Vee

I think so many things made it "over for Trump" that would've ended any other normal politician a thousand times over in the last year. They didn't because for so long we all treated Trump as a mere novelty act, something transient which would end with the primaries, so it was all just taken as par for the course and everyone assumed he would disappear from the race soon. But when he won the nomination, our press had no idea how to handle it. They lazily tried to deal with it by hoping to refashion him as a normal Republican candidate, especially when he was in bad, bad shape in July and August - they saw the ratings potential dissipate as Hillary began to dominate, so they tried to give him a dozen chances to pivot and run a 'normal' campaign. But they realized too late that he couldn't and wouldn't be remade into a normal candidate. They continued trying to desperately pursue this same old both-sides false equivalence narrative with the two candidates until the last possible moment - namely mid-late September. When the worm turned it turned hard, and that's where he has been since, as a rolling disaster. Everyone knows it, he is cratering and Hillary is fully in control. I think the debate, Alicia Machado, the tax leak, this tape - those are the things that have really destroyed Trump once and for all. There will be no coming back and there will likely be more scandals, but those are the things that officially sealed him off, after a year of too many of us shrugging at it because we thought he'd never get this close. And that happened because of the blinkered, myopic GOP.

The difference is that it's all real now. This isn't the primaries, it isn't 2015, it isn't even the brief respite the media tried to give him in early September. This is the general, and over the last month he's completely cratered. He's down in every poll, including Breitbart. Hillary's wide lead has reopened. He's pulling out of swing states. The only way it could have been worse is to have video of him actually assaulting someone. This is not 'lucking out' just because that didn't happen - this is an unmitigated disaster.

Carl, come on. This is the opposite of luck. In every way. It is incredibly damaging and it is everywhere. Even you must see that. Hey, Australia hasn't exactly covered itself in glory in recent years. That being said, we are going to reject Trump in a landslide.

I didn't realize he was already with (married?) to Melania at the time. CNN just ran it as well.

MSNBC just ran the whole video. Right down to "grab 'em by the pûssy."

The video is already on all the networks.

Ari Zucker!

It gets better.

New merchandise being given out at this weekend's David Lynch Festival of Disruption. Fingers crossed for a trailer or teaser: Kyle MacLachlan was interviewed by Le Monde - the translation is rough but from what I can ascertain, he says he still doesn't know how Season 3 ends. Oy. The entry booth at the Festival of Disruption:

As I've oddly found myself living right next to Beverly Hills, I found this interesting with OG 90210 writer-producer Larry Mollin from a few years back pretty interesting.

From Maggie Haberman at the NYT on Twitter: Hillary is also way, way up again on a variety of Nate Silver, etc. forecasts, and the polling continues to surge for her. I can't lay my hands on it atm, but I saw another journo (John Harwood?) say that some of Trump's senior advisors will not be voting for him, calling him 'unhinged and unfit.'

Meanwhile, in the smoking wreckage of Ted Cruz's life.

Yes, yes, aren't we all, dear.

The VP debate seems to have been greeted as an uninteresting draw at best, with some networks and pundits giving it to Kaine and others Pence, others calling it a tie. But one man is very unhappy with Pence - his running mate, who feels upstaged.

The thing looked like a muddle to me what little I saw of it, but I don't think it moves the needle either way for voters. It's the VP debate. Still, seems like most networks/pundits other than Chris Matthews are giving it, surprisingly I thought, to Kaine. I didn't think either of them covered themselves in glory, but the takeaway seems to be Pence was unable to defend Trump.

Trump already had his comeback and bombed out again when he mocked the media with his hotel. Anything left now is just trying to save the last shreds of the horse race while still enjoying the media feeding frenzy towards the rolling apocalypse that is his campaign. The taxes, the debate, Machado - none of that is going away, and the media loves it.

Today in Trump (so far);

A French ad/cover? for The Secret History of Twin Peaks, out at booksellers in two weeks. Ray Wise is now a regular on Fresh Off the Boat.

Up by 13. Boom.

Angelo Badalamenti, Julee Cruise, Trent Reznor and other Lynch associates (many of whom, including Reznor, Chrysta Bell and Wayne Coyne, are working on the new show alongside Badalamenti and Cruise) talk about making music with David Lynch.

Fun fact: Famed casting director Johanna Ray is also the mother of Eric DaRe (Leo). She had Eric with Aldo Ray, and Lynch picked Eric to play Leo after he ran the casting sessions for the original show with his mom.

Irish actress Amy Shiels and Welsh actor Owain Rhys-Davies are two of the show's new FBI agents.

The alt right kids were cheering for Hillary to drone him during the length of the livefeed.

This Wikileaks 'press conference' is a hilarious circlejerk. An hour of randos praising Assange with ludicrous technical difficulties (which I did not watch), and now Assange mumbling and whining about his situation and waxing rhapsodic about his place in history. The desperate alt right is savaging him on Twitter. Rambling and stumbling and promising he will publish 'major things' soon while comparing his operation to the library of Alexandria. Priceless. Good night! The best part at the end: Claiming at the end he was 'misquoted' about having documents against Hillary Clinton, and that people are mistaken - he doesn't dislike Hillary Clinton. LMAO

Just because the country has a portion of ignorant people who key into Trump doesn't mean it doesn't repulse the larger electorate overall. There's a reason he has never really been ahead of Clinton and is now freefalling again. It's because, as the Republicans have learned in every presidential election since '08, "a lot of (dumb) people" ultimately ain't [!@#$%^&*] for the national vote these days.