Tuesday Reads: Trump Is Imploding.

Good Morning!!

Poor Donald. He is rapidly swift-boating his own campaign and he can’t stop himself. Last night he actually said that Hillary Clinton is “the devil.”

NBC News: Trump Calls Clinton ‘The Devil,’ Boasts About Meager $35 Million July Fundraising Haul.

MECHANICSBURG, Penn. — Donald Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric against Hillary Clinton once again on Monday, telling a rowdy crowd in battleground-state Pennsylvania that she was “the devil” — a temporary departure from the “Crooked Hillary” moniker.

Speaking about former Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, Trump said the Vermont senator “made a deal with the devil. She’s the devil. He made a deal with the devil.”

Trump also bragged about his very weak fund-raising prowess.

Trump, who constantly reminded that he was “self-funding” his campaign throughout the primaries, bragged while previewing his July fundraising totals.

“It’s gonna be announced tomorrow or the next day: we’ve raised, we think, about $35.8 million. This is unheard of for Republicans, $35.8 million,” Trump said.

While the haul certainly shows a much-needed uptick for the Trump campaign’s fundraising efforts, “unheard of” it is not: In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney raised just over $101 million in July of that year.

In his appearances yesterday, Trump appeared even more out of control than usual. Olivia Nuzzi at The Daily Beast: 15 Hours of Donald Trump’s Lies.

Even for Donald Trump, Monday, Aug. 1, was a banner day for bullshit.

With 100 days until Election Day, the Republican presidential nominee decisively rejected suggestions that he make some attempt to appear statesmanlike in his campaign against Hillary Clinton, opting to commit fully to the erraticism and dishonesty that characterized his performance in the Republican primary.

Typed into the ether on Twitter, shouted at the people of Columbus, Ohio, at a town hall, or yodeled at a rally to the cable cameras and citizens of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the steady stream of nonsense could not be corked….

Read all the sorry details at the link.

Oh, and Trump ended his long day of lies by eating Kentucky Fried Chicken with a knife and fork.

This op-ed by Kathy Sullivan, former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, comes from the ultra-conservative Manchester Union Leader (!): Donald Trump’s weekend of lies.

ON THE LAST DAY of the Democratic National Convention, three of us went to lunch at a local Irish pub near our hotel. After thanking us for stopping by, the owner told us he would never vote for Donald Trump. He knew three small contractors Trump stiffed on his Atlantic City project. None were paid in full. One got less than 50 cents on the dollar. Another was never paid at all. He lost his house.

That night, Khizr Khan gave his now widely covered remarks regarding the loss of his son, a young Muslim American Army officer, in Iraq. A better man than Donald Trump would have said, I appreciate the sacrifice the Khans made, and that is all I have to say. Instead, when asked what sacrifices he had made, Trump falsely equated working hard at his business career with the death of Capt. Humayun Khan in the service of his country. He also made the stupid statement that perhaps Mrs. Khan had not been “allowed” to speak.

Faced with outraged condemnation, Trump just could not shut up. The next day he said Mr. Khan had no right to stand on stage and say things about him. Then, extending his losing streak another day, he tweeted that Mr. Khan had “viciously attacked” him, and asked if he was not allowed to respond.

Yes, Donald, you may respond. Keep it up, so America can see who you are.

A passing conversation in a bar, and Trump’s reaction to Mr. Khan’s speech, may not seem to have a lot in common. But they both show Trump’s contempt for ordinary Americans. Whether it is Donald ducking bills, or disrespecting the parents of a dead soldier, he does not care for us. In 1984, Trump served on a commission to erect a Vietnam War Memorial in New York. Two commission members told the Washington Post at the time that Trump had only attended two of the more than 20 meetings. Trump’s response to the criticism? “They’re very small thinkers. They’re stockbrokers that were in Vietnam, and they don’t have it.” “It” apparently was Trump’s word for his own self-perceived magnetism. Instead of explaining his attendance record, Trump attacked his critics as veterans without “it” who worked in the financial sector. The insulting attack does not even make sense. By the way, if you are a stockbroker who served in Vietnam? Don’t vote for Trump.

There’s more at the link.

At a Mike Pence rally in Nevada, a military mother was booed by the crowd. Pence tried to counter the booing, but the fact is, it happened. CBS News:

After delivering a standard stump speech, Pence took audience questions at a room inside a Carson City, Nevada, casino.

The second question came from 52-year-old Catherine Byrne, whose son serves in the U.S. Air Force. Byrne asked Pence about Trump’s treatment of Muslim parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son, a decorated Army veteran, was killed in Iraq in 2004.

“Will there ever be a point in time when you’re able to look Trump in the eye and tell him enough is enough?” she asked Pence, prompting boos from the crowd.

Pence asked the crowd to quiet down, then said of Byrne, “That’s what freedom looks like. That’s what freedom sounds like.”

“I know this has been much in the news as of late in the last few days,” Pence said, acknowledging the controversy over Trump’s reaction to the Khan family. “But as I said last night … Captain Khan is an American hero and we honor him and honor his family.”

Byrne, a CPA who lives in Carson City, welcomed part of Pence’s response. “I did like his words about Captain Khan and his family,” she told CBS News’ Alan He in a telephone interview. But she felt he didn’t fully answer the part of her question about Trump’s disrespectfulness. Byrne’s son is 27 years old and is stationed in the UAE.

Pence added that he has never spent time around someone who is “more devoted” to military and to veterans than Trump.

Pence has sold his soul to Trump, and he will never live this down. I’ll be shocked if Pence ever gets another chance at elected office.

Meanwhile, Hillary is getting a strong bounce following the Democratic Convention last week. NBC News:

Following the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton now leads Donald Trump by 8 points — 50 percent to 42 percent — up from a single-point difference last week, according to the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll.

Clinton’s gain also comes after a series of controversial comments made by the Republican nominee this past week regarding the family of a fallen American soldier and Trump’s suggestion that Russian hackers should seek out deleted Clinton emails.

The Republican National Convention did not result in a post-convention bounce for Trump.

Clinton also saw a bounce in a four-way general election match-up against Trump, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Clinton now leads Trump by 4 points — 42 percent to 38 percent — in the four-way race. This is a lead-reversal from last week, when Trump was beating the Democratic nominee by 2 points. Support for Johnson (9 points) and Stein (4 points) remained virtually unchanged from last week….

Perhaps a result of a series of well-received speeches from high-profile Democrats, Clinton’s gains this week were not only in the horserace numbers. Overall, the number of voters who say they have a strongly favorable impression of the Democratic nominee is up 5 points — from 15 percent to 20 percent — since the question was asked two weeks ago.

Clinton’s favorability among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters rose from 74 percent two weeks ago to 80 percent this week. Her unfavorable rating also dropped among Democrats from 24 percent to 19 percent.

More analysis of the poll results at the link, with charts.

From Politico: How big is Hillary Clinton’s convention bounce?

Five new public surveys, each conducted over the weekend following Democrats’ national party convention, give Clinton a lead ranging from 3 to 9 points. Four of the five pollsters point to a clear Clinton bump, having found Trump ahead or down by only a single point the week before.

What’s also clear is that bump exceeds the rise in support for Trump after his convention the week prior. While Trump called his bounce “the biggest bump in the history of conventions,” the best poll for him showed his support ticking up 6 points, while other polls showed no change or a nominal Trump boost….

The bounciest of the new polls, a CNN/ORC International survey conducted Friday-Sunday, shows Clinton leading Trump by 9 points, 52 percent to 43 percent. That’s a massive shift from just a week prior, when CNN/ORC gave Trump a 3-point lead, 48 percent to 45 percent. Clinton’s 7-point bounce over that time was larger than Trump’s 6-point surge from a poll conducted shortly before the GOP convention in Cleveland.

A new CBS News poll conducted over the same time frame, shows Clinton ahead by 6 points, 47 percent to 41 percent. That’s a 4-point jump for Clinton, who trailed Trump by a point in between the two conventions, 44 percent to 43 percent. (This uses CBS News results including voters leaning toward one candidate, which CBS began to measure with the between-conventions survey.)

Trump’s post-convention bounce in CBS News’ polls, on the other hand, was just 2 points.

For discussion of the rest of the recent polls, head over to Politico.

More stories to check out:

Eater.com: Why Won’t Donald Trump Touch Food With His Hands?

Buzzfeed: Trump: My Position On Keeping Terrorists Out Is What Bothered Khizr Khan.

CNN Money: Donald Trump attacks CNN in tweetstorm.

NPR: GOP Criticism Mounts As Trump Continues Attacks On Khan Family.

KUTV 2: Utah could vote Democrat for president for first time in 5 decades.

Syracuse.com: GOP Rep. Richard Hanna: I’ll vote for Clinton; first House member to cross party line.

WBUR Boston: 50 Years After Texas College Shooting, ‘Campus-Carry’ Becomes Law.

What else is happening? Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a terrific Tuesday!