Even Mort Zuckerman doesn’t like Trump. The Daily News is all over him.

When the Daily News Editorial Board strives to identify the person who offers the greatest promise to brighten the futures of Americans and to safeguard the national security.

Never have we questioned a candidate’s fitness to serve.

Then came Donald Trump — liar, thief, bully, hypocrite, sexual victimizer and unhinged, self-adoring demagogue.

If even the Daily News can see it, everyone can see it.

The 16-month campaign since Trump vaingloriously entered the race has horrifyingly revealed that the Big Lie brazenly told — built on smaller falsehoods and spread by social media and a lust for TV ratings — can bring the United States to the

Speaking of Trump, I found this pretty hilarious –

Michael Nugent

The Al Smith Dinner helped to humanise Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who are both demonised beyond their actual flaws.

Hahaha yes the two are exactly equivalent.

No but seriously – it’s beyond me how anyone who’s not as awful as Trump is himself can say that. Trump puts his actual flaws on display at all times. He makes it quite impossible to overlook them.

Nugent was also tweeting up a storm about how it doesn’t matter that Trump has refused to say he’ll accept the election results if he loses. Easy for him to say from the other side of the Atlantic.… Read the rest

Another woman for Trump to threaten to sue.

Adult-film star and sex educator Jessica Drake is the latest woman to accuse Donald Trump of moving on her sexually without consent. At a live Los Angeles press-conference Saturday with lawyer Gloria Allred, Drake accused the Republican presidential nominee of “uncontrollable misogyny, entitlement, and being a sexual assault apologist,” and claimed he kissed her and two other women without their consent upon meeting them in 2006. Drake also said Trump offered to pay her for sex.

According to Drake, she and the other women were invited by Trump back to his Lake Tahoe hotel suite after meeting him at a golf tournament. Once there, Trump allegedly grabbed each of them tightly

So Trump gave a talk today in Gettysburg – as one does, hoping some of the cred that Lincoln picked up there will transfer. Slate chose a nice photo to show Trump in Lincoln mode:

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

After weeks of scandal after scandal, Donald Trump was meant to focus on policy. His Saturday address in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was billed as the chance for Trump to show why voters should choose him over Hillary Clinton. The speech would “set the tone” for the final weeks of the campaign as Trump would make the case for why he is “the change-agent our country needs,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s national policy director said before the speech.

Right at the beginning of

From Pliny the in Between:

 … Read the rest

Let’s go back back back in time, to April 2011.

Donald J. Trump arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April 2011, reveling in the moment as he mingled with the political luminaries who gathered at the Washington Hilton. He made his way to his seat beside his host, Lally Weymouth, the journalist and socialite daughter of Katharine Graham, longtime publisher of The Washington Post.

A short while later, the humiliation started.

The annual dinner features a lighthearted speech from the president; that year, President Obama chose Mr. Trump, then flirting with his own presidential bid, as a punch line.

He lampooned Mr. Trump’s gaudy taste in décor. He ridiculed his fixation on false rumors that

Steve Almond wrote about Trump’s contempt for women back in September…which seems like such a dewily innocent time now.

Trump’s central motive for entering the race, after all, was the shame he suffered after being laughed at during a fancy banquet.

He has spent much of the campaign stoking racial and religious resentment. This “politics of scorn” is nothing new in American politics.

But his preoccupation with humiliating and hurting women is unprecedented. To put it bluntly: We’ve never dealt with a politician — let alone a presidential candidate — so nakedly insecure about his manhood, and so hostile towards women.

As a reality TV star, Trump could get away with saying things like, “must be a pretty

… Read the rest

Jim Wright on Facebook:

Trump is now actively promoting the conspiracy theory that Clinton was given last night’s debate questions in advance

Guess what?

He’s right.

It was obvious Clinton knew all the questions in advance.

BECAUSE NONE OF THEM WERE IN ANY WAY A SURPRISE.

Leaving aside the utterly ludicrous idea Fox News would (even without the clammy groping right wing hand of Roger Ailes) help out HILLARY GODDAMNED CLINTON in any way, only somebody so appallingly ignorant of reality as Donald Trump could possibly NOT know what questions were going to come up in last night’s debate.

Let’s review, shall we?

First Question: Supreme Court.

Wow. What a surprise. There is no way Clinton could have seen

Dr Jennifer Gunter explains about late-term abortions.

The third and final Presidential debate focused very quickly on abortion. Clinton defended choice and Trump, not one to be bothered with facts, countered with this doozy of line:

“I think it’s terrible if you go with what Hillary is saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that’s okay, and Hillary can say that that’s okay, but it’s not okay with me. Because based on what she’s saying and based on where she’s going and where she’s been, you can take the baby and

So did you watch it? I watched it except for the last few minutes. I laughed at his furious scowl, his “I shoulda got that,” his “You’re the puppet.” I gaped in astonishment when he wouldn’t say he would accept the outcome of the election. I cringed when he said “bad hombres.” I missed “Such a nasty woman.”

The Washington Post:

[T]he more damaging impression that average voters will be left with from Las Vegas is Trump’s total lack of self-discipline.

Truth. It was an astonishing thing to see. We could tell he was trying, at first, to discipline that rowdy self of his. He spoke more soberly and quietly for the first few minutes, and a little bit … Read the rest

Talking Points Memo on Trump and voter intimidation.

Civil rights  groups are already gearing up for an especially tense Election Day. Meanwhile, the federal government has been hobbled by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling in its ability to monitor elections in places with histories of voter intimidation. Of particular concern are states with loose open carry laws, where already, some armed Trump supporters have shown an interest in making their presence known at voting sites.

“The idea that people would be standing outside the polls with guns, or even inside the polls with guns, clearly has the potential to turn people away. There’s a long history of this,” said Deuel Ross, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund,

The Boston Globe a few days ago on Trump’s paranoia-stoking.

“It’s one big fix,’’ Trump said Friday afternoon in Greensboro, N.C. “This whole election is being rigged.’’

He saved some of his harshest criticism for the media, which he said is in league with Clinton to steal the election.

“The media is indeed sick, and it’s making our country sick, and we’re going to stop it,” he said.

Mainstream Republicans are watching these developments at the top of the ticket with a growing sense of alarm, calling Trump’s latest conspiracy theories of a rigged election irresponsible and dangerous. They also say the impact of voter fraud or errors on the outcome of elections is vastly overblown.

It surprises me … Read the rest

The Times editorial board says Republicans should stop ignoring Trump’s lies about a “rigged” election.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, are the two most powerful Republicans in the country and should be willing to put the national interest above their own. Both know full well that there is no “rigging,” and yet between them they have managed one tepid response to Mr. Trump’s outrageous accusations: “Our democracy relies on confidence in election results,” Mr. Ryan’s spokeswoman said, “and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.”

This is like standing back while an arsonist pours gasoline all over your house, then expressing confidence that the

Rebecca Solnit did a public Facebook post about the second debate as a display of domestic violence behavior. There are roughly a million comments on it, expressing how reminiscent Trump is of every abuser people have ever known.

I realized it was like watching a domestic-violence relationship for 90 minutes. He endeavored to humiliate and shame her sexually, menace and intimidate her physically, silence her by talking over her, discrediting her, upstaging her, invading her space repeatedly, and putting his rage on display. Men use rage to instill fear. I’ve talked to people who wondered if he was going to physically assault her, and he certainly loomed as if he might, while he ran through his crazy bunchy-faced scowling,

The disgust only deepens.

Donald Trump keeps peddling the notion the vote may be rigged. It’s unclear whether he understands the potential damage of his words, or simply doesn’t care.

Oh please, it’s very clear that he’s doing it because he wants to. He’s a narcissist, and what he wants is all that counts.

Trump’s claim, made without evidence, undercuts the essence of American democracy, the idea that U.S. elections are free and fair, with the vanquished peacefully stepping aside for the victor. His repeated assertions are sowing suspicion among his most ardent supporters, raising the possibility that millions of people may not accept the results on Nov. 8 if Trump loses.

It’s no skin off his nose. If … Read the rest

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,

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

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:

… Read the rest

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