A Twitter pal wondered yesterday why Trump would keep chattering about Machado given that this whole thing is an obvious PR scam arranged by Clinton to goose votes from women and Latinos. Answer: Total alpha move. Negging the beauty queen is key to mobilizing the all-important “bro” vote.

No, seriously, though, he’s probably just insane. Note the timestamps.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/781784161044553728
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/781785509639118848
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/781788223055994880

Hard to top this analogy:

Hillary on Machado is Judge Doom tapping "shave and a haircut" on the wall. Like Roger Rabbit, Trump had to burst out and shout "two bits"!

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) September 30, 2016

You may remember that the 2008 election was neck and neck down the stretch until Obama proved he was presidential by urging his fans to check out a sex tape. Speaking of which, which “sex tape” is Trump talking about here? Does he mean the reality show Machado was on where she hooked up with one of her housemates? Because that’s real. Or does he mean actual pornography starring Machado? Because … that’s not real. And now we’re going to get a teary press conference at which Machado claims she’s been smeared and defamed, and it’ll make her even more sympathetic to Hillary’s target audience. And the story will drag on.

The good news, I guess, is that it could have been worse. Trump could have mentioned her in relation to Benghazi, like, er, Newt did. The bad news is that there’s probably a 50/50 chance that Trump ends up retweeting an alt-right fan this weekend who wants Machado deported even though she’s a naturalized U.S. citizen.

The inevitable Clinton hay-making:

Alicia deserves praise for courageously standing up to Trump's attacks. And he has the gall to blame her—and say he "helped"?

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 30, 2016

When something gets under Donald's thin skin, he lashes out and can't let go. This is dangerous for a president.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 30, 2016

Machado posted a statement too, in Spanish, alongside a picture of her wrapped in the American flag. There’s a (broken) translation here which refers to “slander” by Trump. David Frum asks a good question: Did Clinton use Machado to set a trap for Trump because Machado has a sketchy past? Normally political campaigns wouldn’t go anywhere near someone who’s been accused of driving a getaway car after a murder and threatening a judge, but in this case Frum might be on to something.

The genius of the trap here was to draw Trump into a fight where he had enough right on his side to make it impossible for him to let go https://t.co/6fgETgwjWf

— David Frum (@davidfrum) September 30, 2016

Trump never went hard after the Khans because there wasn’t anything obvious to attack. The best he could do was Mrs Khan declining to speak during her husband’s convention address. There’s plenty of dirt on Machado to tempt him into keeping the story going, though. If that’s what Team Clinton had in mind in choosing her as their designated victim, it’s a next-level Machiavellian play and a shrewd read on Trump’s personality. They’re trying to run out the clock on him and here he is arguing with a fan in the stands while the seconds tick off. Just as they seemingly planned.

Here’s Megyn Kelly wondering on last night’s show why Trump’s people can’t shut up about how much women should weigh. We can’t be more than 48 hours away from a 4 a.m. tweet attacking her again too.