The male Trumps are of course very clued-in and wise about sexual harassment. Like Eric Trump for example:

In an interview with “CBS This Morning,” the son of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump seemed to think that women allowed sexual harassment to occur.

Eric Trump was responding to a comment his father made in a USA Today piece, in which he said that his daughter Ivanka would either find a different career or job if she was harassed in the workplace.

“I think what he’s saying is, Ivanka is a strong, powerful woman, she wouldn’t allow herself to be objected to it,” the younger Trump said. “And by the way, you should take it up with Human Resources, and I

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is speaking at a Mike Pence event today.

Arpaio, a longtime supporter of Trump, spoke on his behalf at the convention.

“I have spent 55 years in law enforcement,” Arpaio told delegates and attendees. “Fifty-five years, I’ve always regarded my work [and] missions critical, but my most important mission has just begun: to help elect Donald Trump president of the United States. The stakes are high. We need a strong leader who will stand up for America and put the interests of her citizens first.”

Not including the ones who have the misfortune to be in the Maricopa County prison system, of course. Arpaio doesn’t want A Strong Leader (a führer) to put their interests first, … Read the rest

Two of Trump’s sons have paid big bucks to slaughter charismatic megafauna in Africa.

Animal rights activists are revolted by a series of trophy photos that have emerged showing Eric and Donald Trump Jr. posing with a dead elephant, kudu, civet cat and waterbuck while on a big game safari in Zimbabwe last year. In one photo, Donald Jr. proudly holds a dead elephant tail in one hand and a knife in the other.

“Look at me! I made this animal dead because I have a big gun! Animals are losers, they don’t have guns.”

The big game safari was organized through a company called Hunting Legends. The Daily Mail reports that there are trophy fees for the deer-like

(No, it’s not going to be all Trump all the time from now on. But…clear and present danger, and all that.)

Jim Wright says what I say – McCain doesn’t get to say Trump doesn’t represent the Republican Party, because he obviously and absolutely does.

John McCain said this morning Donald Trump does not “represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.”

Donald Trump doesn’t NOT represent the views of our Republican Party.

Its Officers.

Or its CANDIDATES.

Has no one told Johnny Walnuts that Donald Trump IS the Republican Party’s official nominee for President of the United States and in point of fact DOES represent the Republican Party, its Officers, its members, and all its Candidates

John McCain isn’t happy with Trump’s attacks on Khizr and Ghazala Khan.

Mr McCain, a war veteran and the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, thanked the Khan family for immigrating to America, adding “we’re a better country because of you.”

“I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement,” Mr McCain said in a statement.

“I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.”

Ah  no. Sorry but that claim is dead in the water. You can’t say that when the guy who made the remarks is the Republican candidate for president. You’re stuck with them, because you’re stuck with him.

Mr Trump took to Twitter

Historians speak out on Trump.

[David] McCullough and Ken Burns, the filmmaker and author, have assembled a group of distinguished American historians to speak about the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, in videos being posted to a Facebook page, Historians on Donald Trump.

It is a diverse, honored group — including, among others, Robert A. Caro, Ron Chernow, David Levering Lewis, William E. Leuchtenburg, Vicki Lynn Ruiz — that speaks with alarm about Mr. Trump’s candidacy and his place in the march of American history.

I plan to work my way through that whole page.

Mr. McCullough, raised in a Republican home and now aligned with no party, said the prospect

Trump is going to find that one drawback to being a major party candidate is that news organizations will report that he’s telling whoppers. He told whoppers about how the NFL wrote to him to complain about the debates, which the NFL says it never.

In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Trump complained that two of the debates are up against NFL games, and claimed that the organization sent him a letter calling the schedule “ridiculous.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I don’t like. It’s against two NFL games,” Trump said. “I got a letter from the NFL saying, ‘This is ridiculous. Why are the debates against—’ ‘cause the NFL doesn’t wanna go against the debates. ‘Cause the

Trump goes on tv, attempts to talk to grownups, fails dismally.

Donald Trump said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t make a military move into Ukraine — even though Putin already has done just that, seizing the country’s Crimean Peninsula.

“He’s not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want,” Trump said in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.”

“Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?” Stephanopoulos responded, in a reference to Crimea, which Putin took from Ukraine in early 2014.

At this point I see Basil Fawlty in my … Read the rest

The New York Times reports, aghast –

DORAL, Fla. — Donald J. Trump said Wednesday that he hoped Russia had hacked Hillary Clinton’s email, essentially encouraging a foreign power’s cyberspying of a secretary of state’s correspondence.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said, staring directly into the cameras. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Mr. Trump’s call was an extraordinary moment at a time when Russia is being accused of meddling in the U.S. presidential election. His comments came amid questions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers, which researchers have concluded was likely the work of two

Trump pissed off a lot of musicians.

Quite a few bands whose music has been used along Donald Trump’s campaign trail have made their unhappiness very public: The O’Jays. The surviving members of Queen. George Harrison‘s estate. Adele. Earth, Wind & Fire. REM’s Michael Stipe. The Turtles. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler (though he said his objection was financial, not ideological). Neil Young (though he, like Tyler, eventually said he was concerned about money and permission). And perhaps most famously now, The Rolling Stones — more on them later.

Legally, however, the GOP and the Trump campaign can use all those songs, as Melinda Newman (a former colleague of mine at Billboard) explained

James Hamblin at the Atlantic has more details about Trump the man. I figure everybody should keep recycling them non-stop so that nobody will forget them.

Hamblin focuses on the question whether Trump is really a psychopath, and says let’s talk about NPD instead.

One psychologist, Ben Michaelis, called Trump “textbook Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” Psychologist George Simon called Trump “so classic that I’m archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example of his characteristics.”

Then he says no actually let’s talk about Antisocial Personality Disorder.

According to the DSM, Antisocial Personality Disorder should be diagnosed in a person who meets two criteria about the way they function in the world, and criteria about

Evan Osnos at the New Yorker says the scary thing about the Republican convention is that the Republican party seems to have fallen into line behind this terrible terrible man.

Four years after the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, told delegates that “we are a nation of immigrants,” Trump connected killings of police officers, misperceptions of immigration levels, and distorted anecdotes about crime in order to employ the classic technology of the demagogue: he created a grave national threat that only he can solve. His opponent, he said, promises “mass amnesty, mass immigration, and mass lawlessness. Her plan will overwhelm your schools, your hospitals.”

For moderate Republicans, the Convention cemented a bewildering transformation at the top of their Party. There

People with more determination to look straight at unpleasant things than I have watched Trump’s acceptance speech last night, and reported that it was pure fascism, which by that time surprised no one.

The Times says about it:

In the most consequential speech of his life, delivered 401 days into his improbable run for the White House, Mr. Trump sounded much like the unreflective man who had started it with an escalator ride in the lobby of Trump Tower: He conjured up chaos and promised overnight solutions.

To an electorate that remains anxious about his demeanor, his honesty and his character, Mr. Trump offered no acknowledgment, no rebuttal, no explanation.

His demeanor, his honesty, his character and his politics… Read the rest

Adam Gopnik pointed out a week ago how shockingly normalized Trump is being, by Republicans and by the media.

What is genuinely alarming is the urge, however human it may be, to normalize the abnormal by turning toward emotions and attitudes that are familiar. To their great credit, the editors of most of the leading conservative publications in America have recognized Trump for what he is, and have opposed his rise to power. Yet the habit of hatred is so ingrained in their psyches that even those who recognize at some level that Trump is a horror, when given the dangling bait of another chance to hate Hillary still leap at it, insisting on her “criminality” at the very

The guy who ghost-wrote Trump’s The Art of the Deal is regretting having done so. He regrets having helped shape the Trump image that has brought him so terrifyingly far.

But the prospect of President Trump terrified him. It wasn’t because of Trump’s ideology—Schwartz doubted that he had one. The problem was Trump’s personality, which he considered pathologically impulsive and self-centered.

Schwartz thought about publishing an article describing his reservations about Trump, but he hesitated, knowing that, since he’d cashed in on the flattering “Art of the Deal,” his credibility and his motives would be seen as suspect. Yet watching the campaign was excruciating. Schwartz decided that if he kept mum and Trump was elected he’d never forgive himself. In

Natalie McGarry MP replies to a request for money from a son of Donald Trump.

Forgot to include @realDonaldTrump. why your son is contacting us is beyond bizarre. pic.twitter.com/QGiArA8YWD

— Natalie McGarry MP (@NatalieMcgarry) June 23, 2016

… Read the rest