Analysis: Donald Trump's Double Standard for Women

by IRIN CARMON

SEP 30 2016

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has bragged about "being out four or five nights a week, usually with a different woman each time" during his youth and described avoiding sexually transmitted infections back then as "my personal Vietnam." But it was the sexual history of former Miss Universe Alicia Machado that he derided early Friday morning as "disgusting" and urged people to "check out sex tape and past."

Trump, who told Howard Stern he had watched Paris Hilton's sex tape despite having known Hilton since she was 12, also said that Hillary Clinton had falsely portrayed Machado as an "angel" and "paragon of virtue" after she referred to the former pageant winner in Monday's debate.

Clinton, in fact, had focused on Trump's behavior, which included ambushing the then-19-year-old Machado with television cameras during her workout.

Related: Analysis: Trump's Alicia Machado Tweet Storm Points to Deeper Problems

But for feminists, by putting Machado's character on trial, evoking her later and entirely irrelevant sexual history, Trump is engaging in classic slut-shaming. That would be holding women to a higher standard of chastity and assuming any unsanctioned display of sexuality is self-evidently damning.

"It's a total double standard," said feminist author Erika Sanchez. "It's the whole virgin/whore dichotomy."

“"IT'S A TOTAL DOUBLE STANDARD. IT'S THE WHOLE VIRGIN/WHORE DICHOTOMY."”

Trump's terminology also suggested only two categories for women: "angel" or "disgusting," the latter being a word he also used for a female lawyer who pulled out a breast pump and for comedian Rosie O'Donnell.

"In these tweets is this assumption that in order to wrong a woman, that woman must be a saint, otherwise what you've done to her doesn't count," said Emily Lindin, founder of the UnSlut Project, which raises awareness about sexual bullying.

In addition to Trump's dozens of conversations with Howard Stern about his own sexual adventures and preferences, the hypocrisy of Trump using Machado's public sexuality against her is that he himself owned multiple companies that profited off female beauty and sexuality — including a modeling agency and the pageant Machado won. He also tellingly referred to Machado as one of "my" Miss Universes.

Related: Alicia Machado Responds to Trump: 'I Will Continue Standing'

"Every woman needs to be sexual on his terms," said feminist writer Veronica Arreola. "If it benefits him, they can be as free and liberated as possible. And if it doesn't, hey, you need to button up there …. And it makes him angry to see women who fall outside that assert themselves."

On Monday night, Clinton also repeated Machado's charge that Trump "called her 'Miss Housekeeping,' because she was Latina," pouring ethnic stereotyping into the misogyny cocktail.

"I think for many Latinas, being called a housekeeper is not a personal offense as much as a reflection of the person calling them that," said Arreola. "If Trump thinks that calling someone a housekeeper is an insult, how does he treat his hotel staff, the people who clean up after him and his home?"

She added, "He has continued to frame his campaign as one of the working class, but he uses working class positions as derogatory words."

None of this is likely to help Trump with Latino voters, with whom he had trouble long before his tweet-storm about the Venezuelan-born Machado. Trump famously launched his presidential campaign claiming that "when Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best …. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

Related: Video of Trump Deposition in D.C. Hotel Feud Ordered to be Released

"It's all related to how he sees us as solely sexual, primitive people, as uncivilized and dangerous," said Sanchez. "He talks about my community in such a disgusting way, but he definitely benefits from our labor."

“"HE TALKS ABOUT MY COMMUNITY IN SUCH A DISGUSTING WAY, BUT HE DEFINITELY BENEFITS FROM OUR LABOR."”

Trump has refused to back down from his comments about Mexican immigrants. In his pushback to Clinton saying he had berated Machado in a racist and sexist way, Trump has not denied any of the account, nor has he apologized.

He has, however, previously insisted that he is not a misogynist.

"I cherish women," Trump said last year, during his attacks on Megyn Kelly. "I want to help women."

But Arreola said that attitude, too, is reductive and stereotypes women. "That's not the way to love and honor women, to put them on a pedestal," she said. "That chivalrous view of women, as opposed to loving and honoring them as people, leads to what Trump is doing now."

The Machado incident also highlights yet another example of Trump holding women's bodies to a standard to which he does not hold himself. Hours after the debate, Trump indignantly went on television to protest that Machado had indeed gained weight, as if it refuted Clinton's charge.

According to Trump's own medical report, as analyzed by the Washington Post, he is five pounds short of obese. He famously subsists on fast food and told Dr. Oz recently that his campaign trail exercise regimen is "using a lot of motion" as he speaks during his rallies. But one thing is clear, by Trump's own account: When he deems it necessary, women's bodies are to be used against them. 

Donald Trump quintuples down

By Jeremy Diamond, CNN

September 30, 2016

(CNN)What does the Republican nominee for president do when he can't sleep?

Awake at 3 a.m. ET, Donald Trump picked up his phone and began tweeting about "made up lies" in the media.

Just two hours later, he opened up Twitter again and quickly went from venting to slandering a former beauty queen -- shaming her for a sex tape that does not exist.

Trump's conduct since the first debate has been astonishing for a major party nominee just 39 days away from the election. Instead of zeroing in on his strongest points from Monday night on jobs and trade, he's cited fake polls, resurfaced Bill Clinton's marital scandals from the 1990s, floated a conspiracy theory about Google searches, and attacked 1996's Miss Universe.

And after Hillary Clinton raised allegations that Trump called 1996 Miss Universe Alicia Machado "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping," Trump has kept that controversy alive by refusing to apologize, instead seeking to discredit Machado and justify his apparent comments and similar ones he made in interviews at the time.

The overnight tweeting spree once again brought into focus Trump's apparent unwillingness or inability to back away from a fight, regardless of who is attacking him. It's a habit that serves to keep the attention away from his core campaign message and also emphasizes Hillary Clinton's argument that Trump lacks the temperament to be president.

"What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories," Clinton's campaign tweeted Friday about the incident.

Trump responded via Twitter Friday afternoon.

"For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o'clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!" he tweeted.

Asked by WZZM in Grand Rapids, Michigan, about his tweeting habits, Trump said he finds the medium "effective."

"It's one way you communicate whereas you know two years ago, five years ago, 20 years ago you wouldn't have this, but now it's a modern day way of communicating," he said Friday. "I find it very effective."

Clinton called Machado Friday on her drive from her first event in Florida to the airport in Vero Beach, according to Nick Merrill, Clinton's spokesman. The call lasted around 5 minutes.

Clinton started by thanking Machado for all she has done and for the courage she has shown, Merrill said. Machado responded by saying that she supported Clinton for a long time and she will continue to support Clinton and I will continue to stand up to Trump.

It was reminiscent of Trump's rough and tumble month of August when he skirted numerous controversies and refused to back down after the Khans, parents of a Muslim US soldier who died in Iraq, criticized him for his Islamophobic rhetoric and policies.

Even as his top advisers urged him to abandon his feud with the Khans, Trump escalated it, suggesting Ghazala Khan, the mother, stood silently alongside her husband at the Democratic National Convention because she was subservient to her husband and comparing his own sacrifices to the family's loss of their son.

It's also become clear that Trump's supporters are less than thrilled with his decision to keep the Machado controversy alive.

Kellyanne Conway, the billionaire's campaign manager, said Thursday on "The View" that she reprimanded Trump for his comments on "Fox and Friends."

And Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany, a CNN political commentator, rebuked Trump Friday morning for his overnight tweeting, saying, "I don't think Donald Trump needs to be doing that."

The controversy started when Clinton brought up Trump's comments and treatment of Machado at Monday's presidential debate. The next morning, Trump doubled down.

"You know, she gained a massive amount of weight (after winning Miss Universe) and it was a real problem. We had a real problem," Trump said on "Fox and Friends" the morning after the debate.

He defended himself similarly in an interview the next day with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.

As Machado did the media rounds and the Clinton campaign continued to attack Trump over his treatment of Machado, Trump apparently couldn't shake the hits. And that's when he pulled up Twitter in the wee hours of Friday morning, and began firing off.

"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!" he tweeted.

"Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virture just shows taht Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT! Hillary was set up by a con," he continued at 5:19 a.m.

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

Machado's past has come under intense scrutiny in recent days, including accusations from Trump's surrogates that she drove a getaway car from a murder scene in Venezuela in 1998, to which Machado replied on CNN this week that "I have my past" and that she is "no saint girl."

"He can say whatever he wants to say. I don't care. You know, I have my past, of course everybody has a past. And I'm no saint girl," Machado told CNN's Anderson Cooper Tuesday on "AC360." "But that is not the point now ... (Trump) was really rude with me, he tried to destroy my self esteem. And now I'm a voice in the Latin community. I'm in a great moment in my life and I have a very clear life. And I can show my taxes."

Tabloids and several conservative media outlets have also falsely claimed Machado starred in a sex tape. No such sex tape exists.

Supporters of the Republican nominee have argued since Trump's roller coaster month of August that he has evolved as a candidate: he shook up his campaign leadership and has faithfully stuck to delivering rally speeches from a teleprompter, minimizing the number of controversies he can stoke.

But late at night, with his campaign staff far from his side, Trump was free to follow his gut. And his gut told him to punch back at a former Miss Universe whom he allegedly once called "Miss Piggy" after she gained weight by calling her disgusting for starring in a non-existent sex tape.

And so that's what he did.

CNN's Dan Merica contributed to this report.

Alicia Machado told the truth about Trump, and the backlash is terrifying

Lucia Graves

September 30, 2016

The story of Alicia Machado is many things but as it pertains to the presidential election, it is a story about the time Donald Trump smeared a woman and riled up a media circus to spread the gossip. That was back in the 1990s and mostly fodder for tabloids. Now it’s happening all over again – only as part of a presidential campaign.

In the first candidates’ debate this week, Hillary Clinton invoked her opponent’s high-profile fat-shaming of Machado after she was crowned Miss Universe in 1996, comments that pushed her into a downward spiral of eating disorders for five years.

Until recently Trump wasn’t denying any of it – when the New York Times first asked Trump to respond to her story, he replied simply: “To that, I will plead guilty.” But on Wednesday, his campaign released talking points claiming the story was “totally baseless and unsubstantiated” and that Machado was merely attempting to “gain notoriety at the expense of Mr Trump’s name and reputation”.

The irony of course is that we can verify Machado’s story not in spite of Trump but because of him. It was he who made sure her weight-gain and his treatment of her was documented around the world; what’s changed is simply public perception.

Back in May, Slate’s Jessica Winter published a roundup of the media’s cruel and inappropriate coverage from the time, much of which laughed right along with Trump: “No one could accuse Alicia Machado of being the size of the universe,” wrote a CNN correspondent at the time. “But as her universe expanded, so did she.” And while the media may have since advanced on the subject of fat-shaming – it’s no longer acceptable to write about young women’s weight that way – we’re still falling for Trump’s sensationalized media circuses.

This time the line of attack, pushed most aggressively by surrogates and rightwing news outlets, defames Machado as a porn star and murder accomplice, who once threatened to kill a judge and posed topless for Playboy, among other things. The latest assault came from Trump himself on Friday. He called her “disgusting” on Twitter and asked followers to “check out sex tape and past”. Even if the worst of this is true, it doesn’t invalidate anything she said about Trump.

The real headline should be “Woman Who Speaks Truth About Presidential Candidate Endures Second Character Assassination”. The sequence is familiar by now: throughout history, women who speak out against powerful men – as Machado did, for instance, in the New York Times earlier this year – have been subject to a backlash. They’re slut-shamed or cast as crazy, as the Anita Hill movie, Confirmation, recently reminded us.

Instead the Daily Caller went with “Porn Star Campaigns For Hillary Clinton,” while the Daily Mail landed upon “Miss Universe ‘fat-shamed’ by Donald Trump was accused of threatening to kill a judge and being an accomplice to a MURDER bid in her native Venezuela,” noting that it was “unknown if [the] Clinton campaign vetted Machado”. Alex Jones’s conspiracy-theory-mongering site also speculated luridly about the father of Machado’s daughter’s past.

First off, the Clinton campaign confirmed to the Guardian that she is not being paid by them. She’s a volunteer.

The pornography charge appears to be false. The website Snopes, which specializes in debunking online hoaxes, writes that the anal sex clip that turns up on free porn sites under Machado’s name appears to be from the 2004 feature Apprentass 4, which stars another woman. Machado did pose on the cover of Playboy – twice in fact. But if it’s going to be used to smear her character, perhaps it’s relevant to note that so has Donald Trump? The difference is Trump kept his shirt on, but even that was probably only in deference to the preferences of the audience. And speculation relating to her seven-year-old daughter should not be a journalistic enterprise at any respectable media organization.

The most substantive charge is that in 1998 a 21-year-old Machado was accused of driving a getaway car after her boyfriend shot his brother-in-law. This is from the Economist’s report at the time:

The male lead in this complex plot is Miss Machado’s rugged boyfriend, Juan Rafael Rodriguez Reggeti. He had a sister, who, eight months pregnant, jumped off a fifth-floor balcony. He, allegedly, blaming her husband for the suicide, sought revenge by firing two shots at him just after the funeral. The husband was hit but survived. Mr Rodriguez fled in a car driven, say the police, by Miss Machado.

The investigating judge, Maximiliano Fuenmayor, issued an arrest warrant for Mr Rodriguez. But Miss Machado, who claimed she was ill at home at the time, seemed to be in the clear, for the moment anyway. It was a short moment. Within hours, Mr Fuenmayor had a telephone call from her. He says she threatened to ruin his career and have him killed. She admits she rang, but says it was merely to thank him for his unbiased pursuit of justice.

The accusations went nowhere and she never faced charges. The report that she drove a getaway car was dropped almost 20 years ago due to lack of evidence. More recently, they did not prevent her from obtaining US citizenship in August, a process involving a background check and clearance.

Interestingly Corey Lewandowski, the Trump operator who dredged up the allegations, was charged with battery as recently as this year. And unlike, Machado, who has only volunteered, the former campaign manager was, until Thursday, still on Trump’s payroll.

Machado’s role in the debate has also spawned claims that a profile I wrote was orchestrated with the Clinton campaign.

To be clear: it was not. I never communicated with the Clinton campaign around this story except to ask for a comment on Monday afternoon, as Politico explained.

Given a chance to respond to the personal accusations about her, Machado – whose English is imperfect – did not debunk them as forcefully as she might have (though again, she has been denying them for almost 20 years now). Instead she said something different, and something which has been largely misconstrued. After dismissing the reports as “speculation” born of her celebrity in Latin America she waxed indignant: “He can say whatever he wants to say, I don’t care,” she said. “You know, I have my past. Of course, everybody has a past. I’m not a saint girl. But that is not the point now.”

Trump’s campaign has latched on to this as evidence of her guilt. But perhaps there’s been something lost in translation. Trump said at the debate that she’s “no Mother Teresa” and here she’s echoing Trump’s implicitly sexist line from the debate. Mother Teresa is an actual saint – she shouldn’t have to be.

Let’s assume for a moment that the worst is true and she threatened a judge as a 21-year-old: it doesn’t make Trump look any better.

You shouldn’t have to be Mother Teresa to not be fat-shamed before millions of people. And Michael Brown being “no angel”, as the New York Times put it recently, shouldn’t have been relevant in a case about being killed by police, as Black Lives Matter tried to teach us.

These instances aren’t equivalent, but the point is people who lack power because they are women or minorities, or both, too often aren’t given the basic human dignities the rest of us take for granted.

Machado saying she’s no saint isn’t an admission of guilt. It’s an indictment of us.

Trump’s unusual conflict: Millions in debts to German bank now facing federal fines

By Drew Harwell 

September 30, 2016

Donald Trump’s business empire owes hundreds of millions of dollars to a giant German bank cast into crisis by settlement negotiations with the Justice Department, a relationship some lawyers say sheds light on the massive financial entanglements he could face as president.

Federal regulators are seeking a $14 billion fine from Deutsche Bank, Trump’s top lender, to settle claims that the bank issued toxic mortgages amid the housing crisis. German media have suggested the bank has sought a state bailout that could lead to partial ownership of the bank by the German government.

A settlement could be reached before a new president takes office, but government-ethics experts say the Deutsche Bank situation is a stark reminder of how Trump could face a conflicting set of interests as the nation's negotiator in chief.

As head of the executive branch, he’d oversee the Justice Department and the United States' relations with the rest of the world. But he’d still have a lengthy series of financial relationships with private institutions and countries with business before the United States.

“It’s certainly foreseeable that he could intervene with the DOJ so as to not upset the financing of his companies,” said Trevor Potter, a former Federal Election Commission chairman and general counsel of George H.W. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

It’s “unthinkable in recent history,” Potter said, that “there’s the possibility of a president being able to affect his own personal financial interests, conceivably to the detriment of the general public.”

[For a President Trump, global real estate deals present unprecedented gray areas]

Alan Garten, executive vice president and general counsel of the Trump Organization, said, “I don’t see the conflict,” and drew a parallel to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s global philanthropy.

“Under your theory, no one who has ever done anything before can be elected to the highest office,” he said.

Ethics advisers have called for Trump, if elected, to sell his business interests or sequester them in an independent holding company to lower the risk of him being beholden to foreign powers while in the White House.

But Trump has resisted. The candidate, Garten said, has pledged only to give his companies to his children, a transition that lawyers say would not be enough to sever Trump’s financial ties.

In the Deutsche Bank case, it’s impossible to predict exactly how the bank’s settlement discussions could intersect with Trump’s financial interests if he wins the election — or if they would. But lawyers say the bank could have unusual leverage over him as it searches for a way out of its current crisis.

[Inside Trump’s financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Vladimir Putin]

If Deutsche’s financial health was in danger, that could also potentially threaten Trump’s corporate interests, because the bank could freeze future lending to his companies. If the German government partially owned the bank, lawyers said, Trump’s dual rule as a business executive and chief diplomat could come into conflict.

“The level of entanglements here are unprecedented,” said Ken Gross, the former elections enforcement official and lawyer who has advised presidential candidates from both parties, speaking generally outside the Deutsche case.

“He’ll have to deal with conflict entanglements almost on a daily basis, based on the holdings he has, particularly those involving international issues. It’s just going to plague him, one way or another.”

Deutsche is Europe’s biggest investment bank and one of the world’s largest financial institutions. It is also the biggest lender to Trump’s real estate businesses, the candidate reported in financial disclosure filings this spring.

But the Justice Department negotiations have led to a panic over the bank’s financial health. Big hedge funds have rushed to withdraw holdings from the bank, and investors have sent the bank’s share price plunging about 50 percent this year.

[All the excuses Trump has given for why he won’t release his tax returns]

Justice Department investigators accused the bank of misleading investors while bundling and selling disastrous mortgage-backed securities between 2005 and 2007. The bank said this month that it was negotiating a settlement with the Justice Department and had no intent to settle “anywhere near the number cited.” The department declined to comment.

The bank has also been the subject of wide-ranging criminal investigations in the U.S. and other countries. The bank agreed last year to pay $2.5 billion in fines following a scandal over the bank’s rigging of loan interest rates.

In June, the Federal Reserve said the bank’s U.S. subsidiary had failed a key stress test, and an International Monetary Fund report said the bank was one of the biggest “contributors to systemic risks in the global banking system.”

Trump’s history with Deutsche Bank shows a deep relationship — and a sometimes contentious one.

Trump financial-disclosure filings show that Deutsche is the creditor on four of his companies’ 16 loans, with principals totaling about $360 million. About $125 million of that debt was lumped into two 2012 mortgages for Trump National Doral, his South Florida golf complex.

[Trump adviser’s public comments, ties to Moscow stir unease in both parties]

A third loan was for Trump International Hotel and Tower, his Chicago high-rise. Trump filings state the loan was worth $25 million to $50 million, but county property records show the loan was actually for $69 million.

The most recent Deutsche debt, incurred last year, was a $170 million line of credit put toward the development of Trump’s newly opened luxury hotel near the White House, the Trump International Hotel in Washington. All four loans will mature, or come due, by 2024.

Deutsche is the only big Wall Street bank on Trump’s filings that has continued to lend even as Trump companies filed six bankruptcies. Since 1998, Deutsche has been a lender or co-lender in at least $2.5 billion in loans to Trump or his companies, a Wall Street Journal analysis found in March.

But Trump and Deutsche have also clashed. In 2008, the bank asked for Trump to make payments on a $640 million construction loan for the Chicago tower given by a Deutsche-led group of lenders. Instead, Trump sued, saying the bank should pay him $3 billion because it had undermined his project, in part, by creating “the current financial crisis.”

The bank countersued, saying the lawsuit was “classic Trump” and an attempt “to avoid living up to the deal he reached with Deutsche Bank.” Trump and the bank settled, and the loan has since been repaid.

[A Trump presidency would be ethically compromised]

The Ethics in Government Act of 1978, enacted after Watergate, established strict rules requiring members of Congress to recuse themselves from matters in which they have financial interests. Presidents, however, were exempt, so as to not interfere with the wide-ranging job.

Though not required, many in the modern Oval Office — including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and both Bushes — have sought to minimize red flags by placing their assets in “blind trusts,” run by independent trustees who keep complete control.

Trump’s business empire shows many ties to foreign countries. Trump has praised Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and for years shared hopes that he could develop properties there. Some of the more than 500 companies listed on Trump’s financial disclosures are in countries with sensitive ties to the United States, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and China.

Trump has said he would have no involvement in his businesses because they would be run by his children. “His focus is going to be solely on improving the country,” said Garten, the Trump general counsel. “The business is not going to be a factor or an interest at that point.”

But lawyers say that would create only the appearance of a barrier between Trump and the businesses he’s been involved with for several decades.

“It’s silly to suggest there’s any avoidance of conflict by having your family run the interests,” Potter said. “He talks to his family all the time.”

Trump Tweets About Sex Tape as Campaign Struggles to Regroup

By Jeniffer Jacobs & Kevin Cirilli

September 30, 2016

The salvos are part of an ongoing struggle between Trump and his aides about how to coordinate a cohesive strategy against Clinton.

With the urgency of a presidential election 38 days away, the Republican nominee is urging voters to check out a “sex tape.”

In a series of tweets posted before dawn, Donald Trump slammed Alicia Machado as “my worst Miss U” and told his followers not to believe any anonymously sourced reports about his campaign, attempting to address two of the reasons why he’s been having a tough time rebounding from his performance in the first debate on Monday.

The social-media salvos—including an apparent reference to explicit footage that reportedly exists from Machado’s stint on a Spanish reality-TV show—are part of an ongoing struggle between Trump and his aides about how to coordinate a cohesive strategy against Democrat Hillary Clinton. While some pushed for attacking former President Bill Clinton’s infidelities, others said Trump should focus his criticism on the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server to handle government business at the State Department.

On Thursday, Trump expressed an openness to the personal attacks, telling NH1 News “we’ll see what happens” at the next debate Oct. 9.

Clinton cited Machado, the 1996 winner of the Miss Universe pageant, in Monday’s debate, saying Trump called the Venezuelan  “Miss Piggy” after she gained weight. “She has become a U.S. citizen and you can bet she’s going to vote,” Clinton said.

An e-mail to Machado’s publicist Friday wasn’t immediately returned. “What kind of human being is this?” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said on Twitter after Trump posted the messages. “How are the Trump surrogates going to defend this one today?”

Recovery Effort

Inside Trump Tower on Thursday, the nominee’s daughter Ivanka greeted campaign CEO Steve Bannon with a big smile and broke into a comfortable conversation with him.

But the bad news keeps rolling in. The editorial boards of the Arizona Republic and Detroit News this week broke 100-year-plus traditions of endorsing Republicans, while USA Today took sides for the first time in its history to urge Americans not to vote for Trump. A survey by Gallup found that 61 percent of those who watched the debate believe Clinton won, a 34-point victory over Trump. Battleground polls have showed improvements for Clinton.

“This has been a bad week for him,” said Joe Watkins, former aide to President George W. Bush. “Despite his efforts to spin it otherwise, it was clear that most Americans thought Hillary Clinton won the debate and that she clearly has more substance on the issues. Part of his challenge is to win a larger percentage of women and he’s having trouble doing that.”

Amid the turmoil, staff members are trying to tighten the campaign's focus on dismantling Clinton; on capturing small, targeted blocs of voters such as Cuban-Americans, Polish-Americans, Catholics, and anti-abortion voters; and on shoring up the road to victory they see in a carefully studied batch of battleground states. 

Sunshine State Troubles

Yet disorganization and dysfunction in some of the key states, including Florida, are taking a toll.

A Florida Trump aide resigned Monday because she said she's uncomfortable with the lack of progress in the campaign. “It is clear the campaign is now going in a direction I am no longer comfortable with and I have decided to move on,” said Healy Baumgardner, who had established herself early on as a public face of the campaign on TV, then saw her role shift to Florida following several campaign shake-ups.

Baumgardner, a 20-year political operative who has worked on four presidential campaigns, said she looks forward “to honorably casting my vote for Mr. Trump on Election Day.” 

Clinton is 4 percentage points ahead of Trump in Florida, according to a Mason-Dixon Polling & Research survey taken after the debate.

The campaign’s Trump Talk phone banking system is experiencing technical difficulties, said Florida campaign workers who requested anonymity out of fear of getting fired for speaking publicly. The lack of basic campaign staples such as yard signs and bumper stickers forces staff to repeatedly turn away excited Trump backers who want to show their support. There’s disagreement about spending $40,000 to wrap an RV in campaign advertising for a women’s bus tour in Florida.

Debate Redux

Trump has sought to spin his performance at the debate, complaining about moderator Lester Holt of NBC, who Trump said favored Clinton. He has even suggested that Google conspired to hide bad reviews of Clinton and that his microphone on the podium was purposely defective.

“I had to put up with the anchor and fight the anchor all the time on everything I said,”  Trump said at a campaign rally in New Hampshire on Thursday. “What a rigged deal.”

Despite falling short on stage, there have been no major changes to Trump’s schedule to accommodate practice for the next debate, though there are plans for more vigorous sessions, two advisers said. 

Because the Oct. 9 town-hall format will be much different, with audience members asking the questions, Trump will likely practice sitting on a barstool or high-backed chair and walking and talking as he answers questions, aides said.

Although the strategy doesn't call for Trump to wade into the attacks on Bill Clinton's infidelity, one adviser said if Clinton accuses him of misogyny, Trump could make it clear he stands up for women and reassure voters that he would conduct himself in an ethical and honest way as president, with his own version of the George W. Bush line from 2000, “I will restore honor and dignity to the Oval Office.” 

Trump debuted a similar line in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Wednesday, and repeated it in Waukesha, Wisconsin, later that night and in Bedford, New Hampshire, on Thursday. “We are going to end the Clinton corruption and restore dignity and honesty to government service,” he said.

Strategic Doubts

Some pro-Trump Republicans are flummoxed by his campaign and surrogates’ decision to continue talking about the Democratic nominee’s husband and Machado, fretting that these conversations harm him with women and more educated voters.

“We’ve tried this. It’s not a new story. Bill Clinton won two elections and it didn’t seem to hurt him at all. And it’s not like Donald Trump is purer than the driven snow either,” Republican pundit John Feehery said. “So you have to be careful. I’m not sure what their game plan is. Not sure what they’re trying to get at.”

Focusing on these two controversies is the “wrong tactical move,” Watkins said.

“This Miss Universe controversy plays into the narrative that he doesn’t treat women well. For him to be bogged down with that is a losing issue,” he said. “And Bill Clinton’s troubles are not Hillary Clinton’s troubles. Women will not see it that way.”

—With assistance from Sahil Kapur, Ben Brody, and Elizabeth Titus.