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Trump refuses to disclose his bundlers. What is he hiding?

(Washington Post)" Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place," Donald Trump declared at the Republican National Convention last month. "She is their puppet, and they pull the strings."

Never persuasive, this line of attack was at least less hypocritical when Mr. Trump largely self-funded his campaign. These days he is raking in donations — $80 million last month, according to the campaign — and from bigwigs as well as small donors. Among others, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and coal executive Joe Craft are fundraising for the GOP nominee. So who, to use his formulation, is now pulling Mr. Trump's strings?

Voters could get some answers if Mr. Trump would release, as have Hillary Clinton and most recent candidates before her, the names of his bundlers. These are the people who solicit large numbers of often medium-size checks and hand them over to campaigns. Though they do not necessarily give huge amounts of their own cash, bundlers rake in big sums for their candidates — and therefore pose a similar threat to the integrity of the political process. Even so, the law requires campaigns to disclose bundlers only when they are registered lobbyists. It is left to the campaigns to voluntarily provide more information.

Ms. Clinton has done so, releasing the names of some 500 bundlers. Mr. Trump, Politico's Shane Goldmacher recently noted, has not. Nor would the campaign discuss with Politico, or with us, its intentions with regard to this rudiment of transparency.

yortsed snacilbuper

Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump's Campaign Chief

(MSN.com) Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych's pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine's newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

63splitwindow

Clinton campaign responds to shocking revelations about Paul Manafort’s pro-Kremlin ties

(Raw Story) Clinton campaign press secretary Robby Mook issued a late-night statement on the bombshell in the recent New York Times detailing Donald Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort and his questionable dealings in Ukraine. Mook notes that the comes just before Trump is scheduled to give a major foreign policy address Monday on what his strategy will be if he is elected as president.

"We have learned of more troubling connections between Donald Trump's team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine," Mook said in the statement. "Given the pro-Putin policy stances adopted by Donald Trump and the recent Russian government hacking and disclosure of Democratic Party records, Donald Trump has a responsibility to disclose campaign chair Paul Manafort's and all other campaign employees' and advisers' ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, including whether any of Trump’s employees or advisers are currently representing and or being paid by them."

Doctor Jack

Clinton Up Again At 538, Trump's Average Poll Numbers Now In the Mid-30's

This is a complete and utter implosion. I have never seen a candidate that I can remember polling in the mid-30s during the general election. You have to reach back to 1996 to find a major party candidate doing as poorly as Trump is right now. And if you go through the past polls, Trump's position is historic in how bad it is. The only candidates polling this low this late in the election were Bob Dole, Bush in 1992, George McGovern, Humphrey and Goldwater. Trump is now polling among the biggest losers in the last 50 years.


TomCADem

Poll: Clinton holds large lead among millennials

(The Hill) Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton holds a large lead over Republican nominee Donald Trump among millennial voters, according to a new USA Today/Rock the Vote poll. Clinton is favored by 56 percent of voters under the age of 35, while Trump is backed by only 20 percent, according to the survey of millennials. In a four-way matchup including Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Clinton gets 50 percent of the vote from those under 35 and Trump receives only 18 percent. Johnson is favored by 11 percent and Stein by 4 percent. Another 18 percent say they won't vote or don't know whom they will vote for. According to the survey, half of those under 35 say they identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.

Native

Trump's new problem: His lead on economic issues is gone

(CNN Money) No matter how far behind he was in the polls, Donald Trump always led in one key area: The economy. Now Hillary Clinton has closed that gap. As recently as mid-July, when voters were asked which candidate "would better handle the economy," they picked Trump over Clinton by a wide margin (54% to 43%), according to CNN/ORC polling. Now Clinton has the edge. In the most recent CNN/ORC poll, conducted July 29 to 31, Clinton was ahead on the economy question, 50% to 48%.

Doctor Jack

New Hampshire Polls Show Yet Another State is Slipping from Trump's Reach

(Huffington Post) Donald Trump is losing by 9 percentage points to rival Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire ― a state with a large percentage of white working-class voters who were expected to perhaps give the GOP presidential nominee a boost.

According to a new set of CBS News/YouGov battleground polls released Sunday, just 36 percent of New Hampshire’s likely general election voters support Trump, who swept the state’s Republican primary, while 45 percent back Clinton, who lost the state to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) by an astonishing 20 points in the Democratic primary.

Native

Former Trump Plaza Hotel senior executive: I know Trump, and he's not fit to be president

(Tucson.com) I assumed the Trump I knew back then had changed. Last summer changed my thinking. The day Trump announced he was running for president — the day he declared war on all Mexican people by calling them rapists and drug dealers, and vowed to wall them out of the United States — I remember saying to myself aloud, “Oh my God, Donald Trump has not changed at all in 26 years!”

Back then, Donald Trump’s ego was as big as it is today. He was short-tempered, he was judgmental without facts, he judged people based on their clothes or the color of their skin. His attention span was so small it was almost impossible to have a strategic conversation with him about the business. He would say something one minute and change his mind the next. He would demand something be done one way, only to criticize that directive later, never taking blame. He never said he was sorry for anything. He was crude and sexist toward women, he was a philandering fool publicly. He would humiliate his wife without a second thought.

Donald Trump was humorless, cold and selfish. He would hurt the little guy if he could see even the slightest gain for himself. He refused to pay his bills, he sued anyone who got in his way. He threatened people like myself for telling the truth.

EricMaundry

The final insult: Donald Trump is a bore

(Fred Hiatt/WaPo) If he doesn’t ultimately win the election and shred our Constitution, the most annoying thing about Donald Trump may end up being this: He forced us to devote so much of our lives to a man who is, fundamentally, a bore. Don’t get me wrong: I’m as addicted to coverage of his train-wreck, oh-no-he-didn’t campaign as everyone else. Even if we wanted to avert our eyes, as citizens we would have a duty not to, to learn as much about the man and his potential presidency as we can. As Trump pinballed last week from “rigged election” to “Second Amendment people” to “founder of ISIS,” I crashed from one bumper to the next along with the rest of America.

But one reason this feels like such an imposition is that Trump is, in the end, so uninteresting. Trump has upended our politics. But he turns out to be the guy you would pray not to sit next to at dinner. He’s the one who never asks you a question, talks endlessly about himself — and has nothing to say. He doesn’t read, has no original ideas and thinks he knows more than you do because he once heard something on the news. If you were at a bar and saw him walking in, you’d look the other way, hoping not to catch his eye.

TexasTowelie

Federal judge rules Ohio's effort to defund Planned Parenthood is unconstitutional, permanently

(Cleveland.com) A federal judge on Friday permanently blocked Ohio from implementing laws that would defund Planned Parenthood by making the agency ineligible for state funding to pay for health care programs for the poor. The judge also ruled the laws unconstitutional. Judge Michael R. Barrett of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio ruled the state's efforts violated Planned Parenthood's rights to free speech and due process and that any action to implement the law would cause irreparable injury.

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