| WikiLame Does it feel like Julian Assange is always promising that the really big revelations are just around the corner? WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vowed Tuesday that the online publishing organization would publish "significant" secret information related to the United States presidential election — and that it would do so before Nov. 8. Assange made the comments via video link from London to Berlin as part of a news conference to mark WikiLeaks' 10th anniversary. He said WikiLeaks intends to start "publishing every week for the next 10 weeks" material on weapons, war, Google, the election and other topics, but did not otherwise elaborate on the timing or the subject matter of the documents. He knows the election is November 8, right? There's a calendar with America's Election Day listed somewhere in that embassy, right? Roger Stone, Trump's longtime friend and confidante, says he has "total confidence that WikiLeaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon." Well, okay then! Does he know early voting is going on? As of Monday, 129,801 Americans had already cast a ballot. That pace is going to pick up quickly in the coming weeks. By Election Day 2012, 46 million Americans had voted early. If you have some sort of bombshell revelation that will change voters' minds, why would you hold onto it? Every week, WikiLeaks should just link to this video: 
Gonna let you down, gonna run around and desert you; gonna make you cry, gonna say goodbye, gonna tell a lie and hurt you . . . (For those asking what Jim is talking about, click here.) Programming Tonight's Vice-Presidential Debate Tonight's Vice Presidential Debate, presented as a computer program: 10: Moderator: Introduce Candidates. 20: Kaine: Attack Trump. 30: Pence: Deflect, pivot to criticize status quo and Hillary. 40: Goto line 20, repeat until time remaining < 5 minutes, then goto line 50. 50: Kaine: Lament negative campaigns, promise to uplift America. 60: Pence: Pledge to make America more like Indiana. 70: Moderator: End Debate. What Is Donald Trump an Expert About? Donald Trump's ability to carry forward losses under the tax code — see Megan McArdle for a good explanation of why this is not surprising, scandalous, or even bad policy — is cited by the likes of Rudy Giuliani as evidence of his encyclopedic knowledge: "The man's a genius. He knows how to operate the tax code to the benefit of the people he's serving." Let's put aside that you don't "operate" a tax code like a piece of machinery. It's written down, and you — or in the case of Trump, you and your accountants and tax lawyers — either follow the rules or you don't. But does Trump have a masterful knowledge of the details of the tax code? Timothy O'Brien, author of TrumpNation and man who actually saw Trump's tax returns during discovery of Trump's unsuccessful libel suit, writes that he is not: But Trump isn't that financially sophisticated. In my interviews with him, he had trouble explaining such basic real estate concepts as "cash flow." And in the present campaign, he has dropped alarming howlers about how he might manage federal finances as president. His eyes tend to glaze over when complex numbers come into play. Trump's own former accountant, Jack Mitnick, told the Times that it was always Trump's ex-wife Ivana who asked probing questions about the couple's taxes. Trump himself, Mitnick said, was disengaged, and less detail-oriented than his father, Fred. It's obvious Donald Trump hasn't mastered the details of foreign or domestic policy. But what topic area would you expect Trump to know a lot about? What is Trump an expert in? Those of us who bothered to look had no problem finding a lot of Trump associates who say he's not merely not a details guy when it comes to government policy; he's not a details guy in much of anything. You may not recognize the name "George Ross," but if I say, "the bald older gentleman with glasses who sat next to Trump on The Apprentice," I'll bet you remember him. Here's his assessment of his longtime friend and boss: Consider George H. Ross, Mr. Trump's real-estate lawyer for 30 years, who describes himself as the businessman's "closest advisor." In Mr. Ross's 2006 how-to manual, "Trump-Style Negotiation: Powerful Strategies and Tactics for Mastering Every Deal," he observes: "To my knowledge, Donald Trump has no negotiating weaknesses except maybe the fact that he doesn't like to discuss minor details. He lacks the patience to work on unimportant paperwork, because he likes to focus on the big picture as a more productive usage of his time." Mr. Ross admires Mr. Trump, but he thinks this indifference is a fairly lethal weakness. Bad negotiators share an "inability to focus on the details," he explains elsewhere in the book. "Trust me when I say the devil is in the details." Then he adds: "You want to be the expert on the topic under negotiation" (his italics). Mr. Ross even advises readers who wind up across the negotiating table with "someone who thinks like Donald Trump" to offer to bore his subordinate with the minutiae. "This gives you complete control over the documentation process and who will make the day-to-day decisions. You have uncovered the real deal maker for your transaction—and it's not the boss." Or let's take a look at Trumped!: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump-His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, written at the height of Trump's financial problems in the early 1990s: We had discovered during the renovations at Trump Plaza that Donald's expertise in construction was nowhere near the level his reputation led us to expect. Now the [Trump] Castle's management was about to learn the same lesson. And his attention span was so limited that it was impossible to discuss problems with him in any detail. Nor did he anticipate them on his own; he never got involved to that degree. . . Left to his and Ivana's devices, the suites and the marina met with cost overruns in the tens of millions of dollars. Donald was looking at a final price tag of more than $100 million for the construction and renovations. Once the construction was underway and it was too late to stop it, he was furious that he had agreed to such exorbitant costs. So he blamed Ivana — "mother***ing" her all the time . . . 'I can't believe she's so f***ing stupid.'" The difficulties of getting Trump to prepare for the debate seem a lot clearer, hm? ADDENDA: Today's Tuesday at Two Facebook Live discussion may not occur at two o'clock — I'm headed down to Farmville, Virginia, to cover the Vice-Presidential debate and to appear on the program of my friend, Cam Edwards. I will try to do one sometime in the afternoon, and maybe have some video of what it's like when a small town in central Virginia becomes the center of the political world for one night. Ready for a giant X-Factor in the election? How about Hurricane Matthew hitting Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina in the coming days? | 
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