That item about Trump’s wanting to use the nukes? I didn’t post about it yesterday because there was only one source, but ThinkProgress has collected examples of his saying it in public on the record, so.

On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough passed on an intriguing piece of gossip: Donald Trump, speaking with a “foreign policy expert,” repeatedly asked “why can’t we use nuclear weapons.”

Scarborough’s claim was thinly sourced. He didn’t reveal the identity of the expert advising Trump or even where he learned the information. Information attributed to anonymous sources is inherently suspect.

But one need not rely on anonymous sources to glean Trump’s views on nuclear weapons. He has broached the subject repeatedly on the campaign trail. Several of his public comments are similar to Scarborough’s account while others are terrifying in their own way.

They provide a video clip.

And transcribe it:

MATTHEWS: Well, why would you — why wouldn’t you just say, “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about nuclear weapons. Presidents don’t talk about use of nuclear weapons”?

TRUMP: The question was asked — we were talking about NATO — which, by the way, I say is obsolete and we pay a dis —

MATTHEWS: But you got hooked into something you shouldn`t have talked about.

TRUMP: I don’t think I — well, someday, maybe.

MATTHEWS: When? Maybe?

TRUMP: Of course. If somebody —

MATTHEWS: Where would we drop — where would we drop a nuclear weapon in the Middle East?

TRUMP: Let me explain. Let me explain.

Somebody hits us within ISIS — you wouldn`t fight back with a nuke?

…

MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.

TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?

[MSNBC, March 30, 2016]

You can watch him saying it:

Exactly.

Republicans nominate dangerously insane person to lead America, then panic when he proves he’s dangerously insane

They knew that about him when they nominated him. It’s too late to freak out about it now. They should have done that before they nominated him, not after.

Republicans have shifted into a much higher state of Red Alert because Trump’s erratic antics are revealing just how reckless their decision to nominate him really was, and how reckless their continued support for him really is. In other words, Trump is now threatening to damage the party in far worse ways than Republicans had bargained for, because he’s revealing in inescapably clear terms the real character and qualifications of the person they knowingly nominated to run the country and continue to support for the presidency.

All that was plenty obvious enough before the convention. He’s a terrible human being; he’s not subtle about it.

Trump’s pathologically abusive tendencies, his hair-trigger overreaction to criticism and slights both real and imagined, and his mental habit of sorting the world into the strong and the weak — the dominant and the submissive — render him temperamentally unfit for the presidency. He lacks basic knowledge of the world and doesn’t appear burdened by any curiosity about the complexities of foreign affairs or domestic policy. He is at worst a genuine bigot and at best a charlatan who has actively sought to stoke reactionary hostility to culturally and demographically evolving America. He is indifferent to the inner workings of the American system and instead promises authoritarian glory.

…

What’s really happened in recent days is that Trump’s ongoing battle with the Khan family only made all of these traits — the unhinged response to criticism, the bigoted attacks on Muslims, the naked abusiveness directed at a grieving family — more glaringly obvious. By extension, this has made nominating this man even more impossible politically for Republicans to defend. But Republicans knew who they were nominating. They themselves had repeatedly acknowledged that his personal traits were alarming and had castigated many of his positions as cruel and at odds with fundamental American values. Voices from all across the political spectrum, from liberals to centrists to Never Trump conservatives, warned that he would only get worse.

Now Republicans want to stage an intervention?

My point exactly.

Republicans are reacting with shock and horror to the sudden news that their candidate for the presidency is none other than real estate tycoon and “reality” tv star Donald Trump.

The Republican Party was in turmoil again Wednesday as party leaders, strategists and donors voiced increasing alarm about the flailing state of Donald Trump’s candidacy and fears that the presidential nominee was damaging the party with an extraordinary week of self-inflicted mistakes, gratuitous attacks and missed opportunities.

Well stone the crows! It turns out the candidate is not a responsible competent grown up who knows how to behave, but instead, it’s real estate tycoon and “reality” tv star Donald Trump.

Trump’s top campaign advisers are failing to instill discipline on their candidate, who has spent the past days lunging from one controversy to another while seemingly skipping chances to go on the offensive against his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

How could the Republicans possibly have known this would happen? What hint was there beforehand?

Reed, who managed Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, recommended that Trump “stop doing silly interviews nine times a day that get you off message” and deliver a major address seeking to reset the campaign establishing himself as the change candidate.

If only the Republicans had nominated a candidate who wouldn’t want to do silly interviews nine times a day – but alas for them, they didn’t, they nominated real estate tycoon and “reality” tv star Donald Trump.

Friends and allies of Manafort disputed reports that the top adviser had given up on Trump, describing him as fully committed to waging a successful campaign. But they said Manafort has been frustrated by Trump’s apparent lack of discipline on the stump and in his many media interviews.

But Manafort, being Trump’s campaign manager, must have known this all along, unlike the innocent Republicans who had no idea what he was like until just a day or two ago. Manafort must be well familiar with Trump’s lack of discipline and microscopic attention span.

“Paul has good influence with Donald,” said Charlie Black, a longtime GOP strategist and former business partner of Manafort. “But he’s Donald and he’s going to operate stream of consciousness a lot of times. You just hope he’ll have more days on message than days on consciousness.”

You just hope he’ll have more days when he doesn’t freak out and launch the nukes than days when he does.

From Washington to state capitals around the country, a feeling of despair and despondence fell over the Republican establishment. Two weeks ago at the party’s national convention in Cleveland, GOP leaders were buoyed by what they saw in Trump. But Trump quickly reverted to his old ways, setting off alarm bells in some parts of the party.

They were “buoyed” by that? By that orgy of fascism and egomania?

I hope the alarm bells burst their fucking eardrums.

Gingrich said Trump is continuing to operate on instincts that helped him in business and in the primaries but said the GOP nominee doesn’t realize those skills are not adequate for a general election.

Of course he doesn’t. He’s not bright. He doesn’t think.

“He can’t learn what he doesn’t know because he doesn’t know he doesn’t know it,” Gingrich said.

So he’ll be a fabulous president then. I don’t see what could possibly go wrong.

This has been going around since yesterday when Trump got peevish about a crying baby at one of his appearances.

Obama’s a baby-whisperer. Trump not so much.

Yesterday Obama pointed out that Trump is unfit to be president.

Speaking in the East Room of the White House while Mr. Trump rallied supporters in a nearby Virginia suburb, the president noted the Republican criticism of Mr. Trump for his attacks on the Muslim parents of an American soldier, Capt. Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq.

But Mr. Obama said the political recriminations from Republicans “ring hollow” if the party’s leaders continue to support Mr. Trump’s campaign.

“The question they have to ask themselves is: If you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?” Mr. Obama said. “What does this say about your party that this is your standard-bearer?”

The thing about Trump is that it’s not just his views or his policies (if he actually has anything that can really be called a policy) – it’s his nature, his character, his way of being. It’s how horrible he is in every visible way.

Has anyone come forward to say anything like, “Look, I know Trump seems rude and abrasive in public but behind the scenes he’s actually a warm, caring, decent guy”? Not that I know of. As far as I can tell what you see is exactly what you get – a rude, abrasive, belligerent asshole.

Mr. Obama lamented what he called an attack on a “Gold Star family that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country.” He said he did not doubt that Republicans were outraged about the statements Mr. Trump and his supporters had made about the Khan family in the last several days.

“But there has to come a point at which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn’t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding, to occupy the most powerful position in the world,” Mr. Obama said.

The president did not limit his criticism to Mr. Trump’s treatment of the Khan family. Mr. Obama said the Republican nominee had repeatedly demonstrated that he was “woefully unprepared to do this job.” The president said Mr. Trump had proved he lacked knowledge about Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Asia.

“This isn’t a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily,” Mr. Obama added. “There has to be a point at which you say, ‘This is not somebody I can support for president of the United States, even if he purports to be a member of my party.’ The fact that that has not yet happened makes some of these denunciations ring hollow.”

As hollow as Trump himself.

My friend Tasneem Khalil asked some probing questions about the whole “soldier killed in battle” thing yesterday.

Worshipping the dead soldier is one of the highest rituals of a national security state. Like many other places, we actually have special monuments for this in Bangladesh and India. It is then not surprising to see that even a petulant scumbag like Donald Trump can not get away after insulting two Gold Star parents whose son died in Iraq. This is the same guy, mind you, who got the GOP nomination after calling Mexicans rapists and advocating a blanket ban against Muslims.

Captain Khan was undoubtedly a brave man but was he a hero? A hero for whom? Would any of my Iraqi friends consider him a hero — the fallen soldier of an invading army that waged an illegal war and devastated their country? Which little big book an Iraqi father would pull out of his breast pocket when he gives a speech about his child’s deformed body, thanks to depleted uranium dropped as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom? Are we all free and safe now, because of the sacrifice by young men and women like Captain Khan?

If you are a US citizen, please try to ask yourself these questions. I, herewith, propose a possible answer. If you really are grateful to soldiers like Captain Khan, the best tribute you can pay to their memories is by ensuring that your rulers do not send your children to die in illegal wars in the future.

PS. Those who know me well know that I do not share the lazy anti-Americanism of the Chomsky-quoting, Assange-worshipping left. I, also, do not belong to the flag-waving, soldier-worshipping right.

The first Republican Representative to ditch Trump.

Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) is the first Republican member of Congress to announce he’ll vote for Hillary Clinton this November.

…

Regarding the reasons he was resolved not to support Trump in the first place, Hanna wrote that they “were simple and personal. I found him profoundly offensive and narcissistic but as much as anything, a world-class panderer, anything but a leader.”

“I never expect to agree with whoever is president, but at a minimum the president needs to consistently display those qualities I have preached to my two children: kindness, honesty, dignity, compassion and respect,” he continued. “I do not expect perfection, but I do require more than the embodiment of at least a short list of the seven deadly sins.”

That’s what’s so astonishing about this whole thing – he’s such a terrible human being, and he makes it so obvious. He’s mean, rude, a bully – and an ignoramus, and loud with it, and boastful, and grandiose. How did this happen? What’s wrong with us?

In the interview with the Post-Standard, Hanna says Trump’s criticizing of Gold Star parents left him “incensed.”

“I was stunned by the callousness of his comments,” he added. “I think Trump is a national embarrassment. Is he really the guy you want to have the nuclear codes?”

No, he is not.

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 think she would as a strong person, at the same time, I don’t think she would allow herself to be subjected to that. I think that’s a point he was making, and I think he did so well.”

Yeah. Good point. Strong Trump women don’t take any shit, while the rest of us just sit there limply and let it happen. It’s totally voluntary, sexual harassment is, so if it happens to you, it’s your fault for being so weak and stupid.

Even the women of Fox aren’t buying it.

Sigh. https://t.co/dj6rtOa8ta

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) August 2, 2016

Well she just says that because she’s got blood coming out of her whatever.

Sad in 2016 we're still victim blaming women. Trust me I'm strong. #StandWithGretchen https://t.co/e2GxTaHZLN

— Gretchen Carlson (@GretchenCarlson) August 2, 2016

Only Losers get sexually harassed, am I right?

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, or anywhere.

The New Yorker on Arpaio in 2009:

The biggest part of the sheriff’s job is running the jails, and Arpaio saw that there was political gold to be spun there. The voters had declined to finance new jail construction, and so, in 1993, Arpaio, vowing that no troublemakers would be released on his watch because of overcrowding, procured a consignment of Army-surplus tents and had them set up, surrounded by barbed wire, in an industrial area in southwest Phoenix. “I put them up next to the dump, the dog pound, the waste-disposal plant,” he told me. Phoenix is an open-air blast furnace for much of the year. Temperatures inside the tents hit a hundred and thirty-five degrees. Still, the tents were a hit with the public, or at least with the conservative majority that voted. Arpaio put up more tents, until Tent City jail held twenty-five hundred inmates, and he stuck a neon “vacancy” sign on a tall guard tower. It was visible for miles.

His popularity grew. What could he do next? Arpaio ordered small, heavily publicized deprivations. He banned cigarettes from his jails. Skin magazines. Movies. Coffee. Hot lunches. Salt and pepper—Arpaio estimated that he saved taxpayers thirty thousand dollars a year by removing salt and pepper. Meals were cut to two a day, and Arpaio got the cost down, he says, to thirty cents per meal. “It costs more to feed the dogs than it does the inmates,” he told me. Jail, Arpaio likes to say, is not a spa—it’s punishment. He wants inmates whose keenest wish is never to get locked up again. He limits their television, he told me, to the Weather Channel, C-span, and, just to aggravate their hunger, the Food Network. For a while, he showed them Newt Gingrich speeches. “They hated him,” he said cheerfully. Why the Weather Channel, a British reporter once asked. “So these morons will know how hot it’s going to be while they are working on my chain gangs.”

Arpaio wasn’t kidding about chain gangs. Foreign television reporters couldn’t get enough footage of his inmates shuffling through the desert. New ideas for the humiliation of people in custody—whom the Sheriff calls, with persuasive disgust, “criminals,” although most are actually awaiting trial, not convicted of any crime—kept occurring to him. He put his inmates in black-and-white striped uniforms. The shock value of these retro prisoner outfits was powerful and complex. There was comedy, nostalgia, dehumanization, even a whiff of something annihilationist. He created female chain gangs, “the first in the history of the world,” and, eventually, juvenile chain gangs. The chain gangs’ tasks include burying the indigent at the county cemetery, but mainly they serve as spectacles in Arpaio’s theatre of cruelty. “I put them out there on the main streets,” he told me. “So everybody sees them out there cleaning up trash, and parents say to their kids, ‘Look, that’s where you’re going if you’re not good.’”

Naturally he likes Trump.

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 animal they shot, called the Kudu. The Trumps reportedly paid at least $2,795.00 and another $1,997.00 for the Waterbuck they were pictured with, but Don Jr. says on Twitter, “the money from hunting fees preserves animals and habitat.”

Of course they could always just donate the money to animal habitat preservation and skip the part where they kill the animals.

Or, even, they could just skip the part where they kill an elephant.

Updating to add:

Via Samantha Bee:

(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 (of which he is chief among them)? By DEFINITION.

…

You’ll note, McCain STILL endorses Trump for President.

What I’m saying here, not so subtly, is that John McCain is a sterling example of why down-ticket voting in the coming election is even more important than voting for the President. This raging loony old man and those like him in the Senate and the House are the entire problem. And they know it. THEY KNOW IT. McCain daily rages against Trump’s lunacy but supports him ANYWAY and it doesn’t take any great clairvoyance to extrapolate Senator McCain’s rubber stamp support for President Trump’s mad demands once he’s in office.