• After Clinton pointed out Trump’s long record of lawsuits from contractors he had not paid, or had underpaid, he said: “Maybe he didn’t do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work.” That is, he viewed these transactions from the vantage point of the hard-to-please employer rather than the perhaps living paycheck-to-paycheck employee.
                                                                                                     
• When asked by Clinton about his own start in life, he said, “My father gave me a very small loan in 1975.” No one can feel sorry for Hillary Clinton in her current economic circumstances. But she did put this “small” loan in perspective: “He started his business with $14 million, borrowed from his father, and he really believes that the more you help wealthy people, the better off we’ll be and that everything will work out from there.”
                                                                                                     
• When asked about his pre-financial crash comment that he “sort of hoped” for a collapse of housing values, so he could buy up distressed properties, he said “That’s called business, by the way.” That’s a kind of business, but not necessarily the way we like to think of businesses.  It’s the business ethic of Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life or Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. It’s not the way any of the country’s really richest people, from Warren Buffett to Bill and Melinda Gates to Michael Bloomberg, would talk—or, significantly, would want to be remembered.

***

Will any of this matter? Of course I don’t know. Objectively, any one of these comments seems as potentially powerful as Mitt Romney’s “47 percent.” (As Thomas Friedman put it today in the NYT, “How do we put in the Oval Office a man who boasts that he tries to pay zero federal taxes but then complains that our airports and roads are falling apart and there is not enough money for our veterans?”) This year, all bets are off.

But think of this political calculation: the people who like Trump’s style and approach are already with him. But so far there don’t seem to be enough of them to produce 270 electoral votes. To win the election, Trump needs to attract new support from groups where he currently trails—notably women, Latinos, African Americans, young voters, and highly educated voters. Will these comments and this tone broaden Trump’s appeal among these groups? That’s the question for Trump and the country, with 40 days and a few hours to go.

***

Related bonus reading:

Michael Gerson, former GW Bush speechwriter, in the WaPo:

Trump’s defenders will charge his critics with elitism. The great public, it is argued, gets Trump in a way that the commenting class does not. But this claim is now fully exposed. The expectation of rationality is not elitism. Coherence is not elitism. Knowledge is not elitism. Honoring character is not elitism. And those who claim this are debasing themselves, their party and their country.

Michiko Kakutani, in a remarkable and pointed NYT review of a new Hitler biography by Volker Ullrich. Illustrative sample:

Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who “only loved himself” — a narcissist with a taste for self-dramatization and what Mr. Ullrich calls a “characteristic fondness for superlatives.” His manic speeches and penchant for taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his capacity for self-control, even his sanity. But Mr. Ullrich underscores Hitler’s shrewdness as a politician — with a “keen eye for the strengths and weaknesses of other people” and an ability to “instantaneously analyze and exploit situations.”

***

Republican politician. For 30 years, John Warner was a Republican Senator from Virginia. Before that, he had served as Richard Nixon’s Secretary of the Navy. He is from the pre-Tea Party version of the party, but he has been very much a Republican stalwart.

Today comes news that he will endorse Hillary Clinton and her running mate, current Virginia Senator Tim Kaine.

Think of the stand that publications like the Dallas Morning News and now the Arizona Republic are making, along with politicians like John Warner. And then think by contrast of the current Republican leadership of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, et al.

41 days to go.

This exchange, which in real life involved Trump’s interrupting Clinton, came during one of the rare mentions of climate issues:

CLINTON: Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it's real.

TRUMP: I did not. I did not. I do not say that.

CLINTON: I think science is real.

TRUMP: I do not say that.

Even as Trump was saying that, his own personal Twitter feed was still showing (and as I type still is) the message above, and the one below. (As a reminder, you can search the whole vast corpus of Trump tweets here.)

***

Is this the most consequential lie that took place during the debate? No. By my lights, his claim to have opposed the Iraq war is more significant; so too is his risible argument that he can’t release his tax returns because they are “under audit.”

But this one stood out to me because it was so blatant and bald—like his earlier claims that the Koch brothers had sought a meeting with him (which they immediately denied), and that the NFL had sent him a letter complaining that the debates were scheduled head-to-head against football games (which the NFL immediately denied).

Has Trump convinced himself these things are true? Does he imagine no one can check? Has he forgotten? Does he just not care? I don’t know. All public figures shade the truth. But what we’re seeing from Trump is something that in my experience has no precedent.

After her victory, she began gaining weight—and as the NYT reported back in May, Trump hectored her so relentlessly about being “fat” that she essentially had a breakdown. As the earlier story said:

Mr. Trump said he had pushed her to lose weight. “To that, I will plead guilty,” he said, expressing no regret for his tactics.

But the humiliation, Ms. Machado said, was unbearable. ... “I was sick, anorexia and bulimia for five years,” she said. “Over the past 20 years, I’ve gone to a lot of psychologists to combat this.”

***

Why might this be a moment that matters?

1. Trump is trailing among women voters, while running against the first-ever female major-party nominee; and the episode reminds women of the oppressive power of being judged on looks (as Susan Chira writes about in the NYT).


2. He is trailing badly with Hispanic voters, and this is a reminder that he called a pageant winner from Latin America “Miss Housekeeping.”


3. He won’t let it go. This is the incredible part. When asked about the episode this morning on Fox and Friends, part of the only network he will deal with any more, Trump dug in deeper, much as he had with Captain Khan’s family. You can see for yourself below if you’d like. Sample: “She was the winner, and she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”

Will this matter? Will it be, like “Mexican judge” (installment #7) or the Khan family (#65), something that seems incredible at the time but then is sort of factored into the “normal” reality of Trump? I don’t know. But noting it for the record, with 41 days to go.

1. Is this unusual? It certainly seems that way to me. But don’t listen to me; listen to the actual expert Fahrenthold quotes: “‘This is so bizarre, this laundry list of issues,’ said Marc Owens, the longtime head of the Internal Revenue Service office that oversees nonprofit organizations who is now in private practice. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen this, and I’ve been doing this for 25 years in the IRS, and 40 years total.’”


2. No nominee in the modern era has had financial arrangements as tangled as Trump’s. Every single major-party nominee since Richard Nixon has disclosed his taxes. Trump, alone, stonewalls. If he gets away with it, this norm in campaign transparency probably will not be restored.


3. Every time Fahrenthold asked Trump or his representatives about these transactions, they flat-out denied any of them had taken place, until presented one-by-one with evidence to the contrary. Implication: Anything else they say about his finances should be viewed with extreme skepticism. Also: Presumably there is a reason he refuses to release the information all other recent nominees have turned over.


4. For years, and most recently yesterday on the front page of the New York Times, the affairs of the Clinton Foundation, have been the subject of stories about “lingering questions,” “clouds of doubt,” “images of corruption.” Nothing that has even been alleged about Clinton Foundation finances comes close to what is now on the record about the Trump Foundation. This is not a rationalization of anything the Clintons have done wrong; but it underscores the difference in scale between the two operations.

Forty-two days and a few hours until the election; two hours until the debate.

Both the Los Angeles Times, one of my boyhood hometown papers (along with the Redlands Daily Facts and the San Bernardino Sun), and the New York Times have weighed in this weekend. Each is worth reading in full, but I’ll offer samples.

The LAT endorsement begins this way, and then gets harsher:

American voters have a clear choice on Nov. 8. We can elect an experienced, thoughtful and deeply knowledgeable public servant or a thin-skinned demagogue who is unqualified and unsuited to be president.

You can see the headline of the LAT editorial below.

And as for the NYT, which is mainly a positive case for Hillary Clinton and her accomplishments, it makes a point similar to Bernie Sanders’s on the much- huffed-about email controversy:

We believe Mr. Trump to be the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history…

Mrs. Clinton ... has learned hard lessons from the three presidents she has studied up close. She has also made her own share of mistakes. She has evinced a lamentable penchant for secrecy and made a poor decision to rely on a private email server while at the State Department. That decision deserved scrutiny, and it’s had it. Now, considered alongside the real challenges that will occupy the next president, that email server, which has consumed so much of this campaign, looks like a matter for the help desk. And, viewed against those challenges, Mr. Trump shrinks to his true small-screen, reality-show proportions

It might not seem surprising that the NYT would endorse the Democratic candidate. It is, or should be, very surprising that the Dallas Morning News and the Cincinnati Enquirer would do so, given that they have been rock-ribbed Republican editorial-page operations for generations.

***

3) Conservative national-security leaders. It is similarly surprising that Donald Gregg, who was national security advisor to George H.W. Bush during his time as Ronald Reagan’s vice president, has come out saying that he would vote for Hillary Clinton. Sample:

"We now have a person at the top of the Republican ticket who I believe is dangerous, doesn't understand the complex world we live in, doesn't care to, and is without any moral or international philosophy," Gregg said in a statement.

"I’ve met Hillary Clinton a number of times and followed her career in public service. I'm impressed with her knowledge and experience. She would make an extremely good president."

Really, the likes of this have not happened before.

There are 43 days and a few hours until the election; early voting starting soon; the GOP candidate is still stonewalling on his tax returns, which if he wins will mean (among other things) that no candidate ever again will bother to release tax information; and the GOP establishment is still saying: He’s fine.

You can say what you want about Hillary Clinton’s performance skills as a campaigner, and we’ll have another important chance to assess them just two days from now in the first debate. (Preview here.)

But I think it is hard to dispute that her video-ad team is very skillful. Consider also their “Role Models” ad from two months ago:

Noting this for the record, with 44 days and a few hours to go, as one more aspect of the 2016 campaign that people may re-visit years from now.

Probably because she is so very familiar a figure on the U.S. political scene, Hillary Clinton’s pioneering role as potentially America’s first female president has attracted less sizzle than the brand-new Barack Obama did during the 2008 campaign, as potentially the first black president. But an ad like “Mirrors” may make the point more pointedly than another “glass ceiling” speech.

We fear the damage that such ineptitude could cause in our closest relationships as well as the succor it might offer our enemies.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s handling of foreign affairs has consistently sought to advance fundamental U.S. interests with a deep grounding in the work of the many tens of thousands of career officers on whom our national security depends. Not every one of us has agreed with every decision she made (and the same would be true of every one of her predecessors), but we have profound respect for her skills, dedication, intelligence, and diplomacy.

If you’ve followed international affairs, you’ll recognize a lot of names on this list, including a number who were prominent under Republican presidents Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes.

This statement follows similar anti-Trump and/or pro-Clinton statements by former intelligence officers, foreign-policy officials and scholars, military figures, and others, as summarized in dispatch #109. Some veterans of the foreign-policy world express their preferences during each election. I am aware of nothing comparable to this, from usually above-the-fray career diplomats. It’s a bookend to the also-remarkable statement from 50 Republican former cabinet members and other senior officials, who said Trump would be “the most reckless president in American history.”

***

2. The Boss. In some different political world, you might imagine Donald Trump being so authentic a vessel for the interests of left-behind America that Bruce Springsteen would want to tour with and support him. (This 2014 Politico article by Marc Dolan about Springsteen’s political evolution, from apolitical rock star to someone conscious of being a voice of the working class, is fascinating.)

Instead, in a new interview with Brian Hitt of Rolling Stone, Springsteen leads off by saying:

The republic is under siege by a moron, basically. The whole thing is tragic. Without overstating it, it's a tragedy for our democracy.

In the context of “under siege by a moron,” the brilliant teaser for Frontline’s The Choice is worth watching very closely. The final minute of this video has become famous in the past 24 hours, for Omarosa Manigault’s soliloquy:  “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.”     

But the five-minute clip as a whole suggests that rage at being disrespected is a very important part of Trump’s drive right now. The clip focuses on Barack Obama’s relentless public mockery of Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner five years ago. I was there at the time, in easy eyeshot of Trump, and I recall him looking even more steamingly bitter than you can see in this clip. Frontline suggests that those few minutes of public ridicule played more than a small part in the “siege by a moron” predicament the U.S. confronts today.

Whether or not that stands up, it’s obvious that the quest to dominate, to be seen as dominant, to humiliate, to get revenge, plays an even larger part in Trump’s mixture of motivation than for politicians as a whole. The theme of “I’ll show them!” is of course familiar in our politics. Lyndon Johnson was going to show the Ivy-League boys who looked down on him. Richard Nixon was going to show everybody. Jimmy Carter was hyper-conscious of anti-Southern snobbery. And on down a long list.

But what we’re seeing with this man is something new.

***

3. Enquirer. In installment #97 I noted that the Dallas Morning News, whose editorial page is as reliably conservative as any in the country, came out and endorsed Hillary Clinton. The also-very-conservative Richmond Times Dispatch took the halfway-house step of endorsing Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Today the Cincinnati Enquirer, a rival to the DMN for most-conservative title, joined it in an editorial titled “It has to be Hillary.” Sample of the argument:

The Enquirer has supported Republicans for president for almost a century—a tradition this editorial board doesn’t take lightly. But this is not a traditional race, and these are not traditional times. Our country needs calm, thoughtful leadership to deal with the challenges we face at home and abroad. We need a leader who will bring out the best in all Americans, not the worst.

That’s why there is only one choice when we elect a president in November: Hillary Clinton.

I am a Democrat by voting history and small-l liberal in most policy preferences. My esteem for small-c conservatives and capital-R Republicans who are willing to recognize the reality of Trump steadily rises. If Trump had remained a Democrat and somehow became that party’s nominee, I would swallow hard and vote for any sane-world Republican who ran against him. Thus I respect the conservatives and Republicans who are taking the counterpart step.

***

So it stands with 45 days until the election, three days until the first debate, and still no tax data forthcoming from Trump—a point the Enquirer addressed this way:

His refusal to release his tax returns draws into question both Trump’s true income and whether he is paying his fair share of taxes. Even if you consider Trump a successful businessman, running a government is not the same as being the CEO of a company. The United States cannot file bankruptcy to avoid paying its debts.

• The current U.S. president, as reported in Time Capsule #67;
• Apart from Gates, two other former CIA heads, including one who said Trump had become “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” in #70;
• A former Prime Minister of Sweden, calling Trump “a serious threat to the security of the West,” #61;
• Some 50 former military, intelligence, and foreign-policy appointees from Republican administrations, “most reckless president in American history,” #72;
• Another 160-plus foreign policy experts—“Mr. Trump’s foreign policy vision has inspired alarm … in allied capitals throughout the world”—also #61;
• A former Republican president, by implication in saying that he would take the unprecedented step of voting for the Democratic rival, #107.

So it stands with 47 days to go, no tax records or non-Dr. Bornstein medical information forthcoming, and the Republican establishment saying: He’s fine.

To say it once more: nothing like this has happened before.

***

Colin Powell? Condi Rice? George Tenet? Your G.W. Bush-era Cabinet colleagues Robert Gates, and before him Henry Paulson, Michael Hayden, Michael Chertoff, John Negroponte, Tom Ridge, and others have set the precedent of doing the right thing. Dick Cheney will never do so, but you have the opportunity, and not just in leaked emails.