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.”

Several news outlets have posted updated lists of the current accusations of sexual assault by Trump. New York mag is one.

It was just last week that a tape emerged of Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women. Since then, Trump has been accused of harassment and assault by anumber of women, with several coming forward to share their harrowing stories of alleged misconduct by a so-called “megalomaniac” who also happens to be running for president. The Cut has compiled a list of all the new allegations against Trump, as well as past accusations of assault, harassment, and discrimination by women.

They will probably have to update it regularly.

Some of the new ones:

Kissing a Former Miss USA Contestant Twice Without Consent

Former Miss USA contestant Temple Taggart McDowell claims Trump kissed her on the lips on at least two occasions without consent when she was just 21 years old. In 1997, McDowell was representing Utah in the beauty pageant, and was “shocked” that he thought he had the right to kiss her on the lips, according to the Daily Beast. After one of the kisses, a woman who accompanied her to Trump Tower allegedly warned her not to go into a room alone with Trump. McDowell told NBC News, “I would never approach or greet somebody like that unless it was somebody that I had been dating.” Trump has called the accusation “ridiculous.”

And yet we know he has told people he kisses women without asking. We heard the Tic Tac box rattling.

Sexually Assaulting a People Magazine Writer

Natasha Stoynoff, a staff writer at People, came forward as an alleged victim of Trump on October 12. In an essay, Stoynoff wrote that Trump assaulted her and forcibly kissed her in 2005 while she was on assignment for the magazine. At the time, Stoynoff was asked to interview Trump and wife Melania on their one-year anniversary at Mar-a-Lago. While there, Trump allegedly insisted upon giving her a tour. Stoynoff wrote:

“We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds, he was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat. Now, I’m a tall, strapping girl who grew up wrestling two giant brothers. I even once sparred with Mike Tyson. It takes a lot to push me. But Trump is much bigger — a looming figure — and he was fast, taking me by surprise, and throwing me off balance. I was stunned. And I was grateful when Trump’s longtime butler burst into the room a minute later, as I tried to unpin myself.”

Afterward, Trump reportedly told Stoynoff that the two were going to have an affair. The writer says she didn’t report the assault at the time, as she both blamed herself and wrote it off as one of the risks associated with her job.

At the time, she didn’t know he’d be a candidate for president of the US. No one knew that. I doubt that many people fantasized about how great it would be.

Groping a Woman at Mar-a-Lago

Mindy McGillivray claims Donald Trump groped her 13 years ago while she was visiting Mar-a-Lago with her companion, photographer Ken Davidoff. According to the Palm Beach Post, Davidoff brought his friend McGillivray with him to the estate while he covered a concert by Ray Charles. Only 23 at the time, McGillivray allegedly had her ass grabbed by Trump while he stood next to his then-fiancée, Melania.

Well her ass was just standing there right next to him. What was he supposed to do, not grab it? That would be sheer waste! Think of the starving children in Whereverstan! Waste is criminal.

Groping Miss Washington USA 2013

In a Facebook post earlier this year, former Miss Washington USA Cassandra Searles claimed Trump grabbed her ass and invited her back to his hotel room, according toRolling Stone. She called Trump a “misogynist” and accused him of treating women like cattle. Searles wrote that he “lined up [contestants] so he could get a closer look at his property,” a claim that has been corroborated by Paromita Mitra of Mississippi.

Walking in on Teen Pageant Contestants While They Were Changing

Four women who competed in the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant have accused Trump of walking into their dressing room while the contestants were changing, BuzzFeed News reported. Mariah Billado, a former Miss Vermont Teen USA, told BuzzFeed News that the contestants (who ranged in age from 14 to 19) were “just scrambling” to grab whatever garments they had when he walked in. She said, “I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here.’” Trump reportedly responded something along the lines of, “Don’t worry, I’ve seen it all before.”

Since he boasted to Howard Stern about doing exactly that, we have little reason to doubt the story.

Sexually Harassing a Woman During the 1993 White House Correspondents’ Dinner

When Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter invited Trump to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 1993 as a “novelty guest,” he allegedly got more than he bargained for. Forty-five minutes after Trump sat down next to Swedish model Vendela Kirsebom, Carter claims she came over to his table, almost in tears, begging him to move her. “It seems that Trump had spent his entire time with her assaying the ‘tits’ and legs of the other female guests and asking how they measured up to those of other women, including his wife,” Carter wrote. ‘“He is,’ she told me, in words that seemed familiar, ‘the most vulgar man I have ever met.’”

And last, for now –

Hiring Women Based on Appearances

Trump gave writer Mark Singer a tour of Mar-a-Lago for an article in TheNew Yorkerin 1997. Singer wrote that Trump introduced him to the property’s resident physician, Dr. Ginger Lea Southall. When she was out of earshot, Singer asked Trump where Southall had been trained.

Trump replied, “I’m not sure. Baywatch Medical School? Does that sound right? I’ll tell you the truth. Once I saw Dr. Ginger’s photograph, I didn’t really need to look at her résumé or anyone else’s. Are you asking, ‘Did we hire her because she’d trained at Mount Sinai for fifteen years?’ The answer is no. And I’ll tell you why: because by the time she’s spent fifteen years at Mount Sinai, we don’t want to look at her.”

The most vulgar man anyone has ever met.

I was thinking what L. V. Anderson says at Slate: that Clinton’s ability to stay calm, cheerful, reasonable, and coherent during that trainwreck of a “debate” on Sunday is a kind of superpower. I was thinking the whole time how totally impossible I would find that. I was thinking about the years of experience she’s had, as a practicing lawyer as well as a campaigner and politician, that must have helped train her, but also that it’s still a superpower.

Trump was as ugly and uninspiring as usual. But here’s what people haven’t been saying in the days since the debate: Hillary was inspiring as all get out.

Yes, I’m familiar with all the arguments against Hillary as inspirer-in-chief. She’s part of the establishment. She’s laden with potential conflicts of interest. Her judgment during the whole email thing was poor. She seems, to many observers, wooden and robotic. Fine. The fact remains that Hillary stood onstage and calmly and persuasively made the case for her candidacy while her looming, lurching, lunatic opponent attempted to humiliate her in front of the entire world. If Hillary can do that, then the rest of us can do whatever we put our minds to.

Wait, there’s more. Two women say Trump groped or kissed them.

At the debate he said it was just talk; he’d never actually done it.

At that moment, sitting at home in Manhattan, Jessica Leeds, 74, felt he was lying to her face. “I wanted to punch the screen,” she said in an interview in her apartment.

More than three decades ago, when she was a traveling businesswoman at a paper company, Ms. Leeds said, she sat beside Mr. Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York. They had never met before.

About 45 minutes after takeoff, she recalled, Mr. Trump lifted the armrest and began to touch her.

According to Ms. Leeds, Mr. Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.

Tried to grab her by the pussy, in short.

Mr. Trump’s claim that his crude words had never turned into actions was similarly infuriating to a woman watching on Sunday night in Ohio: Rachel Crooks.

Ms. Crooks was a 22-year-old receptionist at Bayrock Group, a real estate investment and development company in Trump Tower in Manhattan, when she encountered Mr. Trump outside an elevator in the building one morning in 2005.

Aware that her company did business with Mr. Trump, she turned and introduced herself. They shook hands, but Mr. Trump would not let go, she said. Instead, he began kissing her cheeks. Then, she said, he “kissed me directly on the mouth.”

But he’s supposed to be allowed to do that, because he’s a star. He said so himself.

In a phone interview on Tuesday night, a highly agitated Mr. Trump denied every one of the women’s claims.

“None of this ever took place,” said Mr. Trump, who began shouting at The Times reporter who was questioning him. He said that The Times was making up the allegations to hurt him and that he would sue the news organization if it reported them.

“You are a disgusting human being,” he told the reporter as she questioned him about the women’s claims.

No, Trump, that’s you. You’re the disgusting human being. It’s not Clinton who’s full of hate, it’s you. You’re projecting.

Asked whether he had ever done any of the kissing or groping that he had described on the recording, Mr. Trump was once again insistent: “I don’t do it. I don’t do it. It was locker room talk.”

But for the women who shared their stories with The Times, the recording was more than that: As upsetting as it was, it offered them a kind of affirmation, they said.

That was the case for Ms. Taggart. Mr. Trump’s description of how he kisses beautiful women without invitation described precisely what he did to her, she said.

“I just start kissing them,” Mr. Trump said on the tape. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”

“Wait” as in “wait to ask and to receive an affirmative answer.”

Leeds didn’t complain to a flight attendant at the time because she was all too familiar with handsy men in business.

“We accepted it for years,” she said of the conduct. “We were taught it was our fault.”

She recalled bumping into Mr. Trump at a charity event in New York about two years later, and said he seemed to recall her, insulting her with a crude remark.

She had largely put the encounter on the plane out of her mind until last year, when Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign became more serious. Since then, she has told a widening circle of people, including her son, a nephew and two friends, all of whom were contacted by The Times.

They said they were sickened by what they heard. “It made me shake,” said Linda Ross, a neighbor and friend who spoke with Ms. Leeds about the interaction about six months ago. Like several of Ms. Leeds’s friends, Ms. Ross encouraged her to tell her story to the news media. Ms. Leeds had resisted until Sunday’s debate, which she watched with Ms. Ross.

That’s interesting. She resisted until the debate – until Anderson Cooper asked him straight up if he’d done it and he said no. Until she felt like punching the tv.

Guess who’s the disgusting human being here.

Jessica Lussenhop at the BBC is another who points out that it’s unfortunate the Central Park 5 story got buried last week by the boasting of sexual assault story.

The heinous attack was committed while New York City was in the throes of a crack epidemic and the number of homicides were reaching all-time highs.

In this climate, and in response to the attack, Donald Trump – then known only as the flashy real estate developer who had just purchased the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City – took out a full-page ad in four New York newspapers.

“Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police!” the ad read.

“I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyse or understand them, I am looking to punish them,” he continued.

“Civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins!”

That’s Trump. He’s not looking to understand anything.

But in 2002 serial rapist and convicted murderer Matias Reyes confessed he’d done the crime on his own, and DNA evidence confirmed it.

Nevertheless, Mr Trump has never apologised for his ads or acknowledged the existence of the true perpetrator.

To this day, he insists the Central Park Five are guilty.

But very soon after he told CNN that, the rapey comments story broke, and grabbed all the attention.

In the ensuing uproar, the Central Park Five comments were lost.

With them went an opportunity to carefully examine why Mr Trump refuses to accept the exonerations of the five men, and what implications that has for a Trump presidency.

There were no questions about it at the Sunday debate.

However, many prominent observers want the moment marked.

“Apparently Mr Trump is unfamiliar with the concept of wrongful conviction,” tweeted documentarian Ken Burns, who made a critically acclaimed film about the bungled investigation and prosecution of the five boys.

“He should be apologising for calling for their death, not claiming they’re guilty,”tweeted California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom. “This is not ‘law and order’.”

Some, like the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, called Mr Trump’s stance blatantly racist.

“For young African American and Latino men, Trump has a clear and ominous message: You must be guilty of something. Not even scientific proof can convince him otherwise,” Robinson wrote.

“If that is not racism, the word has no meaning.”

Or his ominous message is even: It doesn’t matter whether you’re guilty or not, you need to be punished anyway.

I’ll be so glad when this is over.

NPR reports that Trump is apparently quoting Russian propaganda in order to slime Clinton some more.

A riff by Donald Trump at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Monday night about Hillary Clinton’s culpability in the deaths of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, is raising questions about where exactly Trump got his information and how.

During his speech, Trump held up a piece of paper. “This just came out a little while ago. I have to tell you this,” Trump said as he read from the page, which he identified as an email from Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal.

“The attack was almost certainly preventable,” Trump read. He continued, “Clinton was in charge of the State Department … if the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate.”

Trump said, “In other words he [Blumenthal] is admitting that they could have done something about Benghazi. This just came out, a little while ago.”

Trump folded the page and let it fall to the floor, and his audience booed.

But – surprise surprise – it’s just another Trump lie.

For Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald, the words Trump read sounded familiar. It turns out they were taken from an article he wrote, which Blumenthal had included in an email. So they were not Blumenthal’s words, but Eichenwald’s.

The misconstrued “email” that Trump was reading had appeared in an article on a Russia-funded website called Sputnik, which has since taken it down.

You can see the original in a screen grab from The Washington Post.

Eichenwald asked in Newsweek “Who in the Trump campaign was feeding him falsehoods straight from the Kremlin?”

Roger Ailes? Rudy Giuliani? His hairdresser?

The Blumenthal email containing the Eichenwald story was posted by WikiLeaks, and apparently hacked from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s account.

The Obama administration stated last week it is confident that Russia is behind the hacking, which it asserts is “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

It just couldn’t be any more squalid, could it.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights doesn’t think much of Donald Trump.

Mr Hussein said at a news briefing in Geneva: “If Donald Trump is elected on the basis of what he has said already – and unless that changes – I think it is without any doubt that he would be dangerous from an international point of view.”

Mr Hussein said he was “not keen or intent on interfering in any political campaign within any particular country”.

But he said that when an election could result in an increase in the use of torture “or the focus on vulnerable communities in a way that suggests that they may well be deprived of their human rights, then I think it is incumbent to say so”.

That’s sweetly understated. Trump has been very clear about his contempt for human rights.

During the campaign, Mr Trump has said that “torture works” and has promised to bring back “a lot worse than waterboarding”.

Waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques previously used by US forces on terror suspects have been banned by the Obama administration.

Mr Trump said of waterboarding in June: “I like it a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough.”

His comments on migrants, Mexicans in particular, have drawn fire from rights activists.

He has vowed to build a wall along the Mexican border and in June 2015 branded some Mexican migrants “rapists” and “murderers”.

He’s disgraced us all. It will take years to live it down.

John Scalzi on Trump as the worst ever and the inevitable result of what the Republican Party has been up to.

He’s not some weird “how did that happen??” but the natural outcome of the Republicans’ steady march to the right.

Well, surprise! Here’s Donald Trump. He is the actual and physical embodiment of every single thing the GOP has trained its base to want and to be over the last forty years — ignorant, bigoted and money-grubbing, disdainful of facts and frightened of everything because of it, an angry drunk buzzed off of wood-grain patriotism, threatening brown people and leering at women. He was planned. He was intended. He was expected. He was wanted.

Only, they wanted someone more charming about it, more telegenic, more adorable. They didn’t want an angry pumpkin who can’t string a coherent sentence together. Also they wanted a Republican, someone they could control. Trump is a Trumpist instead of a Republican.

And this is why the GOP deserves the chaos that’s happening to it now, with its appalling and parasitic standard bearer, who will never be president, driving his GOP host body toward the cliff. If it accepts the parasite, it will be driven off the cliff. If it resists, the parasite Trump will rip himself from it, leaving bloody marks as it does so, and then shove the dazed and wounded GOP from the precipice.

…

Trump was never about being a Republican; he was just looking to expand his brand. As it turns out, like apparently so many things Trump does, he’s done an awful job of it — the name Trump, formerly merely associated with garish ostentation and bankruptcy, is now synonymous with white nationalism, sexual battery and failure — but the point is on November 9th Trump is going to move on and leave the wreckage of the GOP in his wake, off to his next thing (everyone assumes “Trump TV,” in which Trump combines with Breitbart to make white pride propaganda for the kind of millennial racist who thinks a Pepe the Frog Twitter icon is the height of wit — and I hope he does, because the Trump touch will drive that enterprise into the ground, and little would warm my heart more than a bankrupt Breitbart).

I don’t know – I think the GOP will just dust itself off and laugh ruefully and go right back to being the home of the Tea Party.

H/t G Felis