Sticking To Basics

Government forcing Border Patrol, Trump says, into "letting people pour into the country so they can go and vote".

Also: "The Republican nominee for president believes that African-Americans who are innocent should nonetheless be in prison".

Second-Banana Republican

tengrain nails last night's show. Terrible moderator and questions; filibuster by Pence, and largely weak performance by Kaine.

For former talk-radio host Pence, repeating talking points while deflecting questions is second nature. The smooth routine made it inevitable the punditocracy would deem him the winner.

And to a casual viewer, Pence may seem calm and reasonable. Sure, there was projection (accusing the Dems of running an "insult-driven campaign"). And outburst ("You whipped out that Mexican thing again!") But there certainly was no attention to his extremism; from tengrain's post—

Mike Pence is the kind of theocrat who scares me. Unlike Huckabee or Santorum who are essentially Elmer Gantry wannabes using the Rubes to their own advantage, the Pence's of the world are true believers, the sort of evangelists who can lie with impunity because they are lying in service to what they believe is a greater good. Mike Pence has signed into law in Indiana not just the terrible We Don't Serve Your Kind LGBTQ discrimination laws, but he has all also worked dilligently to defund Planned Parenthood and to add insult to women who do seek abortions, he has signed a law that requires women to have funerals for their fetuses.

Pence as "2020 GOP frontrunner" is the other pundit pronouncement. So much positive attention to Pence; can it only lead to tweet-rage from a jealous 2016 nominee?

Coming Soon, To A Screen Near You

"Trump: The Psychotic Break"...

Steve M. pretty much dismisses the Trump tax story, but (half-way through the post) finds Trump's out of control emotional state more consequential.

Steve cites the WaPo's account of the latest rally performance. Steve notes—

The "range of topics" [WaPo's term] included a racist call for Trump voters to monitor polling places in "certain areas," complaints about CNN's reporting on him during the primaries (why is he still complaining about this?), and a moment of physical mockery of Clinton reminiscent of his attempt to imitate disabled journalist Serge Kovaleski...

Also—

Underlining from Josh Marshall; added note, "Manic episode with anti-Semitic facets."

In other words, more of the famously Best Temperament on display.

Legal Eagle

Just released: Trump deposition. This particular one is for his lawsuit against companies that backed out of opening restaurants in the DC hotel, following Trump's speeches against Mexican immigrants.

Trump's statement is the beaut to be expected. Shakezula pulls out this prime bit of self-justification—

I'm running for office. I obviously have credibility because I now, as it turns out, became the Republican nominee running against, we have a total of 17 people that were mostly senators and governors, highly respected people. So it's not like, you know, like I've said anything that could be so bad. Because if I said something that was so bad, they wouldn't have had me go through all of these people and win all of these primary races. And I'm pretty even in the polls or close to even in the polls right now.

So I was very surprised that he wanted to get out of the lease.

Whodunit

Tax documents mailed from Trump Tower? Tengrain has a list of suspects...

Leaky Ship

Make that a different sort of leaky structure: the NYT is slipped some Trump tax records —mailed from Trump Tower.

Not that it will bother fans of America's would-be CEO, but here's Steven Attewell's synopsis —

So the "highly successful businessman" (according to Trump spokesmen) lost a billion dollars through "mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan," and used it to cancel out his taxes for decades, while "ordinary investors in the new company, meanwhile, saw the value of their shares plunge to 17 cents from $35.50, while scores of contractors went unpaid for work on Mr. Trump's casinos and casino bondholders received pennies on the dollar."

On Trump minions' predictable response to the Times, Attewell
adds —

Now that's what I call a winning message: our boss is a successful businessman who lost a billion dollars, he totally paid all the other taxes, because he’s a tax cheat he knows how to fix the tax code, and if you publish this, we’ll sue you.