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Donald Trump, who thinks the government couldn’t cobble together a good trade deal if its life depended on it, still thinks it can somehow coordinate 50 election offices into defeating him. Trump announced his support for term limits, perhaps to ensure that Republicans aren’t the only ones sent packing due to his candidacy. And Trump’s business servers aren’t secure, particularly when you consider how vulnerable its CEO is to an a/s/l check. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Tuesday, October 18th, 2016:
@AriMelber: Booking at Trump hotels fell 59% this year
~ per @hipmunk in WashPo
TRUMP’S SERVERS INCREDIBLY INSECURE - So, before the election is done, there will be a Trump email hack revealing all his passwords are “12345,” right? Joseph Cox: “[A] researcher has found that a number of email servers linked to Donald Trump’s hotel and others businesses are running horribly out of date software which receive no security patches, and are lacking other precautions for keeping hackers out. The findings come at a time when cybersecurity is a crucial topic in the presidential election, with hackers dumping documents from Hillary Clinton’s campaign online, and Trump and his supporters continuing to criticise Clinton’s use of a private email server. ‘Running outdated software and operating systems for your publicly facing email infrastructure is problematic, especially when you’re a high profile organisation,’ security architect Kevin Beaumont, who highlighted the issues with Trump’s servers, told Motherboard in an email. ‘During an election where cybersecurity is such a big issue, I was a little amazed at what I saw.’” [Motherboard]
The Fraternal Order of Police really needs to retract its Trump endorsement: “With the GOP nominee for president having boasted about his ability to sexually assault women with impunity, a leading women’s group is asking the Fraternal Order of Police to back off of its endorsement of Donald J. Trump. Officers take pride in defending the good work they do on behalf of crime victims, particularly in the face of heightened criticism. Trump and the national FOP were to appear at a rally together in Philadelphia on Oct. 10, but the event was canceled after audio of Trump’s lewd comments surfaced the Friday before.” [HuffPost’s Ryan Grim]
HOW TRUMP’S ACTIONS AND WORDS ARE AFFECTING SEXUAL ASSAULT AND RAPE SURVIVORS - Tremendously powerful stuff from Laura Bassett: “For me, as for many women, Trump’s comments were personal. They triggered memories of an assault that I thought I had processed and put behind me more than a decade ago.... I was raped at a fraternity party in college. The details of the attack are hazy, because I was barely conscious. I remember waking up in the back of a police car, bloody and bruised, in the early hours of the morning. The cop offered to drive me to the hospital and asked if I wanted to press charges, but I was too afraid ― afraid of not being believed, of my parents learning what had happened, of being known as ‘the girl who cried rape’ on campus, as I’d seen happen to others. I told very few people what happened, choosing instead to forget. But there it was, 15 years later, bubbling to the surface as I faced covering a presidential candidate who more than a dozen women have accused of sexual assault. The scene played on repeat in my mind.” [HuffPost]
Inbox: “Tomorrow Republicans for Clinton in 2016 (R4C16), a grassroots movement of concerned Republicans, will launch a mobile billboard reading, ‘DON’T GROPE. VOTE,’ superimposed on Donald Trump’s likeness. The billboard will travel the length of the Las Vegas strip from 10 am - midnight.”
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SIX PEOPLE CORROBORATE PEOPLE WRITER’S TRUMP ASSAULT ACCUSATION - Stephanie Petit: “Six colleagues and close friends who corroborate former PEOPLE writer Natasha Stoynoff’s account of being attacked by Donald Trump in 2005 are now coming forward. Among them is a friend who was with Stoynoff when she ran into Melania Trump later in N.Y.C. The wife of the Republican nominee denies meeting Stoynoff after the attack, but Stoynoff’s friend Liza Herz remembers being there during the chance meeting. ‘They chatted in a friendly way,’ Herz, who met Stoynoff in college, says. ‘And what struck me most was that Melania was carrying a child and wearing heels’.... Trump vigorously denies the story and later attacked Stoynoff on the campaign trail, saying, ‘She lies! Look at her, I don’t think so.’” [People]
Ivanka Trump finally weighs in on #Grabthembythepussy-gate: “My father’s comments were clearly inappropriate and offensive, and I’m glad that he acknowledged this fact with an immediate apology to my family and the American people.” [Fast Company]
WIKILEAKS SHED LIGHT ON ABEDIN’S ROLE - Must be hard keeping all this information straight AND helping to foment a Muslim Brotherhood insurrection from inside the State Department. Annie Karni: “[T]he WikiLeaks release of thousands of stolen campaign emails — the authenticity of which the campaign has neither verified nor denied — shed new light on her unique internal role this cycle: Abedin has been around so long (she started her career as an intern in the first lady’s office), she’s become more than a body woman. She is now Clinton’s external hard drive.... She does not function as a chief power broker in the mold of Podesta or attorney and longtime Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, two aides dating back to the ’90s whom Clinton consults as her peers. Nor does Abedin appear to work as a strategist, like communications director Jennifer Palmieri, campaign manager Robby Mook or longtime media consultant Mandy Grunwald, thinking through the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of Clinton’s presidential bid. In the thousands of emails released by WikiLeaks so far, Abedin is rarely found offering her own suggestions about campaign strategy or yet another opinion on framing language for one of Clinton’s speeches. Instead, she simply channels the boss, manages the boss or serves as a very Clinton-specific Google search of a human being — the fastest way for the rest of the campaign’s top brass to find who and what Clinton wants and knows. In short, she comes across in the emails as the invaluable, irreplaceable uber-assistant of every powerful person’s dreams.” [Politico]
ELECTION OFFICIALS UNEASY WITH TRUMP’S ‘RIGGED’ COMPLAINTS - Sean Sullivan and Philip Rucker: “Donald Trump’s escalating effort to undermine the presidential election as ‘rigged’ has alarmed government officials administering the vote as well as Democratic and Republican leaders, who are anxiously preparing for the possibility of unrest or even violence on Election Day and for an extended battle over the integrity of the outcome. Hillary Clinton’s advisers are privately worried that Trump’s calls for his supporters to stand watch at polling places in cities such as Philadelphia for any hint of fraud will result in intimidation tactics that might threaten her supporters and suppress the votes of African Americans and other minorities. The Democratic nominee’s campaign is recruiting and training hundreds of lawyers to fan out across the country, protecting people’s right to vote and documenting any signs of foul play, according to several people with knowledge of the plans.... ‘Any time that your comments draw into question the legitimacy of the elections process, they have crossed the line,’ said Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican who supports Trump. ‘Particularly if you can’t back it up with evidence.’” [WaPo]
CLINTON CAMPAIGN COORDINATING WITH SUPER PACS - Given our current campaign finance regime, it’s almost quaint that this is still illegal, but it is. Lee Fang: “Newly disclosed hacked campaign documents published by WikiLeaks and a hacker who calls himself Guccifer 2.0 reveal in stark terms how Hillary Clinton’s staffers made Super PACs an integral part of her presidential campaign. Consider: In a July 2015 memo addressed to Clinton herself, her campaign laid out plans for working with the Democratic National Committee and Correct the Record, a Super PAC. Correct the Record was created by David Brock, a longtime Clinton ally and the founder of Media Matters for America. One section of the memo instructed: ‘Work with CTR and DNC to publicize specific GOP candidate vulnerabilities.’ In October 2015, several Clinton staffers strategized over ways to attack author Ed Klein for attributing an apparently fake quote to former President Bill Clinton in his book. ‘I’m sure Brock and team would love to go at him. Nick, want me to put you in touch with them?’ Clinton campaign communications staffer Christina Reynolds, wrote, referring to Clinton press secretary Nick Merrill. ‘I can reach out to David,’ volunteered Karen Finney, another Clinton staffer on the email chain.” [The Intercept]
CLINTON CONSIDERED CEOs FOR VP, AMONG OTHERS - Alexander Kaufman: “Hillary Clinton’s campaign considered the chief executives of Apple, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Starbucks and Xerox as potential running mates, according to an email that the whistleblowing platform Wikileaks released. The executives were listed alongside nearly four dozen vice presidential candidates that a team of Clinton’s top advisers compiled, including campaign chairman John Podesta, who wrote the March 17 email. The broad list also included Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who Clinton chose as her running mate in July.” [HuffPost]
The best (worst?) part of the Podesta email was how he divided up the possible VEEPs into “flavors” ―- African Americans, white people, women, etc.
WOE IS CHRIS CHRISTIE - Daniel Marans: “Christie, who chairs Trump’s transition team, would not give a straight answer when NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell asked him if he is ‘proud’ of Trump’s campaign. ‘The person who needs most to be concerned about the kind of campaign they’re running is the candidate. Because it’s the candidate’s campaign. It’s not my campaign,’ Christie told O’Donnell in an interview that aired on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ on Tuesday. The New Jersey governor went on to suggest that he and other campaign surrogates should not be held responsible for the campaign’s performance. ‘I’m proud of everything I’ve said, and that’s all I can control. The rest of it I can’t control,’ he concluded.” [HuffPost]
BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’s a dog getting its portrait drawn.
OBAMA URGES TRUMP TO PUT A LID ON IT - Jonathan Cohn: “President Barack Obama on Tuesday addressed Donald Trump’s warnings about voter fraud. And he did so by making the kind of argument that might actually get under Trump’s skin. The president told Trump to ‘stop whining’ and suggested the GOP nominee lacks the fortitude to be president. It happened in the Rose Garden, during a joint press appearance with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. A reporter asked Obama a question about Trump’s repeated predictions that Hillary Clinton’s supporters would try to steal the election by casting fake ballots, registering non-citizens, and other sorts of illegal activity in cities with large minority populations that tend to vote Democratic.… ‘It doesn’t really show the kind of leadership and toughness you want in a president,’ Obama said. ‘You start whining before the game is even over? If whenever things are going badly for you, and you lose, you start blaming somebody else? Then you don’t have what it takes to be in this job.’” [HuffPost]
COMFORT FOOD
- Just . . . don’t do this .
- Girl asks a tanker to toot its horn ― she should’ve thought about it.
- Extreme Dubstep Pug is extreme.
TWITTERAMA
@wexler: You have to love Trump pushing term limits for Republican House and Senate majorities that largely support him.
@MEPFuller: He was bleeding out of his wherever. #EvangelicalTrump
@aedwardslevy: DEMOCRATS ON TRACK TO EASILY SURPASS 270 ELECTORAL GLOATS
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