The Commentariat -- October 8, 2016
Afternoon Update:
Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump said in an interview Saturday that he would not drop out of the race under any circumstances, following calls from several prominent members of his party to do so. 'I'd never withdraw. I've never withdrawn in my life,' Trump told The Washington Post in a phone call from his home in Trump Tower in New York. 'No, I'm not quitting this race. I have tremendous support.... They're not going to make me quit, and they can't make me quit,' Trump said of associates and party leaders who have urged him to step aside." -- CW ...
... Vaughn Hillyard of NBC News: "Mike Pence expressed dismay Saturday over Donald Trump's lewd comments about women, saying in a statement that he was 'offended' but wanted to give his embattled running mate a chance to 'show what is in his heart' at the second presidential debate.... Pence earlier cancelled an appearance in Wisconsin [at Paul Ryan's shindig] amid the fallout from Friday's video." -- CW ...
... Kyle Cheney & Burgess Everett of Politico: "In May, Sen. Deb Fischer stood silently as her nephew led a drive to humiliate fellow Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse for his opposition to Donald Trump. On Saturday, she publicly joined Sasse's side. As Republicans abandon Trump en masse over newly revealed lewd comments about women, Fischer joined Sasse in urging the Republican presidential nominee to step aside. 'The comments made by Mr. Trump were disgusting and totally unacceptable under any circumstance,' she tweeted Saturday afternoon, adding: "It would be wise for him to step aside and allow Mike Pence to serve as our party's nominee.'" -- CW ...
... Burgess Everett, et al., of Politico: "After standing aside Trump during months of bombastic remarks aimed at Muslims, Latinos and women, Trump's sexually aggressive and lewd remarks, caught on tape in 2005 and aired Friday, were the breaking point. On Saturday morning, New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte was the first vulnerable GOP incumbent to withdraw her support. Joe Heck, a Republican running in Nevada, quickly followed suit. 'I wanted to be able to support my party's nominee, chosen by the people, because I feel strongly that we need a change in direction for our country. However, I'm a mom and an American first, and I cannot and will not support a candidate for president who brags about degrading and assaulting women. I will not be voting for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton and instead will be writing in Governor Pence for president...,' Ayotte said." -- CW ...
... CW: Yeah, it's funny how all these Republicans were putting up with every horrifying piece of crap from Trump's horrifying history of abusing, cheating and/or insulting everybody but Putin (last week Ayotte said Trump "absolutely" would make a good role model for his kids, a remark she later retracted), but suddenly when he's caught on tape boasting about committing multiple sexual felonies, they're all shocked & discombobulated. ...
Jonathan Swan of the Hill: "The Republican Party would face enormous political and legal problems should it decide to replace Donald Trump as its presidential nominee, election law experts agree. While a number of prominent Republican lawmakers are urging Trump to step down due to his unacceptable sexual comments, the legal community is engaged in a separate argument about whether the Republican National Committee has the authority to remove Trump without his consent." -- CW ...
... Paulina Firozi of the Hill: "Melania Trump says she was offended by her husband Donald Trump's 'unacceptable' sexual remarks about women, but is asking the nation to accept his apology. Melania Trump said in a Saturday statement that the 'words my husband used are unacceptable and offensive to me.... This does not represent the man that I know. He has the heart and mind of a leader.'" -- CW ...
... MEANWHILE. Nikita Valdimirov of the Hill: "Bernie Sanders on Saturday responded to the leaked emails that reveal parts of Hillary Clinton's Wall Street speeches, a major point of contention during their primary battle, by reiterating his support for the Democratic Party platform." -- CW
*****
The New York Times' storm-tracker is here. The latest at 9:12 am ET: "Heavy rains from Hurricane Matthew lashed Georgia and South Carolina early Saturday as the storm began to lose some of its strength. Charleston and Savannah were both reporting flooding, with water breaching the sea wall in Charleston. Video of Savannah showed water rushing through the streets amid reports that the Savannah River was out of its banks. In Georgia, where the governor had ordered residents in six coastal counties to evacuate, the hurricane set a storm surge record for Tybee Island, near the state's border with South Carolina." -- CW ...
... The Weather Channel's coverage of Hurricane Matthew continues. ...
... The main story at 7:45 pm ET, Friday, by Ada Carr: "Hurricane Matthew, in its destructive march along the Florida coast on Friday, caused widespread flooding, damage and power outages across the state. At least five people have died." -- CW ...
... The Miami Herald links to numerous Matthew-related stories on its front page. ...
... Azam Ahmed of the New York Times: "As Haiti picks through the detritus left by Hurricane Matthew, more bodies are turning up every hour. Some estimates said that more than 800 people had died in the storm, more than double what the government has reported, though it acknowledged that the toll was unknown. In one part of the country's southern peninsula, nearly 30,000 homes were destroyed and 150 lives lost, officials said. And a full accounting of damage has not even started." -- CW
Presidential Race -- R-Rated Edition
David Sanger & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Obama administration on Friday formally accused the Russian government of stealing and disclosing emails from the Democratic National Committee and from a range of prominent individuals and institutions, immediately raising the issue of whether President Obama would seek sanctions or other retaliation for the cyberattacks. In a joint statement from the director of national intelligence, James Clapper Jr., and the Department of Homeland Security, the government said the leaked emails that have appeared on a variety of websites were 'intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.' The emails were posted on the WikiLeaks site and newer ones under the names DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0.... In the first presidential debate..., Hillary Clinton ...blam[ed] Russia for the attacks.... Donald J. Trump, said there was no evidence that Russia was responsible, suggesting that the Chinese could be behind it, or it 'could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.'" -- CW: This was, of course, an instance of Trump's defending Putin. ...
... Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed: "Excerpts from Hillary Clinton's closed-door paid speeches, including to financial firms, appeared to be made public for the first time on Friday when WikiLeaks published hundreds of hacked emails from her campaign chairman. The speech transcripts, a major subject of contention during the Democratic primary, include quotes from Clinton about her distance from middle-class life ('I'm kind of far removed'); her vision of strategic governing ('you need both a public and a private position'); and her views on trade, health care, and Wall Street ('even if it may not be 100 percent true, if the perception is that somehow the game is rigged.' John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, was the latest victim in a wave of hacks on key figures in Democratic politics and the political establishment in what administration officials say is an effort by Russia to undermine the election." -- CW ...
... Amy Chozick, et al., of the New York Times: "In lucrative paid speeches that Hillary Clinton delivered to elite financial firms but refused to disclose to the public, she displayed an easy comfort with titans of business, embraced unfettered international trade and praised a budget-balancing plan that would have required cuts to Social Security, according to documents posted online Friday by WikiLeaks.... Mrs. Clinton comes across less as a firebrand than as a technocrat at home with her powerful audience, willing to be critical of large financial institutions but more inclined to view them as partners in restoring the country's economic health.... [Some of her] comments could have proven devastating to Mrs. Clinton during the Democratic primary fight, when Mr. Sanders promoted himself as the enemy of Wall Street and of a rigged economic system." -- CW ...
... Kyle Cheney & Sarah Wheaton of Politico: "Clinton's campaign would not confirm the authenticity of the emails -- though it did not explicitly deny it either. Podesta tweeted on Friday evening that he did not 'have time to figure out which docs are real and which are faked.'" -- CW
Amy Chozick & Patrick Healy of the New York Times: Hillary Clinton "is holed up with aides to practice her body language, facial expressions, vocal cadences and more conversational answers about college debt, the heroin epidemic and other topics that have come up at her campaign events.... Donald J. Trump scoffs at all that. 'I don't need to rehearse being human,' he said in an interview last week. He and his advisers say that Sunday night's town hall-style format ... will showcase his comfort on television and his direct style.... Trump advisers [are] acknowledging privately that Sunday's debate is a must-win for their candidate." CW: Hey, Anderson & Martha, ask him about the "locker-room banter." Let's see if he blames Bill Clinton again. ...
... Sexual Predator Runs for President. Not Your Usual Friday Afternoon News Dump:
** David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone, saying that 'when you're a star, they let you do it,' according to a video obtained by The Washington Post. The video captures Trump talking with Billy Bush, then of 'Access Hollywood,' on a bus with the show's name written across the side. They were arriving on the set of 'Days of Our Lives' to tape a segment about Trump's cameo on the soap opera.... The tape was recorded several months after he married his third wife, Melania.... 'I did try and f--- her. She was married,' Trump says.... 'Grab them by the p---y,' Trump says. 'You can do anything.'... 'This was locker-room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course -- not even close,' Trump said in a statement. 'I apologize if anyone was offended.'... Mike Pence was at a diner in Toledo when the news broke.... But the reporters traveling with Pence were quickly ushered out of the diner by campaign staff, before they could ask Trump's running mate about it, according to Politico." Thanks to MAG for the lead. -- CW ...
... "The Post has edited this video for length." ...
... Here's a transcript of the videotape. ...
... Update. Julie Pace & Jonathan Lemire of the AP: "... Mike Pence, was 'beside himself' and his wife was furious, according to a person familiar with their thinking.... Two Utah Republicans, Gov. Gary Herbert and Rep. Jason Chaffetz withdrew their endorsements, and former Gov. Jon Huntsman did call for the candidate to step aside and let Pence take his place." -- CW ...
... Update. "Access Hollywood" reports that "Nancy," the married woman Trump said he failed to fuck, was Nancy O'Dell, then a co-host with Billy Bush of "Access Hollywood." -- CW ...
... Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "The lewd discussion offers more insight into how Mr. Trump has spoken about women in private and adds to evidence that he has a penchant for sexist behavior.... Mr. Trump's history of making sexist comments about women has caused him trouble before, but he has largely brushed them off as things he said as an entertainer. The new recording could pose more difficult challenges for the Trump campaign, and Democrats were already pressuring Republicans to disavow Mr. Trump.... Mr. Trump has scheduled with Speaker Paul D. Ryan this weekend an awkward affair.... Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, [said], 'I recommend Paul come down with a dental emergency tonight." -- CW ...
... Update. Heroic Paul Ryan Disinvites Serial Molester. James West of Mother Jones: "Speaker Paul Ryan issued a statement Friday night condemning Donald Trump's 2005 comments about groping women. Ryan said he was 'sickened' by the video, published by The Washington Post on Friday evening, and said the GOP nominee would no longer join him for an event Saturday morning." -- CW ...
... NEW. Oh, Wait. Not So Heroic. Jeremy Stahl of Slate: "But if you look at the statement he released Friday, Ryan is giving himself plenty of room not to back out [of his endorsement of Trump] now. 'I hope that Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves' Ryan says, meaning that if Trump says anything about it that Ryan can point to as 'serious,' then he will have nothing to worry about from the Speaker. If history is any guide, he doesn't." CW: See also Trump's "serious" face in the fake-apology video below. I'm sure that counts! ...
... Shane Goldmacher, et al., of Politico: "The Republican Party was in a state of turmoil on Friday night.... As the hours passed, some Republicans began to call for Trump to step aside, leaving the presidential race to vice presidential nominee Mike Pence. Rob Engstrom, the Chamber of Commerce's national political director, was the first to call for Trump to quit, followed by Rep. Mike Coffman, George Pataki and Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock. Sen. Mike Lee said: 'You are the distraction... I respectfully ask you, with all due respect, to step aside.'" -- CW ...
... Jenna Portnoy of the Washington Post: "Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) on Friday night called for Donald Trump to drop out of the presidential race, breaking her campaign-long silence on the Republican presidential nominee.... Comstock, who faces a competitive reelection challenge in her northern Virginia district, said the Republican Party should nominate Trump's runningmate, Mike Pence, in his place or choose another candidate." -- CW ...
... ** Update. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "During a 90-second videotaped appearance, Mr. Trump ... offered a strikingly brief articulation of regret for a decade-old audiotape in which he boasted about grabbing women's genitals and said he could have his way with women because of his fame. But his real message, which appeared early Saturday, was one of defiance. He described the controversy that upended the Republican Party for most of Friday as a mere 'distraction,' and said that his vulgar remarks captured on the tape were nothing compared with the way Bill and Hillary Clinton had mistreated women.... Grudging though they seemed, Mr. Trump's comments were a marked departure from his lifelong resistance to any admission of fault." --CW ...
... CW: Who was Trump so mad at when he cut this video? Probably those "weak" campaign lackeys who made him fake-apologize and the "losers" who condemned him for a little frat-boy talk when he was a boy of 59. ...
... Asawin Suebsaeng of the Daily Beast: "Less than two years after a female journalist [Nancy O'Dell] supposedly rebuffed Donald Trump's sexual advances -- as heard on newly discovered video -- he allegedly tried to have her fired from one of his beauty pageants.... O'Dell co-hosted (along with her Access Hollywood colleague Billy Bush) the Trump-owned Miss USA pageant in 2004 and 2005.... In 2007, TMZ reported that the real-estate mogul wanted to kick O'Dell to the curb as Miss USA host because he allegedly didn't like the way she looked while she was several months pregnant. (Trump's people did not deny the report at the time, and simply refused to comment.)... Ultimately, Trump's bid to get O'dell nixed (whatever his true motivation) was unsuccessful. O'Dell was under contract with NBC, which decided to keep the five-months pregnant host." -- CW ...
... James Hamblin of the Atlantic: "The thing about [Trump]'s words isn't that they're explicit or graphic. It's that they're misogynistic, coercive, abusive, and dehumanizing. And as my colleague David Graham notes, illegal: The candidate is describing forcing himself on women, bragging that they're disinclined to object because of a power structure on which he knowingly capitalizes. Framing this as lewd, even extremely so, is a reminder of the frequent reluctance to name sexual assault.... Trump ... excused his comments as 'locker room banter.' To take him at his word, he misunderstands the ritual: Talking explicitly about sex is different from bragging about forcing yourself on people." -- CW ...
... Danielle Paquette of the Washington Post: "Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager, also defended his former boss. 'He speaks from the heart,' Lewandowski said Friday evening on CNN. 'He speaks the way many people speak around the dining room table.'... The Justice Department writes on its website, sexual assault is 'any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient.' That would include grabbing an unsuspecting woman 'by the p----.' 'That's nothing less than someone talking about committing sexual violence -- the kissing, the grabbing,' said Bridgette Stumpf, co-executive director of Network for Victim Recovery of D.C. 'He's talking about women as if they're objects, as if they don't have a right to consent to the way someone touches them. This is how sexual violence becomes accepted in our culture.'" ...
... CW: I'll take Lewandowski at his word (altho clearly the organ from which Trump was speaking was not the heart): that Lewandowski talks about "grabbing pussy" at the dinner table. In most families, I'd guess, this is not common dinner-table banter. (In my family, I had a rule: "No talking about body-parts at the dinner table." I'll admit my children found inventive -- & fairly hilarious -- ways to break the rule.) ...
... New York Times Editors: "And so we have now heard the Republican nominee for president of the United States bragging about repeated sexual assault.... In a statement released after the video became public on Friday, Mr. Trump tried to minimize the conversation as 'locker room banter.' As if the problem were just his words rather than his actions." -- CW ...
I know everyone is going to jump on Donald Trump for admitting to serial sexual battery on tape, but try to remember Hillary once had a cold -- Daniel Roberts
... Tara Golshan of Vox: "Trump's response to the video was the exact opposite of an apology: It normalized an extraordinarily degrading kind of banter, attempted to deflect the attention to a rival public figure in Bill Clinton, and used a conditional 'if anyone was offended,' placing 'the onus on others to react -- to claim that they were offended or not,' [linguist Edwin] Battistella points out.... For Trump, this is a strategy. When pushed on his shortcomings or his own failings, he tries to deflect on others. It's sorry behavior, but it's not an apology." -- CW ...
... CW: The only thing that surprised me about Trump's non-apology apology is that he didn't blame the women -- arguing that they "asked for it" by dressing or behaving in a sexually-inviting manner. Maybe that tack will play out in late-nite tweets -- if the campaign gives him back his phone. ...
NEW. Paulina Firozi of the Hill: "CNN host Erin Burnett read aloud on air a story from her friend who said Donald Trump tried to kiss her in 2010.... Burnett said her friend was struck by the detail about Tic Tacs in the audio of Trump talking about kissing women. 'Trump took a Tic Tac, suggesting I take them also. He then leaned in, catching me off guard, and kissed me almost on the lips. I was freaked out,' Burnett says, quoting a message from her friend." -- CW ...
... Nicholas Kristof reports on the allegations of Jill Harth, a businesswoman who says Trump tried to rape her & later stiffed the company her then-boyfriend owned. Some years later, however, Harth became Trump's girlfriend & later asked for a job on the Trump campaign. Kristof finds her story believable. -- CW ...
... NEW. Jeremy Stahl has more on Harth's 1997 lawsuit against Trump for groping her numerous times & then attempting to rape her in Ivanka Trump's bedroom. ...
... Steve M.: "I think the election is over." -- CW ...
... Emily Yahr & Elahe Izadi of the Washington Post: Billy "Bush, 44, is the nephew of George H.W. Bush and cousin of George W. Bush.... Billy Bush ... had a rocky transition [from 'Access Hollywood'] when he joined the 'Today' show as a co-anchor this summer, thanks to a viral argument with weatherman Al Roker about whether embattled swimmer Ryan Lochte lied [to Bush] about his alleged robbery.... Bush also hosted both the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants between 2003 and 2005, and again in 2009. Trump purchased the Miss Universe organization in 1996.... Bush was presumably added to the 'Today' show roster to improve ratings for the 9 a.m. hour. But on Friday, as the Trump video circulated the Internet, comments flooded in, many from women -- the 'Today' show's target audience." -- CW ...
... Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post here, & Brian Stelter of CNN here on how the video came to light. Stelter reports that both "Access Hollywood," an NBC-owned show, & NBC News had the tape before Fahrenthold got it late Friday morning. "Access Hollywood" was "deciding what to do with it" & NBC News "hadn't quite finalized" a story. -- CW ...
... According to Stelter, an "Access Hollywood" producer remembered the tape partly because of this AP story by Garance Burke, published October 3: "In his years as a reality TV boss on 'The Apprentice,' Donald Trump repeatedly demeaned women with sexist language, according to show insiders who said he rated female contestants by the size of their breasts and talked about which ones he'd like to have sex with. The Associated Press interviewed more than 20 people -- former crew members, editors and contestants -- who described crass behavior by Trump behind the scenes of the long-running hit show, in which aspiring capitalists were given tasks to perform as they competed for jobs working for him." -- CW
Mr. Trump Goes to Washington. Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times has more on that time young Donald lobbied Congress to make him richer: "He even said that the recession had been caused by President Ronald Reagan's 1986 tax overhaul -- a conclusion few economists shared -- and could be ended only by allowing investor dollars to flow easily back into real estate. Mr. Trump even argued against the very basis of the policy: The best way to get a recovery, he said, was to raise income taxes on wealthy people, to prod them to invest again in syndicated real estate deals." See Steve Mufson & Max Ehrenfreund's WashPo story linked yesterday. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Philip Bump of the Washington Post: In 1989, Donald Trump took out a full-page ad in the New York Daily News aimed at "the Central Park Five," a group of five teens -- four blacks & one Hispanic -- accused of gang-raping & beating, nearly to death, a young white woman jogging in the park. "I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.," Trump wrote in the ad. The five, who confessed under police interrogations, later retracted their confessions & new evidence exonerated them. New York City paid them $40 million to settle their case. "What's remarkable, though, is that even as he's running for president, Trump stands by his excoriation of the five young men.... It barely needs to be mentioned that there's a potent racial element to this case.... What this case suggests is that Trump would be disinclined to moderate his original view on a subject, even if new evidence emerges.... This case combines a lot of the fault lines that lie beneath Trump's candidacy: divisions over race, an unwillingness to admit mistakes, his continued insistence on the centrality of crime concerns." CW: Presidential? Nope. ...
... Charles Pierce: "Do I have to point out how many ways this disqualifies Donald Trump from the position of decent human being, let alone from the position of president of the United States? There's the pure racism of the original ad. There's the pure racism of his still holding to the opinions expressed in the ad in the face of overwhelming scientific and empirical evidence. There's the know-nothing huffing at the legitimacy of the science used to exonerate the five men, which is reminiscent of the way he waves off the science of climate change and anything else that disturbs the fragile intellectual infrastructure of a career grifter." -- CW
Benjamin Wallace-Wells of the New Yorker views the story of Donald Trump's tax returns, released (in tiny part) by the New York Times, as a New York story, a story of real estate's loss of power to Wall Street technocrats, "the blacks," & a powerful newspaper that exposes his crooked deals. "If the Mitnick episode revealed anything about Trump, it was the direction of his narcissism, that he could take credit for an employee's expertise as if it were a condition of his own character." CW: Wallace-Wells uses a couple of literary references as metaphors, but he missed one that directly embodies his view of Trump: Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, where the old-money real-estate moguls try to hang on while downtown banking becomes the new power center & a woman of questionable repute threatens their dynastic plans. They won the latter battle, but lost the war to the first.
Yahoo! News: "With just a little over a month until election day, Donald Trump has racked up zero major newspaper endorsements, a first for any major party nominee in American history. While newspaper endorsements don't necessarily change voters' minds, this year's barrage of anti-Trump endorsements could actually move the needle come November, experts say." -- CW
Meet Your Trump Supporters. Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek on how Trump supporters have threatened him & other journalists, especially those who are Jewish (or even might be Jewish), female or black. "This is exceptional, a circumstance brought about by the gutter rants of Donald Trump and his refusal to condemn the racists, neo-Nazis and other deplorables who support him. That our country has reached this point, where the line between modern American political supporters and Hitler's brownshirts is becoming thinner by the day, is unacceptable. That GOP candidates have stood by and allowed this ugliness to flourish without aggressively condemning their candidate for what he has set loose, simply because they are seeking re-election or fear losing their jobs at the mid-terms, will stain the Republican Party for decades." -- CW
Other News & Views
Gardiner Harris of the New York Times: "President Obama cast his ballot [in Chicago] Friday, joking with staff members of the Chicago Board of Elections about being 20 years younger than he is.' -- CW
Robert Bateman of Esquire on three US ships that are traveling, probably through Hurricane Matthew, to provide aid to Haiti. "Apply this as you see fit." CW: Alas, I have no doubt that some or perhaps a majority of the Marines on this mission will not see fit to apply their own heroism in a appropriate way to the political issues of the day. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Carolyn Johnson of the Washington Post: "EpiPen-maker Mylan reached a $465 million settlement with the Justice Department to 'resolve questions that have been raised' about whether the Medicaid program overpaid for the lifesaving allergy injection, the company said in a release Friday afternoon. In recent weeks, many politicians have called for investigations into whether EpiPen was improperly classified in the Medicaid Drug Rebate program. Under the rebate program, the EpiPen has been classified as a 'non-innovator drug,' which means the company is required to pay only a 13 percent rebate. In contrast, brand name or drugs with a single source must pay a 23.1 percent rebate and an additional amount if price hikes occurred faster than inflation." -- CW
Way Beyond the Beltway
Peter Goodman of the New York Times: "For those blithely inclined toward the view that Britain would somehow find a way to sever its relationship with the European Union free of drama or financial consequences..., Friday was a sobering day of reckoning. As the British pound plunged some 6 percent against the American dollar in the span of two minutes in early trading in Asia, the markets offered a reminder that divorce tends to be messy, expensive and laced with uncertainties. It rarely ends happily.... More than anything, though, the precipitous drop seemed to attest to an increasingly unmistakable reality: Britain's vote to exit the European Union -- Brexit, in common parlance -- has put its commercial relationships with the world on uncertain and potentially perilous ground. That poses risks for the British economy, making its money less attractive to hold." ...
... CW: Here's another lesson: when voters base their "economic theories" on racism and/or isolationism, "it rarely ends happily."