A few thoughts on the Trump and Hillary campaigns with only three months to go that I guarantee you can take to The Great White Shank bank. Ignore at your own risk.

…If you follow the mainstream media you’d be hard-pressed not to think that the Trump campaign was in full melt-down and coming apart at the seams. And were your only news sources the major networks, CNN, MSNBC, the major East Coast newspapers, Yahoo!, and NPR I wouldn’t blame you one bit – they’re fully-invested in propping up Hillary Clinton’s sorry, corrupt carcass and spinning a narrative that runs counter to what’s really happening out there. Sharyl Attkisson speaks of just this very thing in this interview with Steve Malzberg of NewsMax TV, and it’s worth a listen. If there is anything the 2016 election season will have proven when all is said and done is the depths the media has allowed itself to plumb in its insatiable desire to see Donald Trump’s candidacy utterly destroyed.

…Today the mainstream media is mocking Trump’s announced 50-state campaign strategy but it makes sense when you realize that Trump’s plan is to run a pure 50-state populist campaign that bypasses the mainstream media through: a) massive events involving thousands of attendees, b) non-registered voter registration, c) voter enthusiasm, d) social media, and e) more traditional interviews with local media. Trumpgasm blog equates this strategy to lighting small fires across a landscape that ultimately grow into a massive wildfire that overwhelms everything in its path by Election Day. Will it work? I guess only time will tell.

…The mainstream media loves to talk about optics. You want optics? Here are two pictures from last Wednesday: Hillary in Iowa vs. Trump in Ft. Lauderdale. Now you tell me who’s campaign is truly leading in the polls.

…One thing that has become totally apparent is the strategy of the mainstream media to focus on Trump’s supposed “gaffes” in order to keep the spotlight off of Hillary Clinton and the drip-drip-drip of scandal and corruption engulfing both her and her campaign. Consider yesterday’s release of the Clinton taxes: what should have been a defining moment of her campaign to goad Trump further into releasing his own taxes instead illustrated the Clintons’ inherent corruption, showing a whopping 96% of their charitable contributions going to – what else? – the Clinton Foundation, the other 4% to a PGA Tour event sponsored by – you guessed it – the Clinton Foundation! Honestly folks, you can’t even make this stuff up…

…Hillary’s sit-down with Chris Wallace on last week’s “Fox News Sunday” will (at least in my view) go down as the biggest gaffe of the campaign. Her unwillingness to admit she lied both to the FBI and to Congress about her e-mails, and to mischaracterize FBI director James Comey’s testimony before Congress that she didn’t lie not only gave the Trump campaign more ammunition than it could ever hope to get (wait for the ads), but in doing so only confirmed the suspicions of just about anyone who still didn’t think so that Hillary is not just untrustworthy as a presidential candidate but flat-out liar.

…Of course, Democrats won’t care – they’d vote Charles Manson for president if they thought for a second he’d further their political agenda. And I’m not kidding.

…This story is making the rounds at various conservative blogs. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if in fact it’s true both in terms of: a) Trump’s performance against all demographics across the board, and b) pollsters who are paid by major news organizations needing to show results that meet the needs of those organizations rather than what’s actually happening out there. I’m not ready to go that far, but if it is in fact true I’m guessing you’ll see evidence of it soon enough by mid to late September, either from word of campaign shakeups, or the way the campaigns start allocating their spending, or (in the case of the Hillary campaign) leaked stories by worried DNC or campaign staffers to the New York Times or the Washington Post.