On Thursday, Jimmy Fallon had Donald Trump on the Tonight Show and ended the segment by saying, “Donald I want to ask you, because the next time I see you you could be the President of the United States. I just want to know if there is something we could do that’s just not really presidential, really – can I mess your hair up?” Trump let him and the NBC audience roared with laughter. But, for many of us, this is very far from being a joke. 
 
 Giving comic cover to Trump just isn’t funny when he’s unleashed forces of anti-blackness and anti-immigrant sentiment. He’s labelled Mexicans rapists, raised the prospect of a ban on Muslims, patronized and insulted African Americans while pretending to be a potential new hope. As a result, Fallon managed to come over as one powerful white man protecting another. 
 
 Not only was it not funny. It didn’t do anything to take Trump down a notch (if it was even meant to). Instead, it humanized him, boosting him on that stupid metric so many Americans use when choosing a president: “Hey, he’s a guy I’d want to have a beer with! Look at him, letting Fallon have fun with him!” 
 
 Fallon had real power last night and squandered it. I can’t imagine Chelsea Handler, Trevor Noah or the recently departed Larry Wilmore building up Trump like that. 
 
 By smoothing over Trump’s hatefulness with comedy, he allowed the Republican candidate’s supporters to say “Hey, can’t you all take a joke?!” I have been highly critical of Hillary Clinton, but the misogyny directed at her by his supporters, who sell “Trump That Bitch!” shirts and who scream “lock her up!” is terrifying and wrong. 
 
 
 
 Trump was handed a chance to change the story on a day when his conspiracy-minded views on President Obama’s nationality were back on the agenda. The routine smoothed the way for Trump to say he now believes Obama was born in the US, dashing off before answering any questions about his long espousal of birtherism – which he now blames on Clinton. 
 
 Jimmy Fallon, you’ve given permission for all of this to be chalked up as one big joke. 
 
 
 
 The writer Sarah Schulman recently asked whether it was “the TV entertainment class that has sold out this country to Donald Trump”. CBS president Les Moonves basically admitted as much when he said Trumpism “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS”. Now, NBC seems to concur. In January of 2015, NBC admirably cut ties with Trump on the Apprentice and Miss Universe when he called Mexicans rapists. But like most corporations, when they saw how much power he wielded – that he could wind up in the Oval Office – it wanted access. And so last fall they let Trump host Saturday Night Live, Fallon’s old stomping ground, before allowing him to engage in good humored chat with Fallon last night. 
 
 We see you, Jimmy Fallon. You are as “apolitical” as the wretched Jay Leno was, a champion of the status quo. You think the idea of Trump in the White House is as harmless as your face on a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. 
 
 Maybe it is to you, as a powerful white man on TV who doesn’t have to worry about life as a woman, Muslim, Black or Latin person, immigrant, or queer American living under Trumpism (an era which has already begun and will continue, regardless of whether Trump is elected). Your skit was nothing like Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator, which brilliantly skewered a rising leader of the right. In fact, you did the opposite, making Trump seem more palatable. When history looks back on this moment, we may well say: Jimmy Fallon, you helped build a monster. ||||| Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives. 
 
 Enlarge Image CBS News/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET 
 
 He was the man who insisted that his superior tweeting was one of his greatest advantages. 
 
 Now, if the New York Times is to be believed, Donald Trump is no longer allowed to write his own tweets. Instead, said the Times report, his campaign makes him dictate them. 
 
 President Obama is clearly a Times reader. (Well, of course he is.) 
 
 "Apparently, his campaign has taken away his Twitter," the president said, speaking in Kissimmee, Florida. "In the last two days, they had so little confidence in his self-control, that they said, "We're just going to take away your Twitter." 
 
 I feel sure this cannot be true. 
 
 I feel sure his campaign managers said to him: "Please, Mr. Trump. If you let us do your tweeting for you, we'll buy you some more KFC." There had to be some sort of deal here. Deals are Trump's lifeblood. 
 
 Now playing: Watch this: Obama pokes fun at Trump for losing Twitter control 
 
 Still, the president drew a conclusion from all this: "Now, if somebody can't handle a Twitter account, they can't handle the nuclear codes." 
 
 He didn't stop there. 
 
 "If somebody starts tweeting at 3 in the morning because SNL made fun of you, then you can't handle the nuclear codes," said the president. 
 
 This refers to Trump angrily tweeting that SNL should be retired because it was boring. 
 
 I'm not sure that presidents should write their own tweets anyway. President Obama's own tweets read as if several fine PR fingers have stroked each letter. 
 
 Laughing at Trump, though, isn't something the Republican nominee appreciates. Thus far, his Twitter account has revealed no reaction. 
 
 The Trump campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
 I wonder who will be laughing in the early hours of Wednesday morning. And who will be tweeting. ||||| Campaigning on behalf of Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, Obama criticises those Republicans who continue to support their candidate 
 
 Barack Obama assailed the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, on Tuesday over remarks about groping women, also criticizing Republicans who continued to support the candidate. 
 
 “You don’t have to be a husband or a father to hear what we heard just a few days ago and say that’s not right,” the president said in Greensboro, North Carolina, in his first public remarks since the release of a 2005 tape showing Trump bragging about groping and kissing women without their consent. 
 
 “You just have to be a decent human being to say that’s not right.” 
 
 Campaigning on behalf of Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, Obama said the Republican presidential nominee is unfit “for a job at 7-Eleven”, let alone the presidency. 
 
 He encouraged the crowd of nearly 8,000 to respond at the ballot box in November. 
 
 
 
 “If it makes you mad,” the president said, “then you say ‘That’s not somebody I want representing the United States of America.’ You can do something about it, North Carolina.” 
 
 “The guy says stuff nobody would find tolerable if they were applying for a job at 7-Eleven,” he added. 
 
 The president, among Clinton’s most powerful surrogates, did not reserve his criticism solely for Trump. He also mocked Republicans who rebuked Trump’s comments but continued to endorse his candidacy. 
 
 
 
 “That doesn’t make sense to me,” Obama said. “You can’t have it both ways here. You can’t repeatedly denounce what is said by someone and then say but I’m still going to endorse him to be the most powerful person on the planet and to put them in charge.” 
 
 
 
 He also expressed his disbelief at the Republicans who have expressed hope that Trump might change his ways. 
 
 “What did you think? He was going to transform himself? I mean, I’m 55 and it’s hard for me to change. I know at 70 it’s going to be harder.” 
 
 
 
 Earlier in the day, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters the president had found Trump’s boasting about his behavior toward women to be “repugnant”. 
 
 There had been a wide consensus across the political spectrum, Earnest added, that Trump’s remarks “constituted sexual assault”. 
 
 At an evening rally in Florida, Trump managed to train his fire on Clinton rather than members of his own party, whom he had spent the afternoon denouncing on Twitter. 
 
 Trump seized on the hacked emails of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, that were made public by WikiLeaks this week, accusing the Obama administration of colluding with the Democratic nominee over its investigation into her use of a private email server. 
 
 “The DoJ fed information to the Clinton campaign about the email investigation so that the campaign could be prepared to cover up for her crimes,” Trump said at a rally in Panama City, Florida on Tuesday night. “This is collusion and corruption of the highest order and is one more reason I will ask my attorney general … to appoint a special prosecutor. We have to investigate Hillary Clinton and we have to investigate the investigation.” 
 
 He called the FBI investigation into her emails – in which the agency director, James Comey, reprimanded Clinton for being “extremely careless” but ultimately recommended no charges – a “disgrace”. 
 
 The email Trump singled out involves an exchange between Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon and the DoJ concerning a lawsuit pertaining to a freedom of information request about her emails. The exchange between Fallon and the individual at the DoJ occurred two months before the FBI opened its probe into Clinton’s emails, and it pertained to information that was publicly available. 
 
 There is no evidence that the DoJ communicated with Fallon on the email investigation. 
 
 Speaking to reporters aboard Clinton’s campaign plane on Tuesday, Podesta blamed Russian intelligence officials intent on undermining the Democratic nominee. 
 
 “I’ve been involved in politics for nearly five decades,” Podesta told reporters. “This definitely is the first campaign that I’ve been involved with in which I’ve had to tangle with Russian intelligence agencies … who seem to be doing everything that they can on behalf of our opponent.” Podesta did not confirm the veracity of the leaks. 
 
 Ahead of the Florida rally, Trump lashed out at the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, who this week announced he would no longer defend Trump or campaign with him although he stopped short of formally withdrawing his support for the nominee. 
 
 “They’re not giving support – they don’t give the support that we really need – but the fact is that I think we should get support and we don’t get the support from guys like Paul Ryan,” Trump told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday. “[Ryan] had a conference call with congressmen, with hundreds of them, and they practically rioted against him on the phone. One person stuck up for him.” 
 
 “And I don’t really want his support,” Trump added of Ryan. 
 
 O’Reilly asked Trump to elaborate on his earlier tweet in which he wrote that it was “so nice that the shackles have been taken off me”. 
 
 Trump said the shackles represented some of “establishment people, the weak and ineffective people within the party”. When O’Reilly asked if “throwing off of the shackles” meant that he would become more outspoken, Trump forcefully denied that he was outspoken. 
 
 He also denied polling that shows him losing support among women, a group he had trouble appealing to even before the release of video in which he boasted about touching women without consequence because of his fame. He has dismissed the remarks as “locker room talk”. 
 
 “Most people have heard it before, and I’ve had a lot of women come up to me and say I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard a lot worse,” Trump told O’Reilly. “If that’s what it takes to lose an election, I think that’d be pretty sad.” 
 
 With less than one month left until election day, Trump is under pressure from party leadership and his own supporters to hone his attack strategy and stick to it. His campaign has so far proved resilient despite not having a conventional fundraising structure or voter outreach plan. 
 
 During the speech in Florida’s conservative panhandle, Trump encouraged the crowd to register to vote. He noted that the voter registration deadline in Florida had been extended because of the hurricane, which interrupted the state’s final registration days. 
 
 “It’s a movement. But if we don’t win, all it is a little asterisk in history,” Trump said. “There’s never been anything like this. So go and register. Make sure you get out and vote. November 28th.” The US election is on 8 November.
– President Obama handed it to haters, including Donald Trump, while reading mean tweets on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday. "President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States," Obama quoted Trump during the segment. His reply: "Really? Well, @realDonaldTrump, at least I will go down as a president." Another Twitter user asked, "Barack Obama, bro do you even lift?" to which Obama responded, "Well, I lifted the ban on Cuban cigars. That's worth something." During his chat with Kimmel, Obama sent more insults Trump's way. He said he'd spent "most" of the presidential debates laughing at Trump, and while discussing aides waking him up in the middle of the night, he said, "What I don't do at 3am, I don't tweet about people who insulted me." Obama later described how he'd lost $5 to Bill Murray during a recent putting contest in the Oval Office in which they tried to putt into a glass. "He won repeatedly," Obama said. Then, mimicking his favorite GOP nominee, he added, "The glass was rigged."