Clinton Hoping to Get Under Trump’s Skin Monday Night

“Hil­lary Clin­ton is de­term­ined to get un­der” Don­ald Trump’s “skin at Monday’s de­bate, and is test­ing at­tack lines to try to rattle him. …Clin­ton has a thick dossier on…Trump after months of re­search and meet­ings with her de­bate team, in­clud­ing ana­lys­is and as­sump­tions about his psy­cho­lo­gic­al makeup that Clin­ton ad­visers de­scribed as crit­ic­al to un­der­stand­ing how to knock…Trump off bal­ance.” Clin­ton “has con­cluded that catch­ing Mr. Trump in a lie dur­ing the de­bate is not enough to beat him: She needs the huge tele­vi­sion audi­ence to see him as tem­pera­ment­ally un­fit for the pres­id­ency, and that she has the power to un­hinge him. …Clin­ton” is “largely de­vot­ing the next four days to mock de­bate ses­sions and drills in New York.” (New York Times)

SEVER­ING TRUMP FROM THE GOP. In May, a team of Clin­ton “aides in Brook­lyn set out on a new ap­proach, out­lined for the Demo­crat­ic Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee in an in­tern­al email. … The email, made pub­lic along with 20,000 oth­ers on WikiLeaks as part of a massive cy­ber­at­tack on the DNC this sum­mer, is one of about two dozen ex­changes that re­veal a run­ning ten­sion this spring over the cam­paign’s de­cision to ‘dis­ag­greg­ate’ Trump from the Re­pub­lic­an Party. The stra­tegic shift made back in May didn’t just drive a wedge between Clin­ton’s team and the of­fi­cials tasked with co­ordin­at­ing the party across the states. It fun­da­ment­ally upen­ded the way Demo­crats talk about Re­pub­lic­ans. … Months later, Clin­ton’s strategy is un­re­cog­niz­able from the first year of her cam­paign. She doesn’t tie Trump to the rest of the Re­pub­lic­an Party.” (BuzzFeed)

MIL­LION DOL­LAR HOUSE. “Bill and Hil­lary Clin­ton are ex­pand­ing their Westchester spread by buy­ing the house next door, The Post has learned. The Clin­tons shelled out $1.16 mil­lion for the three-bed­room, 3,631-square-foot, ranch-style home set on 1.51 leafy acres on Old House Lane in Chap­paqua.” (New York Post) “The pur­chase makes it easi­er for the United States Secret Ser­vice to pro­tect the former pres­id­ent and pos­sible fu­ture com­mand­er in chief.” (CNN)

PRESS­ING ON TRUMP’S RUS­SI­AN TIES. Vari­ous Clin­ton sup­port­ers held a “con­fer­ence call with re­port­ers about Trump’s ties to Rus­sia” on Thursday. The Clin­ton cam­paign is seek­ing “to keep talk of Trump’s un­known busi­ness ties to Rus­sia and his praise for Vladi­mir Putin in the news.” (Wash­ing­ton Post)

ON AIR. A new Clin­ton TV ad, “Mir­rors,” tar­gets Trump for his of­fens­ive com­ments about wo­men, and how they could im­pact how young wo­men view them­selves. (re­lease)

EN­DORSE­MENT. The Los Angeles Times en­dorsed Clin­ton. The head­line reads: Hil­lary Clin­ton would make a sober, smart and prag­mat­ic pres­id­ent. Don­ald Trump would be a cata­strophe.”

ACA PUB­LIC OP­TION. “Sen­ate mod­er­ates, in­clud­ing Tim Kaine, have not signed onto res­ol­u­tion to add a gov­ern­ment-run in­sur­ance plan to Obama­care. …Kaine’s ab­sence is es­pe­cially strik­ing since Hil­lary Clin­ton em­braced the pub­lic op­tion in Ju­ly.” (Politico)