Comedian Rosie O'Donnell hit back at Republican presidential nominee and former reality TV star Donald Trump after he lashed out at her during Monday night's presidential debate.
In a pointed tweet, the former The View co-host called Trump an "orange anus," writing, "(T)he 5 mins orange anus can't seem to get over --- tell the truth - shame the donald #ImWithHer."
The tweet included a link to O'Donnell on The View criticizing Trump and his involvement with beauty pageants like Miss USA, which O'Donnell called "a modeling competition."
In the clip, O'Donnell skewered Trump's handing of a 2006 flap over Miss USA winner Tara Conner, who went out for a wild night on the town and almost lost her title. Flipping her hair over the top of her head, O'Donnell did a dead-on impersonation of the real estate mogul saying, "Everyone deserves a second chance and I'm gonna give her a second chance."
"He annoys me on a number of levels," the comic said before launching into an account of Trump's broken marriages and 5 children by three different women. "And yet he's the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America. Donald, sit and spin, my friend."
Donald Trump Jr. sat down for a stern lecture from a gun manufacturer in hopes of reassuring "Second Amendment people" that he and his dad love guns as much as they do.
The Republican presidential candidate's son and employee fired some guns and spoke to Joshua Waldren, the CEO of Utah-based SilencerCo, for a video interview posted on the NRA website.
"There is a divide, and it's almost like a 50-50 or one way or the other, and I think that's been what's unique about my father's candidacy, because all the people, when we started during the primaries, like, well, this person doesn't believe all 10,432 points of conservatism, he believes in 10,431," Trump said. "It's like, I don't know, that's pretty conservative."
Trump, who enjoys big game hunting, told the gun maker that firearms were obviously important to the Constitution's framers because they listed those weapons second, after the right to free speech.
"This wasn't an afterthought, years later, this was, I mean, the most basic aspect being the first, the second to protect that, and that can't be at risk," Trump said.
Trump then emphatically mischaracterized Clinton's thoughts on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the District of Columbia v. Heller, which found that federal enclaves could not legally enforce prohibitions against individual gun ownership.
"She says the Supreme Court got that wrong," Trump said, overstating Clinton's argument that cities and states should be able to impose some limits on gun ownership. "That's scary to me as an American, because what's next? Legislation for the sake of legislation, just like government is bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy at this point, just more rules and more government in your in boardrooms, in your daily life, in your business, in your bedroom."
Trump partially choked on that last word, perhaps realizing that opposition to LGBT rights was not one of the 10,431 conservative points that were politically correct to overlook.
"We want to eliminate that, you know, we want to allow law-abiding citizens to exercise their rights and go after the people who are actually committing crimes," Trump said, briefly flashing the "nailed it" expression.
Trump assured the gun maker that his father understood how important the Supreme Court was to gun manufacturers and their NRA lobbyists, while attacking the rule of law by the time he reached end of his remarks.
"You lose the Supreme Court, you lose two or three justices, that's a 30- or 40-year swing, that's probably something you never recover from," Trump said. "It'd likely never come back, it'd be like Europe, where you have essentially a socialist state where everything is process-driven, bureaucratic, rules-based society where entrepreneurship and free thought are, you know, lacking."
He then bragged that he'd hunted in Europe, where he said noise suppressors are allowed as safety features despite being banned in parts of the U.S.
"If you had that kind of noise levels in any other industry as you would in shooting sports, OSHA would be all over the place, people would be going crazy," Trump said. "I mean, it's about safety, it's just another rule that government wants to put in place for no reason, because if Europe can do it, America better well be able to do it."
A new 30-second campaign ad from pro-Clinton PAC Priorities USA zings Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on his laughable insistence during Monday night's debate that his "temperament" is his greatest asset.
"I think my strongest asset -- maybe by far," said Trump at Hofstra University, "is my temperament."
The ad goes on to show clip after clip of Trump losing his cool, talking about how he'd like to punch protesters in the face, bombing "the sh*t" out of ISIS and shooting people on Fifth Avenue.
"Donald Trump," the ad concludes. "Unfit to be president."
Donald Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes asserted on Tuesday that the billionaire candidate's history of adultery was not a negative character trait because he eventually became "friends" with his former wives.
Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that he decided not to bring up Bill Clinton's infidelities at Monday night's debate out of respect for daughter Chelsea Clinton, who attended the event.
"We could have brought up a whole plethora of stories," Hughes told CNN host Carol Costello later in the morning. "You've got 17 women out there that involve Bill Clinton."
"So, actually, I think that showed a little bit of grace, a little bit of class," she continued. "And I think there's a reason why he's winning by 17 points with married women."
Costello wondered if Hillary Clinton could have countered Trump's attack on her personal life with the fact that he cheated on at least two of his wives.
"The thing is, he's still good friends with all of those women," Hughes opined. "All of those women are still speaking on his behalf. His children are all still together. He's always said his family was priority, his children were number one, they've got good relationships."
"You can't say that about Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and the women that have the allegations against him."
Watch the video below from CNN, broadcast Sept. 27, 2016.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson was in rare form during a CBS segment discussing Donald Trump's debate performance on Monday evening.
During the post-debate panel, Pierson was asked to comment on Donald Trump's recent proposal to get more cities to adopt the kind of stop-and-frisk policy in New York that was found unconstitutional back in 2013.
In responding, Pierson said that stop-and-frisk was effective at stopping crime and was not really racist -- but then she blamed Hillary Clinton for stop-and-frisk being necessary because of her own racism.
"It actually did work in New York," Pierson said of stop-and-frisk. "But we have to get down to why, because that's why we're here today. We have two candidates who have very different views. The reason why we have this problem, the reason why stop-and-frisk was implemented, was there were disparities with regard to who people were pulling over. And it's profiling, criminal profiling, not necessarily racial profiling, even though it comes across that way. But the reason why we had it was that we had the First Lady of the United States who went out on the national stage and dehumanized young black children... this has been the conditioning of the American public where black children have been demonized, Hillary Clinton owns that."
So to sum up: Pierson thinks stop-and-frisk isn't a racist policy, but if you don't like it, then you should blame Hillary Clinton for making wrong remarks about "super predators" more than 20 years ago.
The CBS panel, you might imagine, was pretty dumbfounded by this argument.
Evangelical Christians in Florida are pushing for a ballot initiative in 2018 that would not only make abortion a crime, but re-classify the procedure as first-degree murder.
According to Hemant Mehta at The Friendly Atheist, anti-choice activist group Abolish Abortion Florida has launched a petition calling for an amendment to the state constitution that deems medical termination of a pregnancy to be a premeditated murder under Florida state law -- making women who have abortions and their doctors eligible for the death penalty.
"The people of Florida murder 72,000 babies every year while the 'pro life' politicians we’ve elected to protect them attempt to regulate the practice of child sacrifice as if it were healthcare, instead of addressing it as murder," the petition said. "Contrary to widespread misinformation, the right to murder humans is not protected by the Constitution and our legislature is not bound by any law or duty to aid or abet the Supreme Court in their attempted perversion of it."
The group is hoping to gather enough signatures to land the statute on the 2018 election ballot.
Christian News Wire said, "Under the proposed amendment, anyone who performs or procures an abortion would be charged with first degree, pre-meditated murder. 'Abortion' would include any abortifacient drug or device that can kill an embryo by preventing implantation, as well as the intentional destruction of unwanted IVF embryos. The amendment would define life as beginning at fertilization rather than 'conception,' and declares that 'abortion deprives an innocent human being of the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
"They’re pro-life and want to see women who get abortions executed," wrote Mehta, "in case you needed more proof that Christians are often hypocrites."
"No word yet on whether the women and their doctors should be murdered by way of a firing squad or lethal injection," he quipped. "But I sent them an email to find out."
Republican White House candidate Donald Trump stole the social media spotlight during Monday night's U.S. presidential debate on at least one count - what Twitter users branded his #Trumpsniffle.
The wealthy businessman sniffed repeatedly as he faced off against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in their first debate, giving rise to the hashtag and a surge of interest on social media what might be causing his nose to run. Parody accounts, Donald's Sinuses (@TrumpsSinuses) and Trump sniff (@TrumpSniff), gained a large following.
Trump, 70, told Fox News on Tuesday morning he did not have a cold. "No, no sniffles, no," he said. "No cold." He complained he had a faulty microphone and joked that maybe it was picking up breathing.
Several tweeters seized on the sniffling to hit back at Trump over his repeated digs at the health and stamina of Clinton, 68, who had pneumonia earlier this month.
Overall, Twitter said the debate, the first in a series ahead of the Nov. 8 election, was the most tweeted-about political event in the social media company's history. Trump was the focus of 62 percent of the conversation on the social media platform, Twitter said.
On Facebook, conversations about Trump made up 79 percent of debate chat, while Clinton’s share of the conversation was 21 percent.
However, sentiment appeared to go Clinton's way. Social media analytics firm Zoomph said tweets mentioning Clinton ended at a ratio of about 1.5 to 1, which meant that for every negative mention, there were 1.5 positive mentions, Zoomph said.
Sentiment toward Trump fluctuated, but ended nearly flat at a ratio of one positive mention to every negative one.
The most tweeted-about topics were the economy, foreign affairs, energy and the environment, terrorism and guns.
(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Howard Goller and Frances Kerry)
Kellyanne Conway was up early spinning furiously for Donald Trump, whom she praised for resisting the temptation to trash his opponent's marriage onstage during a presidential debate.
Trump's campaign manager repeated President Barack Obama's attack from the 2008 campaign, saying Hillary Clinton was willing to "say anything to get elected," while she praised her boss for refraining from one particular personal attack.
"I'm glad that he was polite and a gentleman to her, particularly at the end, when he pulled the biggest punch of all," Conway said.
She said Trump, who threatened to invite former Bill Clinton mistress Gennifer Flowers to sit in the front row of the debate, had decided at the last moment not to attack his Democratic rival over her husband's infidelities.
"He certainly was prepared to," Conway said. "It's a split-second, spontaneous decision. He certainly could have, and it probably was on the minds of millions of voters at home, saying, 'Wow, she's going to challenge you on a comment you've made here or there about a woman, then goodness -- why can't you challenge her on her husband's personal peccadillos.'"
Conway spun this thin thread into something like a silver lining after Clinton controlled the debate with her focused and prepared performance, frequently pulling Trump off message by questioning his business success and command of the issues.
"He decided not to, and he explained to America why that was," she said. "He said, 'I came here and I was prepared to do some rough talking about that, quote-unquote, but I see your husband here and your daughter, and I'm just not going to do what you're doing in hundreds of millions of dollars in negative advertising is not nice.'"
Conway repeated this line of praise in each of her stops on the cable TV news circuit Tuesday morning, so that's apparently the most positive takeaway she was able to salvage from Trump's disastrous performance.
"I think that whole exchange will grow in importance over the next couple of days," Conway said. "Women will like that."
Kellyanne Conway: Donald Trump's decision not to bring up Bill Clinton's infidelities was a "split second" decision https://t.co/XNn3iY8Y3b
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton jumped back onto the campaign trail Tuesday after a bitter first head-to-head debate in which Clinton frequently forced her prickly opponent on to the back foot.
The White House hopefuls sparred over temperament, stamina, judgment, and other issues in a televised match-up Monday night that seemed to have gone in favor of the Democrat Clinton.
In a snap CNN poll of 521 voters, 62 percent judged that Clinton had won the debate against 27 percent for Trump, with most mainstream political analysts agreeing Clinton was the stronger performer.
But in a campaign that has consistently defied predictions from the political establishment, few can forecast for sure the impact on how America will vote on November 8.
Nate Silver, a respected election analyst at FiveThirtyEight.com, predicted a two to four percent bump in support for Clinton, after the most recent polls showed the race in a virtual dead heat.
With six weeks until election day, Clinton was scheduled to rally in battleground North Carolina on Tuesday, while Trump was to speak to supporters in the swing state of Florida.
During the debate at New York's Hofstra University, with an anticipated audience of up to 100 million, Clinton repeatedly questioned her rival's fitness to serve in the Oval Office.
She painted the celebrity real estate mogul as fatally out of touch and willing to say "crazy things" to get elected.
"You live in your own reality," said the 68-year-old Democrat, who sought to project her steady experience.
Trump played the populist bruiser, pitching to frustrated blue-collar voters fed up with establishment politicians.
"Let me tell you, Hillary has experience. But it's bad, bad experience," quipped the 70-year-old billionaire, accusing the former secretary of state, first lady and US senator of being a "typical politician. All talk, no action. Sounds good, doesn't work."
As the temperature rose, Trump brought out the verbal brickbats, repeatedly interrupting Clinton and even questioning her stamina after a bout of pneumonia. He appeared increasingly irritated, at one point rolling his eyes and emitting a frustrated "ugh."
- Reactions -
"A lot of Americans will look at tonight's debate and see an individual who is prepared to become president of the United States, and she was up against an impostor," said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
"You saw not a perfect performance by Hillary Clinton, but as much as an imperfect performance as you can imagine by her opponent," he told AFP.
"The unique part of a presidential debate is that you don't have to excel. You just have to do better than the only other person on stage."
Steffen Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University, also praised Clinton's performance.
However, he said, "Trump more than held his own with an informal and often unorganized 'speech salad' where he mixed things in odd ways but often with humor, and cleverly."
Meanwhile, financial markets seemed reassured that Clinton appeared to emerge as winner. Asian stock markets and high-risk currencies staged a "relief rally" on Tuesday.
Trump gave an upbeat assessment of his debate outing, telling AFP: "I thought it went very well for me."
Clinton visited supporters who had attended a debate watch party in Westbury, New York, telling the crowd, "Do you feel good tonight? Well, I sure do... We had a great debate."
- 'Stiffed' -
Clinton's brightest moments came when debate turned to foreign policy, while Trump's came when he tapped into malaise about politics and the economy.
Trump squarely blamed Clinton and the political class for losing jobs to Mexico and China through what he termed bad trade deals and incompetence.
Clinton tried to undercut Trump's CEO-in-chief acumen by accusing him of having "stiffed" small business contractors throughout his business career.
She demanded Trump release his tax returns, suggesting he may be lying about his much-vaunted wealth, his charitable donations, his tax bill or his ties with foreign benefactors.
Trump fired back that he would release his tax returns, "when she releases her 33,000 e-mails that have been deleted," alluding to the Democrat's use of a private email server as secretary of state.
- A real shot -
Clinton has a massive organizational advantage, a bigger campaign war chest and a lead in the popular vote and is in a notably stronger position state-by-state.
But Trump weathered allegations of bigotry and sexism to triumph in a vicious Republican primary campaign, and now has a real shot at being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on January 20.
There are two more debates in the 2016 US presidential race, which could be pivotal in deciding whether Clinton will become the first woman president, or if Trump can pull off the greatest upset in US political history.
As soon as you are inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America, I would dearly like to build for you and the American people the wall along the Mexican border. It will be, as you say, a beautiful wall.
Pundits may question the efficacy of a wall in achieving social segregation. But you know intrinsically, in this dark and turbulent age of terrorism, illegal immigrants and lawlessness, a wall will keep the unwanted vice and violence at bay, restoring peace and security in American society.
When building walls, our ancestors were terribly complacent. At about the same time – the Golden Age from approximately 600-500 BCE – both the wise mortals in the Mediterranean and the clever Chinese turned skyward: though they never managed to contact each other, they both found the simple predictability and geometric beauty of the cosmic world a panacea for the inclemency and toil of life on earth.
It should not be a surprise that both the Greco-Roman world and China barred themselves in walled compounds and courtyards so that they could lift their heads towards the heavens. The Chinese went even further: they built vast walled enclosures as cosmic cities on earth.
After having been assaulted by the barbarians from the north, they woke up to the wisdom of border-spanning walls: they built the Great Wall of China to ward off the bandits. The first emperor of China Qin Shi Huang ordered his people to unify the wall with zeal.
As a result of centuries of building, the Great Wall of China was extended to more than 8,000 kilometres. But, with perhaps the exception of a few wild rabbits, the barbarians were not held back at all. China was taken and ruled for centuries by the Mongols and the Manchurians.
Jason Lee/Reuters
Dear Mr Trump, surely this is not what you want. A wall, as neatly summarised by the English architectural historian Robin Evans, affords the rights for retreat and gives rise to the rites of exclusion. But the common women and men in the United States of America are progressive and forward looking; they will not put you in the White House to lead them to retreat. You ought to build a different wall.
Let me pinch this idea of a splendid wall from the Chinese architectural historian Professor Liang Sicheng and market it to you, Mr Trump. (You will be delighted to learn that Professor Liang read architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1930s, when law and order were in place and America was still great. So there is no Chinese conspiracy here.)
In the early 1950s, driven by a self-imposed mission to revitalise China’s pre-modern architecture, mixed with the high optimism generated by the new Communist government, Liang hoped that the new regime could save the magnificent city wall (dating back to 1264, when the Yuan dynasty imperial capital was beginning to be built) by turning it into a civic park for the leisure life of the citizens in the new era.
A hopeless romantic, Liang wanted to give the new republic capital a splendid “green necklace” of 39.75 kilometres, for the city wall that enclosed imperial Beijing would be greened by lawns and plants. This would be the world’s only city-ring-park in the sky; it was not only a civic place, but also would allow the residents of new Beijing to break away from the confined courtyards to climb high to inspect the horizon.
Liang Sicheng’s Sky Garden Proposal.
Liang Sicheng, Author provided
This, if materialised, would be a magnificent creation at a civic scale of a Chinese idea that might have existed only in imagination. It would be the collective garden for the vast tapestry of courtyards in Beijing.
China’s Chairman Mao Zedong, alas, was not quite as clear headed as you are: he worried less about the enemies’ attacks from beyond the wall than the internal law and order of his own people within the wall. Why would he give his newly minted republican citizens leisure in a park hanging in the sky?
Legend has it that the Chairman, in the early days of the new republic, once stood on the Tienanmen – the Gate of Heavenly Peace – while facing a sea of red flags, Mao reared his head to inspect the horizon: he envisioned a forest of gigantic industrial chimneys with black smoke bellowing into the sky. Mao saw this as the future of Beijing. Liang was devastated! The government went ahead to tear down the entire city wall to give way to roads – the symbol of progress and work, not leisure.
Protesters hold a banner reading ‘Wall Off Trump’ as they attempt to block an entrance to the arena hosting the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Jim Urquhart/Reuters
But Mr Trump, you will build this sumptuous garden in the sky along the Mexican border. To ensure its efficacy, you will also learn from another Chinese wall that actually worked. In the grandiose Tang dynasty capital of Changan, in addition to the city wall and the walled imperial palace, all the residents were locked in the walled residential wards, much like that of the peacefully gated communities in America.
Night curfews were implemented to lock the gates of residential wards at dusk, and security guards patrolled the deserted streets and laneways at night to enforce law and order. Not that the residents had no freedom: they shopped in walled markets and visited walled gardens during the day!
Being an enthusiastic student of Chinese history, Chairman Mao surely had this glorious Tang dynasty idea in mind. After taking down Beijing’s city wall, he ordered to build dangwei (walled compounds of “work units”) not only for Beijing but also for the entire country.
For the next four decades or so, the Chinese life, from the cradle to the grave and from a farming hamlet to a factory, was all sorted and ordered in these dangwei enclosures.
The Chairman realised your dream, Mr Trump – that is, law and order. Better still, no criminal-minded illegal migrants ever dreamed of entering China in Mao’s heyday.
You too could see the common women and men of American, with full surveillance and military protection, walking their dogs, barbecuing and having a beer on your Great Wall.
Dear Mr Trump, let me most enthusiastically offer my architectural service to you to design your beautiful walls, though in the true capitalist spirit I must charge you a modest fee. I trust the engineers, the construction managers and the contractors will do just the same. After all, they will create jobs for America’s economy. With these walls, my dear Mr Trump, you will make America truly great again!
Yours faithfully,
Professor of Good for a Wall
Xing Ruan, Professor of Architecture, Associate Dean International and Director of Architecture, UNSW Australia
As the most fractious US election in living memory enters its final furlong, Bono and Springsteen are the latest music stars to launch broadsides at the Republican candidate. But he’s far from alone. Barbara Streisand lampooned Trump in performance and in print while his rhetoric has attracted condemnation from Latino artists and a protest song from rapper YG.
However, this time around the musical commentary is perhaps more vociferous than in previous elections and his divisiveness has run up against a wide array of musicians calling for a halt to his use of the pop and rock tunes that are a staple of campaigning.
REM set the tone during the primaries, slamming Trump’s “moronic charade of a campaign” for playing “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” at a rally. Other demurrals came from Queen, Elton John, the Rolling Stones and more. Being dead, it seems, is also no hindrance to cross-purposes with the Republican nominee. The estates of George Harrison and Luciano Pavarroti described the use of their music as, respectively, “offensive” and “entirely incompatible with the world view offered by the candidate Donald Trump”.
Trump is also the latest in a long line of candidates whose campaign has drawn on the soundtrack to Les Misérables, despite its composers never endorsing political uses of their work.
Electioneering
There’s a longstanding association between popular music and political campaigns in the US. Campaign songs have been in play from George Washington’s time onwards, gaining increasing prominence in the 20th century via mass media celebrity endorsements. The trend towards using pre-existing recordings, rather than specially written songs or familiar tunes with new lyrics, was given a fillip in the 1970s when the 26th Amendment reduced the voting age to 18 and it was seen as a means of attracting younger voters. This has sometimes been successful, where an agreement is reached with artists, as with Bill Clinton’s use of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop”. But more often it leads to the kinds of disavowal piled up around Trump’s campaign.
Rockers and pop stars are often more liberal leaning than their more conservative country counterparts, so the bulk of these have been against Republicans. But there have also been cases of artists not welcoming any political associations. Some have pulled the rug from under the Democrats, as Sam Moore did over Barack Obama’s use of “Hold on I’m Coming”. But as elections get into high gear campaigners looking towards the wider populace seek out classics and big hits with the widest appeal, pushing them towards the aesthetic centre and away from genres that appeal primarily to their political base.
The amorphously aspirational (or angry) tone of many rock and pop songs makes them seem, at first glance – without examination of the artist’s political orientation – apt for either side of a political divide. But this can lead to mismatches. In 1984, Bruce Springsteen disowned the Reagan campaign’s use of “Born in the USA” – somewhat misguided in the first place since the lyrics of its pumping chorus are bitterly ironic anyway, as the song depicts the poor treatment of Vietnam veterans.
A legal matter
The proliferation of complaints in recent years raises the question of what musicians can actually do to stop their songs appearing in campaigns.
Much depends on the context. Many objections refer to rallies and live events. There isn’t much legal comeback here though if the venues hold the requisite licenses for public use of recordings from the copyright collection agencies ASCAP and BMI. In many of these cases, cease and desist letters or similar warning shots are mostly a matter of making the artists’ disapproval and distance from the campaign a matter of public record. While legal protection in such instances isn’t cast-iron, it’s generally not worth the negative publicity for candidates to carry on once an artist has told them to stop. When Tom Petty objected to George W Bush using “I Won’t Back Down”, for instance, Bush did just that.
There’s more scope for blocking if a song is used in an advert or promotional material on the internet, where a license is required and the campaign needs permissions from the song’s publisher and perhaps the artist’s record label. Depending on their deals, artists may have some leverage here. Certainly a failure to obtain permission is a breach of copyright and subject to legal recourse, as John McCain found out when Jackson Browne sued over the appearance of his song “Running on Empty” in a campaign advert.
Fair use?
McCain’s team tried to claim the “fair use” exemption to copyright on the grounds that its use of the song was minimal, not for commercial purposes and unlikely to damage Browne’s financial interests. But Browne had another strand to his case that could be applied more widely, even to campaign rallies – potential reputational damage. The “moral rights” of European copyright provision that offer protection beyond financial concerns aren’t particularly robust in US federal law, but Browne appealed to the Lanham Act, a piece of trademark law that protects brands from misrepresentation or confusion arising in consumers due to misleading use. A similar piece of intellectual property legislation in some states, also cited by Browne, is the Right of Publicity, protecting the property aspects of a person’s voice and image.
Ultimately, McCain conceded and settled, so although Browne was victorious, the legal minutiae weren’t tested in court. But the case illustrated both a potential opening for artists and peril for politicians willing to push the point. While other priorities on the campaign trail and fear of poor public relations tend to militate against this, the need for popular background music remains.
If politics – as Bill Clinton strategist Paul Begala said – is “showbusiness for ugly people”, politicians are rarely shy of deploying the work of more straightforward entertainers to burnish their appeal. And as Trump appears impetuous in the face of legal challenges and contemptuous of bad publicity, the familiar sound of musicians crying foul looks likely to continue apace.
After getting crushed in Monday night's debate, Donald Trump slunk back to his safe space on "Fox and Friends," where he was served a steady diet of softball questions.
Interestingly, he still managed to completely whiff on some of them.
If you want an example, look no further than when the "Fox and Friends" hosts asked Trump if Hillary Clinton was successful at getting under his infamously thin skin. Trump said that she generally didn't succeed, although he did allow that he lost his cool a bit when she brought up the time when he cruelly mocked former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado as "Miss Piggy" because he thought she had gained weight.
Instead of merely letting it go at that, however, Trump instead decided to bash Machado for gaining weight.
"She was the worst we ever had -- the worst, the absolute worst," Trump said of Machado. "She was the winner and, you know, she gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem. A real problem."
Elsewhere on the segment, Trump denied sniffling during the debate, despite the fact that he was very audibly sniffling -- instead, he once again insisted that the microphone they gave him was "very bad."
Check out the full clip of Trump trashing Alicia Machado below.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway is taking a victory lap on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" this morning claiming that Trump won the debate essentially by not setting his podium on fire. Conway reasoned that Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton didn't actually win if you ignore all traditional measures of previous debates.
"As we said before, you judged this by all past debate standards, Hillary Clinton won, and most of us around here believe that," co-host Joe Scarborough determined. "But you don't judge Donald Trump by those standards, do you think he connected with the base or found new voters?" he asked Conway, urging her to declare Trump the winner if you don't take any other debate in history into consideration.
Conway noted that the campaign is hearing a lot of support from people overseas that have left the United States to live abroad.
"I also feel that there was no knockout punch by Hillary Clinton. As much as her ability to tell us all everything she learned in preparation for Donald Trump," Conway began, making it seem like Clinton's 30-plus years of experience was all in preparation for Trump. "She really needed to force him to make a huge mistake that would be the headline this morning, and she did not. I felt sometimes, the camera, she was speaking and she looked a little glib, almost like why am I on the stage with this man."
Panelist Steve Schmidt didn't quite see it that way, claiming Sarah Palin "looked like Henry Kissinger" compared to how Trump appeared when it came to national security issues last night.
Conway did note that Trump told the audience that he could have taken the low road and attacked Clinton on "something" but decided not to because the Clintons' daughter was in the audience. Pundits discussed the bizarre assertion last night assuming the comment was attacking Clinton for her husband's infidelity, something most strategists have cautioned against.
"I have to say, certainly as a woman, I appreciated the restraint at the end, and I am not sure I would have been able to exercise it myself," Conway said. "To tell Hillary Clinton after she accused him about women, and I was prepared to go rough tonight and I am not going to do it because of your husband and daughter are here, and that's a great temperament."
It could be argued, however, that bringing it up at all displays improper temperament. Instead, this morning the campaign is pushing the narrative that Trump somehow deserves a gold star for not attacking Clinton for her husband's infidelity and for that alone he deserves to be president.
