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Trump’s 3 a.m Tweet Storm: Will voters see lack of impulse control? (Roundup)

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Are a winning number of voters going to conclude that Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump dangerously lacks impulse control and should not be allowed in the White House? Or is he Teflon Don? It comes within a context of Trump starting to fall in some national and state polls. It all centers on a Miss Universe, an old conflict Trump had with her raised by Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the last debate — and Trump can’t drop it.
The Politico sums it up bluntly:

While Hillary Clinton is riding high after the first presidential debate, Donald Trump is jumping down into the gutter.
In the wee hours of Friday morning, the impulse-control-deficient Republican nominee let loose a torrent of tweets, calling former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado “disgusting” and accusing her of having a sex tape.
…..Trump has since been unable to restrain himself, attacking Machado as Clinton’s camp has pushed her forcefully into the public eye, playing right into the Democratic nominee’s argument that Trump lacks the temperament and impulse control to be commander in chief.

Here are the (petty)controversial Tweets which don’t exactly seem to resemble the quality of person who has occupied the White House in a while (or our history):




The Nation’s Joan Walsh thinks Trump can’t handle being trumped by two women:

You’ve heard of the 3 am phone call, the one every presidential nominee must be prepared to answer ably. Now we have the 3 am tweet storm, where the would-be leader of the free world melts down at the temerity of mere women to challenge his political dominance.

Four days after his pathetic debate performance, Donald Trump is still digging himself deeper down the hole that Hillary Clinton dispatched him to on Monday night when she disclosed his racist and sexist treatment of former Miss Universe Alicia Machado…..

We already know the Trump phenomenon channels the tremendous and tragic backlash to the advancements of women and people of color in the last few decades…… But Trump is also relying on male anger at female advancement. His serial adultery and his swaggering misogyny are key to his appeal to some older white men.

But they’re appalling to women of every race and age group, who are coming to see Trump as the belittling boss and callow playboy who shames employees, wives, and daughters alike with cruel or crude comments about their appearance. The notion of a man who is clinically obese fat-shaming a beautiful but curvy young woman exemplifies the double standard that reduces women to their youth and beauty, but allows men (especially wealthy ones) a lifetime of presumed virility and social prestige.

The notion of a clinically obese man fat-shaming a beautiful, curvy young woman exemplifies the double standard.
Throughout her campaign against Trump, Clinton has tried to channel the backlash to the backlash, with ads featuring women reading Trump’s own sexist words, and maybe most affectingly, showing young girls looking at themselves in the mirror, as the GOP nominee’s sexist insults play in the background. The campaign clearly invited this latest clash with Trump over Machado—it had an ad featuring her story ready for release the morning after the debate. But I’m not sure anyone dreamed Trump would cooperate so willingly with their ploy.

Or maybe they did. It’s clear that Trump is coming undone by the notion that these two women—one “fat,” the other old, both past their sell date in the eyes of Trump and men like him—are not hiding somewhere in shame, maybe laboring quietly in the back office of one of his golf clubs where no one can see them, but out in the public square trying to bring him down. One is even beating him in the race for president, though the polls remain lamentably close.

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall has long contended that Trump’s whole style is to dominate his opponents but in the debate, Clinton dominated him and he has been lashing out ever since:

Trump hit a brick wall in Monday night’s debate. He didn’t prepare. It took Hillary Clinton, a woman he’d spent weeks calling frail and weak, only 15 or 20 minutes to knock him off stride and reduce him to a defensive posture for the rest of the debate. In boxing terms, she had him on the ropes in under half an hour and landed punches at will for the next hour. He attacked, interrupted, brought up various attack lines. But he was fundamentally reacting to her throughout. She dominated him in front of more than 80 million people. His inability to contain or damage her kept him angry and unfocused, flailing through the encounter.

After this, he denied anything had gone wrong in the debate, insisting that he’d won. This would be at least partly expected for any campaign but this was more wounded pride than spin. Then he got angry at staffers and supporters who said he’d underperformed. Then he spent three days calling a woman fat and saying he’d gotten no thanks for giving her the ‘opportunity’ to stop being fat.

Then he was up just after 5 am this morning ranting at Machado on twitter, calling her “disgusting”, talking about a seemingly non-existent “sex tape.” Even though there’s no evidence there’s any ‘sex tape’ and I assume there’s not, I suspect we’ll learn that someone told Trump something or showed him something that made him think there was or might be. I don’t think the timing is accidental. I suspect he felt he had something new, game-changing and punishing. He could not wait. The words in the flurry of early morning tweets pulses with a rage that goes beyond even what Trump’s usually capable of.

ABC’s Jake Tapper:

“Like a moth flying straight into a bright yellow lightbulb, the Republian presidential nominee appears unable to get away from the hazy glow of Twitter for Android.”

….But instead of just “biting,” Tapper said, “the fact that Donald Trump was up in the middle of the night fuming over this woman, telling voters to check out her sex tape… this was more than Hillary Clinton could have ever dreamed.”

The most brutal take-down of Trump camp from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren who did it in Trump’s favorite venue: Twitter.






This all comes within the context of polls now showing Clinton on the rise nationsally, and in swing states. Nate Silver:

National polls conducted since Monday’s presidential debate have shown Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by an average of about 4 percentage points — a meaningful improvement from her position before the debate, when she led by just 1 or 2 points. Now, it’s becoming clearer that battleground state polls are moving toward Clinton as well. These include the first results since the debate from high-quality, live-caller telephone polls; the numbers we’d been getting earlier this week were all from online or automated polls.

Some of the polls he cites:

In New Hampshire, a MassINC Polling Group poll (live caller) had Clinton up by 7 points.
In Michigan, a Glengariff Group poll (live caller) had Clinton up by 7 points.
In Florida, a Mason-Dixon poll (live caller) had Clinton up by 4 points.
Also in Florida, an Opinion Savvy poll (conducted by automated telephone and online) had the race essentially tied (Clinton up by 0.3 points).
And finally, in Nevada, a Suffolk University poll (live caller) had Clinton ahead by 6 points.

Most likely the Trump tweet controversy won’t have any impact on his followers, some of whom often seem like (old) Justin Beiber groupies.

But independents? Won’t help.

Women voters? Buh bye…