Join us in The Hive for a live chat with Amanda Bellows, the author of the latest TPM Longform on the mysterious black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. Micheaux’s films were one of a kind and his work paved the way for African Americans in Hollywood — check out the piece here, and drop in your questions at or before 1 p.m. EST on Friday, August 26!
As I noted in my earlier post, the Trump camp, trying to right its ship, has now found itself either embracing President Obama’s deportation policy or claiming that they’re now just starting to deciding what their policy should be. It’s hilarious. And it’s important as citizens and Americans that we laugh at their nonsense. But we should also keep in mind the following point.
We have more evidence this morning that the Trump campaign is trying to pull off a painful and likely impossible pivot from the mass deportation of 3% of the US population with an Einsatzgruppen-sounding thing called the “deportation force” to something like exactly what Trump and Republicans have been railing about for years: the deportation policy followed by President Barack (oh hell, let’s just say it Hussein!) Obama.
In a series of interview last night Donald Trump appeared to embrace Barack Obama’s policy on deportations, just “perhaps with a lot more energy.”
The mix of lying, bad faith, and actually for the first time figuring out how immigration law works is quite a thing to behold. I remain pretty confident in what I wrote last night about this being why that Thursday speech got cancelled.
I think next we’re going to have a roll out of the Trump Taj MaWall that is based on the Stonehenge bit in Spinal Tap.
Over the weekend Donald Trump met with a new Hispanic advisory group. When group members emerged they seemed to say he was considering reneging on his vaunted promise to deport 3% of the US population (11 million undocumented immigrants). Then campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said the fate of the ‘deportation force’ – the ridiculous government police agency that would supposedly be charged with rounding up and expelling 11 million US residents – was ‘to be determined.’ Then Trump insisted he was definitely not flip-flopping on his promise to deport everyone.
So far so good: typical Trump disorganization around a completely fantastical policy idea.
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An AP analysis of Trump staffers’ social media accounts shows numerous instances racism, talk of holy war and more.
Here’s our list of takeaways for Donald Trump’s July FEC report which came out over the weekend. But there’s one part of the story I wanted to drill a bit deeper on – in part because it shows what a mess Trump’s campaign remains but even more because it illustrates a very basic Trump MO: friendship and loyalty over experience and competence.
The issue is who’s doing Trump’s digital work.
Kellyanne Conway got a shot today on CNBC to answer why her purportedly post-pivot boss is still insulting and issuing threats against TV personalities. It didn’t go well, though in Conway’s defense, I’m not sure what she’s supposed to say.
I wanted to flag this from election law expert Rick Hasen.