, civil servants as opposed to politicians – are disturbed that Trump refuses to accept their finding that Russia stole files from the Democratic National Committee computers in an effort to influence the U.S. election.

The former officials, who have served presidents in both parties, say they were bewildered when Trump cast doubt on Russia’s role after receiving a classified briefing on the subject and again after an unusually blunt statement from U.S. agencies saying they were “confident” that Moscow had orchestrated the attacks.

“It defies logic,” retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, said of Trump’s pronouncements.

Trump has assured supporters that, if elected, he would surround himself with experts on defense and foreign affairs, where he has little experience. But when it comes to Russia, he has made it clear that he is not listening to intelligence officials, the former officials said.

Trump doesn’t have “little experience” in defense and foreign affairs. He has none. Zero. He’s a real estate developer – what would he know about defense and foreign affairs?

In the first debate, after intelligence and congressional officials were quoted saying that Russia almost certainly broke into the DNC computers, Trump said: “I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?”

It’s all just opinion, innit. It’s guesswork, it’s hunches, it’s looking thoughtfully out the window and coming up with something. There’s no reason for Trump to pay any attention to senior intelligence officials because they don’t know any more about it than he does, since it’s all just opinion.

In the second debate, he said “Maybe there is no hacking,” despite having been told in a briefing that government officials were certain Russia hacked the DNC.

Former acting CIA director John MacLaughlin said all previous candidates took the briefings to heart.

“In my experience, candidates have taken into the account the information they have received and modulated their comments,” he said. Trump, on the other hand, “is playing politics. He’s trying to diminish the impression people have that [a Russian hack of the DNC] somehow helps his cause.”

I for one look forward to Putin’s influence in US affairs.

And then there’s the whole fomenting a fascist uprising problem. Jamelle Bouie points out that he’s been mouthing off about “a rigged election” and “voter fraud” for months.

Trump first told his supporters of this conspiracy theory at an Ohio rally in August and followed up the claim in an interview with Sean Hannity: “I’m telling you, Nov. 8, we’d better be careful because that election is going to be rigged. And I hope the Republicans are watching closely, or it’s going to be taken away from us.” This was in line with comments from his surrogates, like longtime adviser Roger Stone, who told Breitbart that Trump would begin to talk “constantly” about voter fraud. “He needs to say for example, today would be a perfect example: ‘I am leading in Florida. The polls all show it. If I lose Florida, we will know that there’s voter fraud.’ ” Stone continued: “‘If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.'” The implication is clear: If Trump loses, he should foment this “civil disobedience.” And he should start preparing his supporters for it now. He seems to be doing just that.

It’s quite extraordinary, this claim that the only way Trump can lose the election is if there is voter fraud – that it’s impossible that most people reject him because he’s a malevolent piece of shit.

Now that he’s behind, Trump has returned to questioning the legitimacy of the election. More critically, the idea that he would respect the results of the election, full stop, ignores the hatred that’s come to characterize Trump’s campaign, the violence he’s condoned against protesters and other vocal opponents, the virulent prejudice he’s brought to mainstream politics, and the apocalypticism of his message, where he stands as the final hope for an embattled minority of resentful whites. These rhetorical time bombs, in other words, could be the catalyst for actual intimidation and violence, before and after Election Day. And if that violence and intimidation strikes, it will be against the chief targets of Trump’s campaign: people of color.

A friend of mine saw a bunch of Trump protesters marching around in a circle today. They were all armed.

Trump’s anti-democratic conspiracy mongering is unprecedented in modern elections. And we can begin to guess at the consequences of this rhetoric. Angry people, stirred by demagoguery and convinced they’ve been robbed of their rightful power, are a real threat to the already-frayed fabric of our democracy. Donald Trump thinks the election is rigged. He says we need to watch “areas.” Despite what he said at the debate, he’s also said that, should he lose, he doesn’t know that he will concede: “We’re going to have to see. We’re going to see what happens. We’re going to have to see.”

And if he doesn’t? If he loses and pushes his base to reject the outcome? Then we could see protests, we could see mobs — we could even see violence, all directed against the people supposedly stealing the election. It wouldn’t be the first time.

It’s worrying.

The Beeb has a story titled US election 2016: Presidential race goes down the drain. I haven’t read it yet, I just wanted to share their thoughtful choice of photo to illustrate it:

The Committee to Protect Journalists has put out a statement on Trump versus press freedom. This is a first.

Guaranteeing the free flow of information to citizens through a robust, independent press is essential to American democracy. For more than 200 years this founding principle has protected journalists in the United States and inspired those around the world, including brave journalists facing violence, censorship, and government repression.

Donald Trump, through his words and actions as a candidate for president of the United States, has consistently betrayed First Amendment values. On October 6, CPJ’s board of directors passed a resolution declaring Trump an unprecedented threat to the rights of journalists and to CPJ’s ability to advocate for press freedom around the world.

Since the beginning of his candidacy, Trump has insulted and vilified the press and has made his opposition to the media a centerpiece of his campaign. Trump has routinely labeled the press as “dishonest” and “scum” and singled out individual news organizations and journalists.

He has mocked a disabled New York Times journalist and called an ABC News reporter a “sleaze” in a press conference. He expelled Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a campaign press conference because he asked an “impertinent” question, and has publicly demeaned other journalists.

Trump has refused to condemn attacks on journalists by his supporters. His campaign has also systematically denied press credentials to outlets that have covered him critically, including TheWashington Post, BuzzFeed, Politico, TheHuffington Post,TheDaily Beast, Univision, and TheDes Moines Register.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has routinely made vague proposals to limit basic elements of press and internet freedom. At a rally in February, Trump declared that if elected president he would “open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.” In September, Trump tweeted, “My lawyers want to sue the failing @nytimes so badly for irresponsible intent. I said no (for now), but they are watching. Really disgusting.”

While some have suggested that these statements are rhetorical, we take Trump at his word. His intent and his disregard for the constitutional free press principle are clear.

A Trump presidency would represent a threat to press freedom in the United States, but the consequences for the rights of journalists around the world could be far more serious. Any failure of the United States to uphold its own standards emboldens dictators and despots to restrict the media in their own countries. This appears to be of no concern to Trump, who indicated that he has no inclination to challenge governments on press freedom and the treatment of journalists.

When MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked him in December if his admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin was at all tempered by the country’s history of critical journalists being murdered, his response was: “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country… Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, too.”

Through his words and actions, Trump has consistently demonstrated a contempt for the role of the press beyond offering publicity to him and advancing his interests.

For this reason CPJ is taking the unprecedented step of speaking out now. This is not about picking sides in an election. This is recognizing that a Trump presidency represents a threat to press freedom unknown in modern history.

The Economist takes a look at how Trump has been defining deviancy downwards.

HOW do people learn to accept what they once found unacceptable? In 1927 Frederic Thrasher published a “natural history” of 1,313 gangs in Chicago. Each of them lived by a set of unwritten rules that had come to make sense to gang members but were still repellent to everyone else. So it is with Donald Trump and many of his supporters. By normalising attitudes that, before he came along, were publicly taboo, Mr Trump has taken a knuckle-duster to American political culture.

Aka he’s moved the Overton window.

I do think that’s true, and it’s a huge part of why I (and many others) detest him so much. He’s doing terrible damage, every minute of every day, and it’s damage that won’t just slough off as soon as the election is over. We don’t need this. Nobody needs this. Nobody needs a mean, vulgar, ignorant, greedy bully of a man modeling shit behavior in front of howling mobs for months on end. Nobody needs a bad man getting all this adoring attention. It’s bad for us, the way chocolate is bad for dogs – it doesn’t just spoil our appetite for dinner, it poisons our whole system.

The recording of him boasting about grabbing women “by the pussy”, long before he was a candidate, was unpleasant enough. More worrying still has been the insistence by many Trump supporters that his behaviour was normal.

Worrying but not the least bit surprising. After more than five years of being one of the targets of an organized group of Trump-like bullies, and of learning more about that whole culture or movement or whatever you want to call it – I can’t possibly be surprised at the fact that lots of people think Trump’s behavior is both normal and admirable.

Mercifully, America is not about to riot on November 9th. But the reasons have less to do with the state’s power to enforce the letter of the law than with the unwritten rules that American democracy thrives on. It is these that Mr Trump is trampling over—and which Americans need to defend.

If this seems exaggerated, consider what Mr Trump has introduced to political discourse this year: the idea that Muslims must be banned from entering the country; that a federal judge born of Mexican parents was unfit to preside over a case involving Mr Trump; that a reporter’s disability is ripe for mockery; that “crooked” Mrs Clinton must be watched lest she steal the election. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that when many bad things happen at once, societies define deviancy down, until the list of what is unacceptable is short enough to be manageable. When parents wonder if a presidential debate is suitable for their children to watch, Mr Trump’s promise to build a wall on the Mexican border no longer seems quite so shocking.

That may be Trump’s one skill – performing so many outrages that he gets us to sideline some of them while we try to deal with the worst/most recent.

The list of what’s unacceptable is way too long.

Another woman speaks up about an encounter with Trump years ago. This one is an actual example of “grab her by the pussy.”

Kristin Anderson was deep in conversation with acquaintances at a crowded Manhattan nightspot and did not notice the figure to her right on a red velvet couch — until, she recalls, his fingers slid under her miniskirt, moved up her inner thigh, and touched her vagina through her underwear.

Sorry to interrupt, but I wish people would get the wording right. You can’t touch someone “on” the vagina – it’s not an “on” kind of thing, especially not through underwear. It’s an in, not an on. Genitals, crotch, vulva – even pussy, but not on the vagina.

Anderson shoved the hand away, fled the couch and turned to take her first good look at the man who had touched her, she said.

She recognized him as Donald Trump: “He was so distinctive looking — with the hair and the eyebrows. I mean, nobody else has those eyebrows.”

At the time of the incident, which Anderson said took place in the early 1990s, she was in her early twenties, trying to make it as a model. She was paying the bills by working as a makeup artist and restaurant hostess. Trump was a big celebrity whose face was all over the tabloids and a regular presence on the New York club scene.

The episode, as Anderson described it, lasted no more than 30 seconds. Anderson said she and her companions were “very grossed out and weirded out” and thought, “Okay, Donald is gross. We all know he’s gross. Let’s just move on.”

So they did. She told people about it over the years, but didn’t officially report it to anyone.

Anderson, who said she doesn’t support Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton, did not initially approach The Post. A reporter contacted her after hearing her story from a person who knew of it, and she spent several days trying to decide whether to go public.

Anderson’s decision to do so follows last week’s disclosure by The Washington Post of a 2005 video in which Trump boasted to “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush that his celebrity gave him the ability to grab women “by the p—y. You can do anything.”

Trump insisted that his comments were “just words” and dismissed them as “locker room banter.”

Pressed about them in Sunday night’s debate against Clinton, Trump said that he had never done the things he had talked about, which would constitute sexual assault.

What Anderson described, however, is consistent with the behavior Trump described on the video.

It’s strikingly consistent with it. It’s not the more usual kind of harassment or assault – grabbing the more available, sticking-out bits. It’s actually “grabbing her by the pussy” and it’s startlingly crude and invasive.

“It wasn’t a sexual come-on. I don’t know why he did it. It was like just to prove that he could do it, and nothing would happen,” Anderson said. “There was zero conversation. We didn’t even really look at each other. It was very random, very nonchalant on his part.”

It was an expression of contempt, basically.

I feel like Michelle Obama, all over again. Can you believe this terrible, trashy guy is a candidate for president?

Anderson said that she was particularly disturbed by the way the video caught Trump and Bush, who were aboard a bus, crudely discussing Arianne Zucker, an actress they spotted waiting to escort them onto a soap-opera set. Bush has since been suspended from his subsequent job as co-host of NBC’s “Today” show, and the network is reportedly negotiating his departure.

“I watched this woman — who could have been me; it could have been anyone — walk in and shake his hand,” Anderson said. “That was just nauseating, because she has no idea what she was walking into, and what could possibly happen to her. And that’s just wrong.”

Yes it is.

As Anderson agonized over whether to tell her story publicly, the New York Times reported the accounts of two women who said that Trump had groped them, and a People magazine reporter wrote a first-person story claiming that in December 2005 Trump pushed her against a wall and began “forcing his tongue down my throat.”

That decided it for Anderson.

“It’s a sexual assault issue, and it’s something that I’ve kept quiet on my own,” Anderson said. “And I’ve always kept quiet. And why should I keep quiet? Actually, all of the women should speak up, and if you’re touched inappropriately, tell somebody and speak up about it. Actually go to the authorities and press some charges. It’s not okay.”

…

Only in recent years did the incident with Trump start to take on larger meaning to her, Anderson said.

“Every once in awhile it [would] come up in a ‘remember the time when . . .’ conversation and we [would] have a moment of disgust,” she wrote in an email to a Post reporter as she considered going on the record. “It didn’t cross my mind then that this person was a predator.”

Now, she said, she sees that sort of behavior as a “gateway” to something worse.

A stranger “sort of groping you on the side, on the sly, like you’re some kind of stuffed animal on the couch. That’s really not okay, and it opens the door for much worse behavior on [his] part and for the girl, allowing worse things to happen to them because they feel that it’s inconsequential.”

“It’s really not nothing, and it sends an awful message to women that they’re nothing,” she added.

We see you, Donald. We see you.

Oh god. We dive ever deeper into the sewer. Fox Business Network anchor Lou Dobbs tweeted the address and phone number of Jessica Leeds this morning.

I cannot wait for this to be over. It’s a little sliver of fascist hell all by itself, and we won’t recover from it in a hurry. This terrible human being is trashing the place.

The Times reports:

Donald J. Trump pushed back aggressively on Thursday against what he called “false smears” from women who claimed unwanted advances, seeking to stabilize his campaign as Michelle Obama declared “it doesn’t matter what party you belong to, no woman deserves to be treated this way.”

The dueling addresses showed how the race had been galvanized by reports of Mr. Trump’s behavior with the election less than four weeks away, with Mr. Trump calling the disclosures a “horror show of lies” as they increasingly consumed his campaign.

He’s projecting, as he always does. The horror show is coming from inside the house.

“Anyone who challenges them is deemed a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and morally deformed,” he said of the news media, repeatedly singling out the “failing New York Times.”

No, Donald – that’s you. You’re deemed those things because of the words that come out of your mouth.

At a rally Thursday in New Hampshire, Mrs. Obama, the first lady, ripped into Mr. Trump and said that his treatment of women was a sign of weakness. “We simply cannot endure this or expose our children to it any longer, not for another minute let alone another four years,” Mrs. Obama said.

She added, “Now is the time to stand up and say enough is enough.”

She’s profoundly shaken by the whole thing, as so many of us are. It’s not as if we focus on the sexism and racism and bullying because we want Trump to lose for some other, hidden, venal reason. The sexism and racism and bullying are the reasons. There are additional reasons, because Trump is generous that way, but they’re all of the same kind.

Jerry Falwell Jr., a prominent evangelical Christian leader who is the president of Liberty University in Virginia, said that he did not believe the allegations made against Mr. Trump and defended his character.

“That videotape that was released last week, I think there’s a different Donald Trump now,” Mr. Falwell told CNN. “Unlike Hillary, I believe all people are redeemable, and I believe his life has changed.”

I think most people are redeemable – but people with certain personality disorders maybe not. I think Trump is a wrong’un. I don’t think there’s anything in him that could make him change.

NPR has a transcript of a Trump speech today. I don’t watch his rallies, but I can stand to read some of a transcript, because it’s so much faster. It’s striking how crude and stupid it all is. But even more striking is how fascist it is.

For them it’s a war, and for them nothing at all is out of bounds. This is a struggle for the survival of our nation, believe me. And this will be our last chance to save it on Nov. 8, remember that.

This election will determine whether we are a free nation or whether we have only the illusion of democracy, but are in fact controlled by a small handful of global special interests rigging the system, and our system is rigged. This is reality, you know it, they know it, I know it, and pretty much the whole world knows it. The establishment and their media enablers will control over this nation through means that are very well known. Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, a racist, a xenophobe, and morally deformed.

They will attack you, they will slander you, they will seek to destroy your career and your family, they will seek to destroy everything about you, including your reputation. They will lie, lie, lie, and then again they will do worse than that, they will do whatever is necessary. The Clintons are criminals, remember that. They’re criminals.

This is well documented, and the establishment that protects them has engaged in a massive cover-up of widespread criminal activity at the State Department and the Clinton Foundation in order to keep the Clintons in power.

Never in history have we seen such a cover-up as this, one that includes the total destruction of 33,000 e-mails, 13 iPhones – some by hammer – laptops, missing boxes of evidence, and many, many other things.

It’s fascism. Lies and rage, intended to work people into a violent frenzy.

I know this isn’t news, it’s just that it’s so…blatant.

Then he explains how the New York Times is lying lying lying about him, and then he has a complete breakdown in communication between his brain and his mouth:

The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. The only force strong enough to save our country is us. The only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you, the American people.

We are going to have a policy: America first.

They control incredibly, the Department of Justice.

And they even secretly meet with the Attorney General of the United States. In the back of her airplane, while on the runway — remember he was there — he was going to play golf. Oh, oh gee, there’s the Attorney General. Let me go say hello — plane’s on the runway. Let me go say hello to the Attorney General. He never got to play golf, I understand. And it was Arizona, a place I love, but the weather was about a hundred and some odd degrees — he’s not gonna play. He was never there to play golf, folks, don’t be foolish.

They met for 39 minutes and most likely it was to discuss her reappointment, in a Clinton administration, as the Attorney General, just prior to making a decision over whether or not to prosecute Hillary Clinton, okay? That’s what happened. That’s called real life and that’s pretty sad.

They met for 39 minutes. Remember he said, we talked golf and we talked about our grandchildren. Three minutes for the grandchildren, two minutes for the golf, then they sat there and they twiddled their thumbs. Now I believe they talked about her remaining in her position under a crooked Hillary Clinton administration. That’s what I believe. That’s what I believe folks. That’s what I believe and I think that’s what most people in this room believe.

Then there’s a lot about what a martyr he is, and how kind of him it was to do this when he could have just enjoyed all his money instead.

The Times itself reports on the ridiculous libel threat.

Donald J. Trump threatened to sue The New York Times for libel on Wednesday night in response to an article that featured two women accusing him of touching them inappropriately years ago, but the newspaper defended its reporting and told Mr. Trump’s lawyer that “we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.”

See Arkell v Pressdram:

Dear Sirs,

We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr. J. Arkell.

We note that Mr Arkell’s attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off.

Yours,

Private Eye

The Times stands by the story.

David McCraw, vice president and assistant general counsel of The New York Times, followed up in a letter to Mr. Kasowitz and said that the article would not be retracted.

“The women quoted in our story spoke out on an issue of national importance – indeed, an issue that Mr. Trump himself discussed with the whole nation watching during Sunday night’s presidential debate,” Mr. McCraw wrote. “It would have been a disservice not just to our readers but to democracy itself to silence their voices.”

Mr. McCraw also made the case that the crux of a libel claim is that a person’s reputation has been damaged. However, Mr. Trump has repeatedly boasted in public about his “non-consensual sexual touching of women,” Mr. McCraw said.

It would be an interesting challenge to think of a way anyone could damage Donald Trump’s reputation.

The LA Times shares the letter a lawyer for the NY Times sent in response to a “shut up” letter from Trump’s lawyer.

Team Trump told the Times (the NY one from here on) to remove the story from their website and say they were sorry. They decline to do so.

The essence of a libel claim, of course, is the protection of one’s reputation.

Then a partial list of all the ways Trump has trashed his own reputation, starting with the fact that he has “bragged about his non-consensual sexual touching of women.”

Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr. Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself.

Hard to answer, innit. If you go around saying you did X, you won’t have much success claiming it’s libel to say you did the X you say you did.

Michelle Obama says it too – it’s not just the politics, the guy is a terrible human being.

First lady Michelle Obama delivered Thursday an impassioned denunciation of Donald Trump, calling the recently unearthed comments by the Republican presidential nominee “shocking” and “demeaning,” and below “basic standards of human decency.”

…

“I can’t believe I’m saying a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women,” Obama said.

…

Obama said the comments made by Trump in the video, which was recorded in 2005, had left her “shaken.”

“I can’t stop thinking about this,” she said. “It has shaken me to my core in a way I could not have predicted.”

She added: “I know this is a campaign but this isn’t about politics. It’s about basic human decency.”