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Melania Trump delivered a strong condemnation of online bullying, while Donald Trump continued posting “ur an idiot” on the universe’s Facebook page. Eric Trump said white supremacist and Louisiana Senate candidate David Duke deserves “a bullet,” exhibiting an attitude the Trump children typically reserve for endangered animals. And Mitch McConnell said, “if America votes like Kentucky, we’ll be fine,” which is something we would make fun of, but we’re too busy developing a line of T-shirts saying just that. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Thursday, November 3rd, 2016:
MELANIA TRUMP: STOP BULLYING - Up next, her “Grab Her By The Nothing, Politely Ask Her How She Is Doing And Be Mindful Of The Patriarchy” campaign: Eliot Nelson: “Melania Trump returned from political exile on Thursday by making a rather eyebrow-raising claim: as first lady, she would combat bullying. That anti-bullying campaign, however, likely wouldn’t extend to her husband. ‘Our culture has gotten too mean and too violent,’ the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told a crowd here in the suburbs of Philadelphia. ‘It is never OK when a 12-year-old girl or boy is mocked, bullied or attacked. It is terrible when that happens on the playground and it is unacceptable when it’s done by someone with no name hiding on the internet.’ … ‘We’ve seen this already,’ ‘Melania Trump said Thursday. ‘As adults, many of us are able to handle mean words, even lies.’ (This very week, a social media campaign, #ImWithTur, has sprung up as a defense of NBC News reporter Katy Tur, whom the Republican nominee singled out for mockery during a speech in Miami on Wednesday.)” [HuffPost]
We asked Kellyanne Conway before the speech whether Melania would discuss the allegations against her husband. “The nice thing about the First Amendment is you can ask rude questions,” she replied. Thanks, Kellyanne!
MITCH COMES OUT OF HIS SHELL - How many terms does he think Trump should get, though? Adam Beam: “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made his strongest statement yet on his party’s presidential nominee, telling a rally in his home state Wednesday that ‘we need a new president, Donald Trump, to be the most powerful Republican in America.’ … While McConnell has not been eager to discuss Trump, he has had plenty to say about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.” [AP]
Eliot will be participating in a Reddit AMA tomorrow at 11:00 am. He’ll be discussing the election, his book The Beltway Bible, and what it’s like to attend all four major political conventions and not want to jump into a volcano. [/r/politics]
STOP READING POLLS, YOU LUNATICS - Calm down. We all get to find out in a few days who won the election anyway. Natalie Jackson: “The polls do show that some states are close. But the level of panic that threatened to ensue if one poll showed Trump up in one state was baffling ― especially considering the other high-quality polls out on Wednesday. It shows just how uncertain politicos think this election is. Yet Clinton is in a better place than Barack Obama was at this point in 2012. In the HuffPost Pollster chart, Obama widened his lead to just 1.5 percentage points over Mitt Romney nationally ― but that was good enough for Simon Jackman’s HuffPost model and Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight model to give Obama a 91 percent chance of winning. Obama’s odds in the states were good enough that he was predicted to get 332 electoral votes (which is what he got). Clinton is currently about 6 points ahead of Trump in the HuffPost Pollster national chart, and our predictions give her 341 electoral votes.” [HuffPost]
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TRUMP MAY BE LYING ABOUT MONEY, YOU GUYS - Many people are saying he’s full of crap. Russ Beuttner: “Mr. Trump has repeatedly held out his financial disclosures as a justification for breaking with tradition and refusing to release his personal tax returns. ‘You don’t learn that much from tax returns,’ he said in September during his first debate with Hillary Clinton. ‘You learn a lot from financial disclosure. And you should go down and take a look at that.’ But an examination of his tax appeals on several properties, and other documents obtained by The New York Times through Freedom of Information requests, shows that what Mr. Trump has reported on those forms is nowhere near a complete picture of his financial state. The records demonstrate that large portions of those numbers represent cash coming into his businesses before covering costs like mortgage payments, payroll and maintenance. After expenses, some of his businesses make a small fraction of what he reported on his disclosure forms, or actually lose money. In fact, it is virtually impossible to determine from the forms just how much he is earning in any year.” [NYT]
STUNNING THAT THIS CONSTITUTES NEWS - Congress does not, in fact, have a PreCrime unit. Laura Barron-Lopez: “Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) earlier this week called recent talk of impeaching Hillary Clinton if she is elected ‘premature.’ The election is five days away, but a number of Republicans have already begun floating the idea of impeaching the Democrat if she wins the White House…. ‘Well, I think that’s premature myself, to be talking about that because of course she hasn’t been elected or sworn into office,’ Cornyn said. ‘And unless there is some additional evidence that the FBI director and the [Justice Department] would take to a grand jury, then she is not likely to be convicted of a crime.’” [HuffPost]
MEGYN KELLY DETAILS HARASSMENT FROM AILES IN NEW BOOK - Again, that’s Roger Ailes, Donald Trump confidante. Emily Peck: “In a forthcoming memoir, Fox news anchor Megyn Kelly describes in detail the repeated sexual advances of her disgraced former boss at Fox News, Roger Ailes, according to a report on RadarOnline. Kelly writes that Ailes made inappropriate comments and even tried to grab and kiss her, threatening her job if she did not comply, per the outlet. RadarOnline says it got an early look at Kelly’s book, ‘Settle for More,’ and that the 45-year-old only recently added the details on Ailes behavior. Ailes was ousted from the top spot at Fox this summer, after several women there came forward alleging sexual harassment. The new details seem to confirm earlier reports that Kelly had told investigators at Fox that Ailes sexually harassed her. Kelly’s bombshell comes just as the popular anchor is negotiating a new contract with Fox. The network reportedly is offering her $20 million a year to stay. “ [HuffPost]
ERIC TRUMP INNOCENTLY OFFERS FREE AMMO TO DAVID DUKE - Political correctness has gotten so bad. Christina Wilkie: “Eric Trump, son of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, said Thursday that former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke deserves ‘a bullet.’ ‘The guy does deserve a bullet,’ he told Denver radio host Ross Kaminsky, agreeing with Kaminsky’s suggestion that Duke, an unabashed racist and long-shot Senate candidate, should be shot in the head.” [HuffPost]
TOOMEY: LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA - Sometimes, you can’t spend your WHOLE day pretending to be on your BlackBerry. Samuel Levine: “With just days until election day, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) still won’t say whether he’ll vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Toomey, who is fighting to save his Senate seat in a tight election race, dodged the question repeatedly last month during a debate with his Democratic opponent, Katie McGinty. He narrowly trails McGinty ahead of Tuesday’s election. So it’s no wonder he was coy again on Thursday. ‘Like a lot of Pennsylvanians and a lot of Americans, I am very disappointed with the choice that we have and I can’t vote for Hillary Clinton under any scenario,’ he said in an interview on WTXF. ‘I have a lot of problems with Donald Trump. I have been very public about my criticisms when I’ve disagreed with him, and I’ve said so.’ Toomey added that he could see some benefits from a Trump presidency.” [HuffPost]
WOULD BE NICE IF COMEY COULD JUST SAY THIS, TOO - Ryan J. Reilly: “If Daniel C. Richman, an adviser to James Comey, were writing this story about the FBI director’s recent disclosure that the bureau was reviewing newly discovered emails in the Hillary Clinton probe, it would include a sentence like this right up top: ‘We don’t know what’s in them, and it’s entirely possible that there’s nothing in them. Don’t change your assumptions based on complete uncertainty.’” [HuffPost]
IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH THEY DON’T WANT BLACK PEOPLE TO VOTE - Julia Harte: “This year’s highly charged presidential contest between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump has stoked accusations by both parties of political meddling in the scheduling of early voting hours in North Carolina, a coveted battleground state with a history of tight elections. In emails, state and county Republican officials lobbied members of at least 17 county election boards to keep early-voting sites open for shorter hours on weekends and in evenings - times that usually see disproportionately high turnout by Democratic voters. Reuters obtained the emails through a public records request. The officials also urged county election boards to open fewer sites for residents to cast ballots during early voting that began on Oct. 20 and ends on Saturday. [Reuters]
JUDGE BARS PARANOID RACISTS FROM PHILLY POLLING PLACES - Well, at least the ones who don’t actually live in Philadelphia. Christina Wilkie: “Efforts by Pennsylvania Republicans to send poll watchers to minority neighborhoods to guard against ‘voter fraud’ were dealt a serious blow Thursday, when a federal judge rejected a lawsuit seeking permission to send poll watchers anywhere in the state. Under Pennsylvania law, poll watchers may only observe voting in the county where they are registered to vote.” [HuffPost]
NATHAN DEAL TIME TRAVELS FROM THE ‘50s TO SCOLD MINORITIES - Nice talk, sugar mouth. Amanda Terkel: “Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) went after opponents of an education ballot measure known as Amendment 1 in a speech last month, saying if they wanted to help ‘colored people,’ this measure was a good place to start. ‘The irony of some of the groups who are opposing doing something to help these minority children is beyond my logic. If you want to advance the state of colored people, start with their children,’ Deal said in an Oct. 3 speech, Fox 5 in Atlanta reported Wednesday. [HuffPost]
OBAMA SEEMS TO KNOW HE’S OVERSEEN THE END OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY - If he’s so upset about all this, why didn’t he leeeeaaad??? Cristian Farias: “President Barack Obama let Republicans have it Wednesday for their change of tune on how they might deal with Supreme Court vacancies…. ‘Now keep in mind, the reason they said they wouldn’t have a hearing or vote for my Supreme Court nominee, bucking all of American history, was because, “We thought the American people should decide the next Supreme Court justice,”’ Obama said. ‘Now they’re saying, “Well, if they don’t decide the way we want them to decide, maybe we won’t even do that.”’” [HuffPost]
YEAH, YEAH THE MEDIA IS TERRIBLE BUT COME ON - Human beings with lives and families shouldn’t be put in danger for Trump’s shitty applause lines. Michael Calderone: “GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump recklessly singled out NBC News correspondent Katy Tur on Wednesday afternoon during a recurring riff about how the media supposedly won’t show the size of his audiences…. Despite Trump’s onstage outrage, it is ‘factually untrue’ to say members of the media don’t cover his crowds ― and the candidate knows it, Tur said on MSNBC Wednesday night. ‘This is a shtick that he does to rile up his base,’ she said. ‘It’s to give them an excuse for polls that might not be in his favor. It’s to give them an excuse to berate somebody other than Donald Trump, and to blame somebody for something that doesn’t look as good as they want it to look.’” [HuffPost]
THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMA’S SINISTER PLAN TO ALLOW POOR PEOPLE TO SEE DOCTORS - Jeffrey Young: “The share of Americans who don’t have health coverage fell below 9 percent during the first half of this year, the lowest percentage ever recorded, according to survey results published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday…. This latest survey of the uninsured population underscores what the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, has achieved in its first three years of being fully online. The uninsured rate had hovered around 15 percent in previous years, until the health care reform law’s expansion of Medicaid to poor adults, and introduction of subsidized private health insurance for low- and moderate-income families became available.” [HuffPost]
HERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY BELIEVE IN - Yamiche Alcindor: “It didn’t take long for Jack Morris to regret voting for President Obama. A few months after Mr. Morris, a lifelong Republican, cast his first vote for a Democrat in 2008, he learned that the carpet company where he worked planned to lay off 36 people in Pennsylvania and move his job to Maryland…. Mr. Morris is one of a small subset of voters who supported Mr. Obama in 2008 and have now embraced Mr. Trump, attracted by his vow to shake up the political status quo and restore lost jobs…. Interviews with Mr. Morris and more than a dozen others show a common theme: The message of change that inspired them to vote for Mr. Obama is now embodied by Mr. Trump, whom they see as a brash outsider unconnected with Washington bureaucrats and the big-money donors funding Democratic and Republican candidates.” [NYT]
NO MATTER WHO WINS, GOLDMAN SACHS WINS - Zachary Warmbrodt: “Donald Trump is signaling that he wants to appoint his campaign finance chairman, Steven Mnuchin, as Treasury secretary, according to a person close to the campaign. Trump’s preference for the Goldman Sachs alumnus is the latest evidence that the GOP presidential nominee would be inclined to hire officials with experience in the business world should he win next week’s election, despite the anti-establishment tone that has dominated the campaign.” [Politico]
K STREET IS COMING FOR YOUR FACEBOOK - Catherine Ho: “Many K Street leaders view social media and digital advocacy, not traditional lobbying, as the fastest-growing segments of the influence industry, according to a recent survey of Washington lobbyists, lawyers, association executives and think tank leaders. When asked about the next five years, the greatest percentage of respondents, 38 percent, said they expect organizations to increase social media to influence policymakers, according to an October survey of 202 Washington “insiders” by the opinion research firm Prime Group.” [WashPost]
BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’s an adorably old Cubs fan adorably reacting to the team’s victory last night.
SOAK UP THESE OBAMA ZINGERS NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN - DGAF Obama is fun to watch. Paige Lavender: “’This isn’t a joke. This isn’t “Survivor.” This isn’t “The Bachelorette,”’ Obama said at a rally in Florida. ‘This counts.’ Obama continued with his television riff, questioning if Trump could handle the presidency if he can’t even handle being joked about on NBC’s ‘Saturday Night Live,’ referring to Trump’s annoyance at actor Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of him over the last month. ‘Come on, man,’ Obama said.” [HuffPost]
COMFORT FOOD
- A nifty online kaleidoscope.
- Bill Murray had a distinctly Murrian reaction to the Cubs’ victory.
- Here’s a rendition of Toto’s “Africa” on a harp.
TWITTERAMA
@igorbobic: 80 degrees in DC in November. Need someone to throw a snow ball on the Senate floor right now.
@elisefoley: I suppose Melania Trump said it’s bad when people bully on twitter without their names, and Donald does it with his name, so maybe it’s ok?
@MEPFuller: Maybe the Trumps will *finally* hold a unity rally with David Duke now.
You know, to apologize.
Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com) or Arthur Delaney (arthur@huffingtonpost.com).