Donald Trump just won’t walk back his claim, made on Wednesday, that President Obama is the “founder of ISIS” and Hillary Clinton is the “co-founder.” This is a classic Trump strategy, Josh Voorhees writes: “It doesn’t matter to Trump whether his wild-eyed accusations are true; it doesn’t matter to him whether they’re offensive. All that matters to him is casting an illusion his supporters want to believe in.”
Trump’s increasingly frequent complaints about the scheduling and structure of his upcoming debates with Clinton have a purpose, Jim Newell writes. They are a way for the candidate to control expectations and mold perceptions, ahead of contests in which he will likely be demolished: “The whole point of his debate moaning is just to act as another dominance play to demonstrate his ability to wield leverage in negotiating a deal.”
Helaine Olen investigates the phenomenon of “balance billing,” in which patients find themselves unexpectedly charged for procedures done at in-network hospitals by out-of-network third-party providers. “Consumers get hit with balance bills because in many places they’re powerless to stop them,” Olen finds. “In only a minority of states is there significant regulation of balance billing by doctors and other medical providers, but loopholes remain.”
A (straight) reporter posted a piece on the Daily Beast on Thursday about his attempts to entice Olympic athletes, many of whom remain closeted in their home countries, to hook up via the app Grindr. Disgraceful, Mark Joseph Stern writes: “The article is a dangerous disaster, a wildly unethical train wreck that should be taken down immediately for the sake of its duped subjects.”
Simone Biles and her wonderful teammates aside, we have a few other gymasts whose excellence we’d like you to consider. Jessica Winter writes about Larisa Latynina, a Soviet athlete who has won as many medals as Michael Phelps and, incredibly, competed and won at the 1958 world championships while concealing a four-month pregnancy. And Rebecca Schuman loves Simone Biles but thinks Japan’s Kohei Uchimura, who won the men’s individual all-around competition on Wednesday, is probably the greatest gymnast of all time.
Those lines,
Rebecca
