[UPDATE: Ah, I see Dana already did this story. Well, read both of our posts!]

All the online polls say this was a good idea. All of them!

Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an "angel" without checking her past, which is terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016

Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT! Hillary was set up by a con.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016

Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016

After the Machado story broke, places like the Daily Caller reported: “Snippets of an adult film starring Machado are available on multiple free porn websites.” This has been debunked:

It should come as no surprise that celebrity nude photographs and sex videos drive major traffic on the Internet. But when legitimate photographs or videos are not available, hoaxsters often resort to creating their own. In some cases, this involves Photoshopping a famous face onto a nude or near-nude body (as was done with Sarah Palin), or changing the title of a sex video if it features a porn actress who bears a resemblance to a celebrity

The latter is the case with Alicia Machado. In 2009, a video clip purportedly showing the former Miss Universe winner engaging in anal sex was circulated online, and that is the clip that now most frequently shows up in response to web searches on the phrase “Alicia Machado porn.” However, the woman seen in that video is not Alicia Machado — the clip was taken from the 2004 DVD Apprentass 4, which features porn actress Angel Dark, and was later retitled to suggest it showed Alicia Machado:

The Daily Caller article now sports the correction: “Correction: The star of Apprentass 4 was Angel Dark, not Alicia Machado.”

Happily, we can still carry on the debate, because there is some grainy footage of figures squirming together on a bed on a Spanish reality show. As Snopes.com says:

Machado is also often described as having been in a “sex tape,” a claim that stems from her 2005 appearance on the Spanish reality show La Granja (similar to the United States’ The Real World), which she was reportedly kicked off of after being filmed having sex with another cast member:

The romantic relationship between Alicia Machado and her fellow Venezuelan, baseball player Bob Abreu, is finished. The breakup was announced by the athlete himself in an interview with the Telefutura cable network.

The remarks followed a scandal that erupted over Machado’s appearance on the Spanish television program La Granja. In the course of that reality show, the former Miss Universe and Spanish actor Fernando Acaso were filmed having sex. After the incident, the Venezuelan actress and singer was booted from the program, and two weeks ago she apologized on the air to her boyfriend.

“I never thought things would happen like that. [Fernando] behaved very respectfully towards her as a woman” Abreu says. He also said that Machado would now have to think things through. Abreu emphasized that he is no longer Machado’s boyfriend and said their relationship had ended before Machado went to Spain to participate in La Granja.

However, the so-called “sex tape” stemming from that incident, which is nothing more than some grainy, night-vision footage of a couple of covered figures writhing in a bed, hardly qualifies as explicit. And reality television being what it is, the scene the tape depicts was quite possibly staged or fabricated.

I have a friend who once played a role on a reality show. He was the cheating husband caught on tape with multiple bikini-clad women in a hot tub. My friend has never been married, but he got paid cash money to pretend he was so he could sit in a hot tub with bikini-clad women. Not a bad gig. Lesson: “reality” shows are fictional trash. Sorry to burst your bubble.

So now maybe Mike Pence can spend part of the Vice Presidential debate defending the notion that Trump’s late night reference to a sex tape was not a debunked reference to a porn tape, but a reference to grainy footage from a reality show. I think that would be a good use of his time, don’t you? Better than, say, using that time to talk about, say, Tim Kaine boycotting Netanyahu’s speech to Congress and his ties to J Street.

Thanks, Donald!

[guest post by Dana]

Good morning! It looks like some of us were awfully busy during the wee hours of the morning:

Who is it keeping this ridiculous story alive? Who is it giving the media even more fuel for their partisan fires of bias? Who is it that eagerly snapped up the bait dangled before him? And who is it that filters everything, first and foremost, through the personal prism of his enormous ego?

Oh, fool, thy name is vanity:

I don’t understand why everybody is surprised at his lack of discipline. He has been out there for 15 months. He is completely undisciplined. Yes, for a month he has been led around, shackled, handcuffed by his staff, made to read from the Teleprompter. But the minute you let him loose – meaning on the debate stage where there is no prompter, and the immediately after when he is reacting — what emerges is his central weakness: vanity. You have seen this all along. I don’t know whether his strategy was to go after target audiences. I suspect that’s what his staff was hoping. Trump’s strategy is to express himself. He did extremely well in doing that in the primaries. He came out of nowhere. There weren’t a lot of people who thought he could. And he trusts himself. Is anybody surprised he is continuing the feud with Miss Universe? The worst part was that little interjection about not paying taxes, which he now has to defend as well. Because this is a man who, when he is personally attacked, has to reflexively respond to defend his self-image. That’s what drives him…

As observed:

Why should anyone be emotionally invested in this man’s victory, if he refuses to learn, refuses to improve, and refuses to avoid making the same mistakes, over and over and over and over again? I’d love to see Hillary Clinton defeated. I just have no faith that Donald Trump is capable of doing that. Every now and then, he gains some traction, the polls get closer… and then he goes and does something stupid. And all of his supporters insist it doesn’t matter, and that we should all avert our eyes, and that we’re betraying something good and righteous by noticing what just happened right in front of us. And then they insist it’s not stupid, that there’s some brilliant nine-level chess going on that we can’t possibly understand from the outside, and if we just wait and see, Donald Trump will win in the end. Unless he doesn’t, because the election is rigged. That’s not a campaign; that’s a cult.

–Dana

It’s remarkable because they never endorse:

In the 34-year history of USA TODAY, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. Instead, we’ve expressed opinions about the major issues and haven’t presumed to tell our readers, who have a variety of priorities and values, which choice is best for them. Because every presidential race is different, we revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now.

This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.

From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week’s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.

Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections.

I have no quarrel at all with their conclusion, but I don’t support all of their reasoning. For example: why do we need to bother with NATO? There is no more Soviet Union. Why do we need foreign entanglements, when no less a personage than George Washington warned us against that very danger? And as for “the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts” — wake up and smell the deficit, USA Today Editorial Board! It’s virtually a certainty that the United States won’t make good on its debts. We’re over $19.5 trillion in the hole with absolutely no plan to do anything other than run up huge deficits as far as the eye can see. This is a central reason someone is unfit?

No. There is a host of reasons that actually do make Trump unfit, and the piece touches on some of them. Trump’s penchant for dishonesty is so over-the-top and insane that he makes Hillary Clinton look like a fibbing nine-year-old rather than the habitual lying cretin we all know her to be. He once pretended to be a pro-Trump publicist named John Miller, and every person with ears and a brain knows it was him — yet he denied, in 2016, that it was him. I can’t get over that to this day. (And no debate moderator has ever called him on it!) He is carelessly cruel to people on a consistent basis. He is a whiner and a coward. He is a man who avoided military service based on a made up, bullshit medical excuse, and then mocked the service of a man, John McCain, whose story of courage would make anyone who heard it want to punch a lifesized cutout of Donald Trump in the mouth. Trump is everything that is wrong with this country. Indeed, on any objective basis, Donald Trump is a worse human being than Hillary Clinton, and that’s saying something. It is only the fact that her policies are nominally far worse for the country (although who knows what the lying Trump’s real polices really are) that prevents a vote for her from being the obvious choice. If my vote came down to nothing more than which person is a more moral human being, I would easily cast my vote for the lying, power-hungry, wretched old harpy.

And yet our tendency for our partisan reflexes to kick in has blinded Republicans to these problems of Trump’s. Trump’s comment about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue was supposed to be a kind of joke, but I believe it’s no longer a joke. Politics is the best profession for a con man — just ask Brett Kimberlin, who has clothed his cons in the garb of partisan politics for years — because no other area turns off the rational part of the brain like politics. I truly believe, with all my heart and soul, that Donald Trump could literally murder someone tomorrow, and if it were not captured on video, no matter the evidence, millions would still support him. “Well, the Clintons have murdered people, probably a lot more people!” the Trumpers would say. You know they would. They really, actually would.

I recently ran a poll, which was somewhat tongue in cheek to be sure, asking people whether they would vote for the worst mass murderer in history (Chairman Mao) or Hillary Clinton, given that binary choice. The small sample reflected the poll’s lack of seriousness, but it still is remarkable that Chairman Mao won a solid majority of votes, 61% to 39%.

If murdering people, or lying on an insane and pathological scale, aren’t going to change people’s minds about Trump, the opinion of a few editorial writers at a national newspaper sure won’t. It’s still a noteworthy piece and deserves your time.

UPDATE: These South Park clips sum it all up.

[guest post by Dana]

So here is the latest #KidsAgainstTrump political ad. It’s yet another example of children being grossly manipulated and exploited by the left:

“He’s a bully, and I don’t want a bully for President.”

These #KidsAgainstTrump have joined forces to stop Donald Trump! pic.twitter.com/wUDNn7g0IP

— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) September 29, 2016

Do these little pawns know that because of Hillary Clinton and her fellow Democrats, they could have been legally killed while still in their mother’s womb? Every. Single. One. Which reminds me, do you remember the overwhelming concern the left displayed toward another little handicapped fellow who was utterly helpless and wholly vulnerable? Surely you remember the sweetly protective comments directed at him when he was introduced to the country like every other candidate’s children before him.

Hey #KidsAgainstTrump users and supporters, spare me your obscene double-standard-faux-concern bullshit. You’re not fooling anyone. Well, except for a group of innocent children not yet mature enough to understand the very dirty game of politics you are playing with them.

–Dana

There are only two options, and always only these two options: either The Leader won the game, or the game was rigged against The Leader.

Some of Trump’s aides have mistakenly concluded that there is a third option — that Donald Trump lost the debate because he didn’t prepare for it — and Trump is not happy about it. CNN:

Donald Trump is angry that his aides and advisers have conceded to reporters — largely without attribution — that the Republican nominee struggled in his first presidential debate.

In a conference call with surrogates Wednesday afternoon, Trump aides made clear the Republican nominee is upset that his allies publicly acknowledged they pushed him to change his preparation and tactics before his next bout with Hillary Clinton. And he wants them to stop it immediately.

The message was “not subtle,” a source familiar with the call said.

Trump wants his supporters to make an energetic defense of his performance and refuse to concede that he didn’t nail it.

Yes, but how do we know this call really happened? I’ll tell you. Trump’s people deny it happened. That’s how we know it really happened.

Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller denied the account.

“The entire description of today’s call is completely false and anybody saying otherwise is just making it up,” he said.

Donald Trump’s campaign revolves around the idea that he will look you in the eye and tell you that what you know to be true, is not true. You know he tepidly supported the war in Iraq, maybe quibbling about the timing? No, Trump tells you, I was against it. That “publicist” John Miller who sounds just like Trump, speaks just like Trump, and is obviously Trump? No, Trump tells you, it wasn’t me.

Trump lost the debate and it looks like Hillary is getting a bounce in the polls? No, Trump tells you, I won the debate. Who are you going to believe, the evidence and your own good judgment, or the things that come out of my liehole?

In totalitarian states, there is no option for the game to be rigged against The Leader. The Leader simply always wins — end of story. Now, I’m not saying Trump is a totalitarian leader. I’m not saying that at all!

He’s not in office yet.

But I am saying this, while it’s still legal for me to say so:

Donald Trump lost the debate.

P.S. Also he sniffed a lot.

[Cross-posted at RedState.]

Big Media’s new anti-Trump hotness seems to have something of a checkered past. A past which includes accusations of threatening to kill a judge. Associated Press, February 5, 1998:

A Venezuela judge said Thursday a former Miss Universe threatened to kill him after he indicted her boyfriend for attempted murder.

Venezuelan beauty queen Alicia Machado threatened “to ruin my career as a judge and … kill me,” Judge Maximiliano Fuenmayor said on national television.

The 21-year-old Machado, who created an international stir in 1996 when she gained 35 pounds after being crowned Miss Universe, allegedly called the judge after he issued an arrest warrant Wednesday for Juan Rafael Rodriguez Regetti.

Rodriguez, 26, is accused of shooting and wounding his brother-in-law, Francisco Antonio Sbert Mousko, outside a church in Caracas last November where Sbert’s wife _ Rodriguez’s sister _ was being eulogizing.

Rodriguez apparently blamed Sbert for driving her to commit suicide.

The victim’s family accused Machado of driving the getaway car, but Fuenmayor has not indicted her, citing insufficient evidence. The judge said there were no witnesses to place Machado at the scene _ or to back up her claim she was home sick at the time.

She also has been accused of having a child with a cartel kingpin. When someone told authorities about all the top-level drug traffickers at her daughter’s baptism, it did not go well for that someone:

In 2010, the Mexican attorney general’s office said Machado was romantically involved and had a daughter with notorious drug lord, Jose Gerardo Alvarez Vazquez, also known as “El Indio.” The allegation came from a witness who testified the two were romantically linked, according to CNN.

This witness said El Indio and several other known drug-traffickers attended Machado’s daughter’s baptism in 2008. The witness — who went into protection soon after giving this testimony — was shot and killed at a cafe in Mexico City in 2009. Machado has since denied these reports, claiming her child’s father is a well-respected businessman.

Machado’s response when questioned about the getaway driver allegation: “I’m not a saint girl” — but that’s not important now. What’s important, she says, is that Donald Trump was rude to her.

Big Media will certainly agree.

[Cross-posted at RedState.]

Someone made a video of all Donald Trump’s sniffs from last night’s debate.

This is what passes for substance these days. And if this had been Hillary, it’s all we would be talking about. IS SHE SICK? IS SHE GOING TO DIE? DID YOU HEAR HER SNIFF SNIFF SNIFFETY SNIFF? I can see the headlines on Breitbart, linked by Drudge, and three nights of discussion on Hannity. I can see it all.

Hey, Trump has Breitbart, Drudge, and Hannity. Hillary has all of Big Media. Surely one of those hacks will seize on this.

I’m not saying that Hillary Clinton put her neurological problems on full display in tonight’s debate.

I’m not saying that at all.

All I’m saying is this: for someone who has engaged in some weird episodes of shaking, including oddly staggering after a 9/11 memorial service — and for someone whose neurological health has been questioned by an ABC News reporter — it does not show excellent judgment for her to go into one of her odd shaking episodes on nationwide television with millions upon millions of voters watching.

That’s all I’m saying.

WHOO! OKAY!

[Cross-posted at RedState.]

This is a great point, and it hits Trump where he lives — but, in typical Hillary fashion, she fails to press the point effectively. The real fun starts at 1:47:

CLINTON: So you’ve got to ask yourself, why won’t he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he’s not as charitable as he claims to be. Third, we don’t know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.

TRUMP: That makes me smart.

Nothing hurts Trump like suggesting he’s not rich. She should have pressed that point much harder. She could have pointed to Mark Cuban in the front row, and reminded the crowd that Cuban said not all that long ago that Trump really isn’t that rich:

If @realDonaldTrump were fractionally as rich as he says he is,he would write a$200mm check to propel his campaign. He doesn't have the cash

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) June 21, 2016

If she really wanted to see Trump lose it, she should have harped on that point.

But instead, she dumped on Trump for not paying a lot in taxes, which allowed him to wriggle off the hook by aligning himself with the vast majority of Americans who, like Trump, hate paying their hard-earned money to the federal government.

A promising line of attack ruined by poor delivery. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Hillary Clinton campaign in a nutshell.

[Cross-posted at RedState.]

[guest post by Dana]

My main thought right about now is, please God, let it end quickly.

What an extraordinarily low bar of expectation for tonight: Trump has to avoid saying “blood” and “women,” and Hillary just has to remain upright.

With increasingly tight polls reflecting the candidates in a dead heat in spite of Big Media’s efforts to push one crappy candidate over the other, both obviously go into this debate with an equal opportunity to win.

And just to mix it up, while Mark Cuban will be sitting front and center trolling Trump, Trump will also have a few special guests in the audience. Expect Benghazi to come up, and expect Hillary to have a coincidentally-timed coughing spasm as a result…

So, if you are willing to sacrifice a few hours and watch, have your adult beverage of choice ready. You’ll need it.

If you’re not going to watch, have it ready anyway because one of these two people is going to become our next president.

–Dana

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: Hey guys. I am in the house.