| | | | Debate aftermath: Trump signals a negative turn | | Donald Trump didn't blast Hillary Clinton over Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs in last night's blockbuster debate. When they meet again on October 9, though, Trump says that might change. On "Fox and Friends" this morning, Trump said of Clinton that he "may hit her harder" next time. "I really eased up because I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings," he said.
Why didn't Trump bring up Monica Lewinsky last night? "I was going to hit her with her husband's women and I decided I shouldn't do it because her daughter was in the room," he said on Fox.
A sign this is gonna get nasty: Rudy Giuliani -- the former New York City mayor who has Trump's ear and is in debate prep sessions -- told Elite Daily that Clinton is "too stupid to be president" because she stayed with her husband after the Lewinsky scandal.
This would be a dangerous gambit for Trump. Clinton's camp sees it coming from miles away -- which means she's certain to rehearse ways to turn any attack back on Trump. Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon was practically goading Trump to go there in an interview today with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, saying: "Donald can say whatever he wants. He can fling whatever insults he wants. It's what he tried to do against all of his Republican primary opponents. It may have worked on them. It won't work on Hillary Clinton." There's also, as The Washington Post's Aaron Blake points out, the problem of Trump's own indiscretions. "He's walking right into her trap," GOP operative Katie Packer told Politico's Edward-Isaac Dovere, Eli Stokols and Gabriel Debenedetti. "She's making the case that he bullies, degrades and humiliated women. And this will be Exhibit A."
An emerging issue: Climate science. Trump denied Clinton's charge that he'd called climate change "a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese" -- but his 2012 tweet saying exactly that was the most retweeted item on Twitter last night. Today, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN's Alisyn Camerota that Trump does not believe global warming is man-made. The Democratic response started with President Barack Obama, who told Ryan Seacrest that Trump's refusal to believe climate science "worries me." Clinton hits the campaign trail tomorrow with Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire, where Sanders is sure to hit Trump over an issue he considers vital. The Clinton campaign's task -- aided by Tom Steyer's NextGen Climate Action group, the League of Conservation Voters and others -- is to turn the moment into effective outreach to millennial voters, to whom climate change is important.
Here's how many people watched last night: 81.4 million. It's a US record. | | Among Hillary Clinton's most devastating critiques of Donald Trump last night was her reference to Alicia Machado, the 1996 Miss Universe who has said Trump called her "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeper."
Today, Trump risked making it worse, attacking Machado again. "She gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem. We had a real problem," Trump said on "Fox and Friends." It's the top example The Associated Press' Lisa Lerer and Steve Peoples cite in their take on how Trump has dug in on some of the most damaging critiques he's faced -- including the Gold Star Khan family.
Seeing an opening, Clinton's campaign dispatched Machado to talk to reporters today. (She'll be on Anderson Cooper's show tonight and NBC's "Today" tomorrow.) It was also ready post-debate with this video: | | A barrage of TV ads about to hit | | Get ready for the election's most expensive week of television advertisements yet -- with Republicans and Democrats set to spend $28 million on radio and television in the coming days, per CNN's Theodore Schleifer.
What's driving it: Donald Trump is ramping up his ad buy, pumping $6.4 million into nine states as part of his plan to spend $100 million on TV ads through Election Day. He's getting help from allies, including banker and semi-professional poker player Andy Beal, who's spending $1 million on pro-Trump newspaper and digital ads through his own super PAC. A formerly Ben Carson super PAC is spending $1 million on ads for Trump on black radio in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, saying in one spot: "If Ben Carson trusts Donald Trump, so can we."
Republicans altogether are spending about $8.5 million on radio and television. Democrats are spending about $19.5 million -- thanks to $11.4 million from Hillary Clinton's campaign, and $7.5 million from Priorities USA, her super PAC. | | | Medical doctor, former Vermont governor and ex-Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean wondered on Twitter last night -- taking a page out of Trump's book -- whether Donald Trump's sniffles were related to cocaine use. And today, he stuck by the tweet, telling NBC's Kate Snow: "It's something I think it'd be interesting to ask him and see if he ever had a problem with that." | | No, Trump didn't win 'virtually every poll' last night | | CNN's Brian Stelter digs into a bogus claim Donald Trump -- and thousands of his supporters on Twitter -- are making about last night's debate: That he "won every poll -- virtually every poll."
Here's the problem: Trump is misleading people by citing unscientific, unrepresentative Internet polls. He touted them on Twitter and called them "debate polls" -- falsely implying rigorous, scientific polling. These internet polls are, Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson told Brian, "junk food."
Why internet "polls" are bogus: Meaningful national polls seek a diverse sample of respondents. The goal is to accurately represent the views of the country by accounting for differences in age, gender, party affiliations and other factors. That's not possible when anonymous web users fill out online surveys. People choose whether to participate, and they can vote multiple times, further warping the results. The only thing these surveys can measure, to a limited degree, is enthusiasm -- and some Trump supporters are definitely enthusiastic.
Journalists all know this -- and yet Trump's Fox News cheerleaders picked up on it. Sean Hannity bashed CNN's actual post-debate poll, complaining that it had 521 respondents vs. online polls' "hundreds of thousands." Fox morning news anchor Martha MacCallum said debate watchers are "leaning toward Donald Trump, and by pretty large margins in most of these viewer polls" -- inaccurately conflating scientific polls and unscientific web surveys.
Still, others pushed back. Here's what Reuters' Trump correspondent, Emily Flitter, tweeted: | | | Another good media read today: CNN's Dylan Byers on Trump's Hannity-based conservative media bubble. | | | The FBI is concerned about a possible hack of some Democratic Party staffers' phones. ... Senate Democrats blocked a government funding bill today over the GOP's refusal to include aid for Flint, Michigan. ... Jeb Bush will be a guest lecturer at Harvard this fall, focusing on education. | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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