Trump booed for calling Clinton ‘corrupt’ at bipartisan dinner
The best (and worst) jokes from the Al Smith dinner
Arizona asks the unprecedented: could Democrats sweep the west?
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5.00pm BST
The Clinton campaign has released a new ad featuring Khizr and Ghazala Khan, parents of slain Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in a suicide bombing attack in Iraq in 2004.
One of the sharpest moments of widespread bipartisan revulsion at Donald Trump in the campaign came when Trump criticized the Khans for their appearance at the Democratic national convention to tell their son’s story. Khizr Khan offered Trump his pocket constitution, wondering whether he’d ever read it. Trump discounted their story and questioned why Ghazala Khan did not address the convention.
4.50pm BST
As we wait for Donald Trump to pop up in North Carolina, Mike Pence, his running mate, is headed for New Hampshire, for rallies in Nashua and Exeter. Here’s a nice snap from his press secretary:
TrumpForce2 is loaded up and heading to New Hampshire. Join Gov @mike_pence today https://t.co/44XdX099OY pic.twitter.com/iS4u5WM2K5
4.45pm BST
An Ivanka Trump clothing boycott appears to be gaining steam, writes Joanna Walters for the Guardian:
Shannon Coulter, a technology and media marketing specialist based in the Bay Area, is going after Ivanka Trump, calling for the boycott on the clothing, jewelry, shoes, handbags and perfume that are branded as part of the widely sold Ivanka Trump Collection. She is also calling on the retailers that carry them – including Macy’s, Nordstrom, Amazon, Lord & Taylor, Marshalls and Zappos – to stop selling them. ...
Related: Why is the Ivanka Trump clothing line boycott growing? You are what you wear
4.34pm BST
4.25pm BST
Texas Representative Brian Babin, a Republican, got into a discussion on the conservative Alan Colmes talk show yesterday about whether it was appropriate for Donald Trump to call Hillary Clinton “such a nasty lady” at the debate Wednesday evening.
Babin tried to demur as a “southern gentleman” but then shared his opinion that “I think sometimes a lady needs to be told when she’s being nasty.”
.@RepBrianBabin #Texas #GOP congressman on #Clinton: 'A lady needs to be told when she's being #nasty' https://t.co/aJGQWfLSYh pic.twitter.com/QHiDi4RJH0
3.59pm BST
David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former top political strategist, has told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would bet everything he owns that Michelle Obama, who has been thrilling crowds with powerful speeches in support of Hillary Clinton, will not run for office. Because no matter what it may look like, politics is not her thing.
Here’s their conversation, transcribed by HotAir, where you can listen to it:
HH: You’ve known her a long time. I actually have, I know she’s given a few political speeches. I think of her primarily as non-political.
DA: Yes.
So she, you know, she became, you know, she gave up a lot to help him and assist him, and then as First Lady. And, but she’s, you know, to say, people say to me all the time well, do you think she might run for office sometime? I would bet everything that I own against that prospect. She is not someone who loves politics or, at all. And I don’t think she’s really out there as a political figure. Now she’s out there because she feels passionately about the choice here.
3.50pm BST
Barry Blitt on the cover of the new New Yorker captures the unusual role of Russian president Vladimir Putin in American civic life these days. “Donald really is as healthy as a horse,” Clinton said at the Al Smith dinner last night. “You know the one that Vladimir Putin rides around on.”
An early look at next week's cover, “Significant Others,” by Barry Blitt: https://t.co/1GWkiibj1T pic.twitter.com/UGZnNlE33h
3.46pm BST
Trump’s media pool is in position for his first rally of the day, in Asheville, North Carolina. At least 75 minutes till showtime and they’re already marinating them in Rolling Stones. The pool reports:
There’s a flea market situation going on outside with various tractor parts et al for sale, some fall foliage and a crisp, strong wind. We’re being serenaded with Les Mis and The Rolling Stones as we wait for Trump to arrive. The event, which is inside a hangar, is due to kick off at noon.
3.38pm BST
Senate judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley is up for reelection from Iowa this year, and there are good signs for him: polling averages have him up 13 points, and Iowa Republicans appear even to be sticking by Trump at the top of the ticket (like, perhaps, their counterparts in Ohio and in contrast with voters in other purplish states such as Pennsylvania-Virginia-Colorado).
Grassley is not phoning it in, though – he’s just produced an ad featuring Ben Stein reprising his Ferris Bueller role:
Chuck Grassley goes negative on Patty Judge in a new ad featuring Ben Stein doing his schtick from Ferris Bueller https://t.co/2YQ40jNYbK
3.30pm BST
Why is this man smiling?
Former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has made more than a half-million dollars from the GOP nominee’s run. Dan Scavino has made nearly $183,000 from it. Current campaign manager Kellyanne Conway’s polling firm has been paid nearly $382,000 in a single month.
3.22pm BST
Michael Steele, the predecessor of Reince Priebus as chairman of the Republican National Committee, has announced that he’s not voting for Donald Trump, his party’s nominee. Buzzfeed reports:
“I will not be voting for Clinton,” Steele told a dinner in honor of the 40th anniversary of the progressive magazine Mother Jones in San Francisco Friday. “I will not be voting for Trump either.”
Steele, a former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, said that Trump has “captured that racist underbelly, that frustration, that angry underbelly of American life and gave voice to that.”
Update: SIX former RNC Chairs are not voting Trump: George HW Bush, Bill Brock, Marc Racicot, Mel Martinez, Ken Mehlman, Michael Steele.
This is the crisis of the conservative intellectual. After years of aligning with, trying to explain, sympathizing with the causes, and occasionally ignoring the worst aspects of populism, he finds that populism has exiled him from his political home. He finds the détente between conservatism and populism abrogated. His models—Buckley, Burnham, Will, Charles Murray, Yuval Levin—are forgotten, attacked, or ignored by a large part of the conservative infrastructure they helped to build. He finds the prospect of a reform conservatism that adds to our strengths while ameliorating our weaknesses to be remarkably dim. Such conservatism has exactly two spokesmen in the Senate. It has a handful of allies in the House and states.
From the Panama Canal to the Tea Party, from Phyllis Schlafly to Sarah Palin, the conservative intellectual has viewed the New Right as a sometimes annoying but ultimately worthy friend. New Right activists supplied the institutions, dollars and votes that helped the conservative intellectual reform tax, crime, welfare, and legal policy. But that is no longer the case. Donald Trump was the vehicle by which the New Right went from one part of the conservative coalition to the dominant ideological tendency of the Grand Old Party.
1.51pm BST
Hello, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House.
Can we say we’re in the home stretch? Election day is three Tuesdays away. More than 4 million people have already voted, according to the Election Project. The debates are done. We’ve had more “October surprises” than we had a right to expect. Miley Cyrus is door-knocking in Virginia.
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