Alicia Machado reacts as she is crowned Miss Universe by the 1995 winner, Chelsi Smith, at the Miss Universe competition in Las Vegas in 1996. (Eric Draper/Associated Press) 
 
 Hillary Clinton might want to dig out of the vault her “3 a.m. phone call” ad from 2008, wherein she argued that the then-freshman senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, wasn’t prepared to deal with international emergencies: 
 
 This ad from Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign implied that Barack Obama wasn't equipped to deal with international emergencies. (Hillary Clinton 2008) 
 
 The question now may be: Do you want Donald Trump up at 3 a.m. tweeting crazy stuff? That’s precisely what he did (starting with a 3:20 a.m. tweet): 
 
 “Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying ‘sources said,’ DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies!” “Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an ‘angel’ without checking her past, which is terrible!” “Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT! Hillary was set up by a con.” “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?” 
 
 [Greg Sargent: Trump’s ‘disgusting’ tweet about Alicia Machado got one thing right. It isn’t what he thinks.] 
 
 His invitation for Americans to go look at a “sex tape” is beyond bizarre and may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back of his campaign. This is plainly a man unhinged, unable to accept his defeat in the debate and — tweeting in the middle of the night — lacking any impulse control. 
 
 It’s impossible to imagine that this won’t dominate the news for at least a few days and come up in the next debate. The Clinton camp’s best course here is to be very, very quiet as Trump self-destructs. 
 
 This archive video from 1997 shows Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with his now outspoken critic, former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. (Reuters) 
 
 For the evangelical “leaders” who backed him, this is the latest humiliation, confirming that they lack a moral center or any discernible standards. They now support a man urging fellow Americans to go watch a sex tape. 
 
 For Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan, his self-made predicament gets worse. Is he really going to tell us this man is fit to be president? 
 
 This was, of course, precisely what #NeverTrump Republicans warned would happen: An emotionally unstable, raging narcissist would suffer some type of public breakdown, confirming the gross malfeasance of the Republican National Committee and the foolishness of his backers. 
 
 Just about every possible option is now on the table. Trump could decide not to attend the next debate. That could start a GOP effort to get him to step down. Conservative independent Evan McMullin could present himself as a viable alternative to save the party. Or Trump could take the GOP down the tubes in an election that was eminently winnable — until the party nominated a lunatic. 

 How about the content of the tweets? The first appears to be a reference to unnamed Trump aides handwringing to the press about his lack of preparation for the first debate. (As Maggie Haberman wryly noted, Trump would know: He was once notorious for calling reporters and speaking to them about himself while using a pseudonym.) 
 
 The fact that he was unready to take on Hillary Clinton is manifest to practically every observer except Trump, his adviser Rudy “Why would we change if we won the debate?” Giuliani, and spokesman Jason Miller, who somehow managed to mostly keep a straight face while insisting to Chuck Todd on Thursday that web surveys were more reliable than scientific polls. 
 
 Then there’s the Machado tweets. Four days after Trump debate Clinton, he is still consumed by his anger at a woman who was Miss Universe in the 1990s. Or, to put that in demographic terms, Trump is still insulting a Latina woman and calling attention to the fact that he called her fat with just a month left until an election, when he trails Clinton badly among Latinas and women. And he’s doing so at the cost of attacking his opponent, at a time when she is seeing a rebound in the polls. 
 
 Let’s remember how we got here: During Monday’s debate, Trump questioned Clinton’s stamina. Clinton responded by springing a trap, bringing up Alicia Machado and recalling how Trump called her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.” Trump said that it was unfair for Clinton to attack him. The next day, on Fox and Friends, he eagerly confirmed that he’d criticized Machado for her weight gain, walking farther into Clinton’s trap. Now he’s still going. 
 
 Machado is not without her own checkered past. She was accused of being complicit in an attempted murder in Venezuela, though she was never arrested or charged. She did not, it appears, act in any porn, though she did pose topless for Playboy and was filmed doing … something under sheets while on a Big Brother-style reality-TV show. The clip is more embarrassing than explicit. 
 
 Yet Trump’s method of broaching that is baffling. There’s the bizarre spectacle of a presidential candidate from the party of the religious right telling anyone who will listen to “check out [a] sex tape.” (Trump has a special attachment to the word “disgusting,” which he uses to describe a breast-feeding attorney and a bathroom break Clinton took during a Democratic debate.) 
 
 In a campaign of unprecedented moments, this is yet another. Machado’s sex life has nothing to do with the issue at hand, which is Trump’s comments about her weight and ethnicity, but by continuing to talk about her, he offers fresh reminders about what he said about her. 
 
 It also exposes some hypocrisy: Who is Trump to criticize anyone for salaciousness? This is the man who once said, “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass,” and who has bragged about his sexual exploits (perhaps literally) ad nauseam. Trump is only reminding everyone of his double-standard on sex for men and women, which is plays into Clinton’s hands. 

 Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying "sources said," DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies! 

 Alicia Machado reacts as she is crowned Miss Universe by the 1995 winner, Chelsi Smith, at the Miss Universe competition in Las Vegas in 1996. (Eric Draper/Associated Press) 
 
 Hillary Clinton might want to dig out of the vault her “3 a.m. phone call” ad from 2008, wherein she argued that the then-freshman senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, wasn’t prepared to deal with international emergencies: 
 
 This ad from Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign implied that Barack Obama wasn't equipped to deal with international emergencies. (Hillary Clinton 2008) 
 
 The question now may be: Do you want Donald Trump up at 3 a.m. tweeting crazy stuff? That’s precisely what he did (starting with a 3:20 a.m. tweet): 
 
 “Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying ‘sources said,’ DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies!” “Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an ‘angel’ without checking her past, which is terrible!” “Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT! Hillary was set up by a con.” “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?” 
 
 [Greg Sargent: Trump’s ‘disgusting’ tweet about Alicia Machado got one thing right. It isn’t what he thinks.] 
 
 His invitation for Americans to go look at a “sex tape” is beyond bizarre and may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back of his campaign. This is plainly a man unhinged, unable to accept his defeat in the debate and — tweeting in the middle of the night — lacking any impulse control. 
 
 It’s impossible to imagine that this won’t dominate the news for at least a few days and come up in the next debate. The Clinton camp’s best course here is to be very, very quiet as Trump self-destructs. 
 
 This archive video from 1997 shows Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with his now outspoken critic, former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. (Reuters) 
 
 For the evangelical “leaders” who backed him, this is the latest humiliation, confirming that they lack a moral center or any discernible standards. They now support a man urging fellow Americans to go watch a sex tape. 
 
 For Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan, his self-made predicament gets worse. Is he really going to tell us this man is fit to be president? 
 
 This was, of course, precisely what #NeverTrump Republicans warned would happen: An emotionally unstable, raging narcissist would suffer some type of public breakdown, confirming the gross malfeasance of the Republican National Committee and the foolishness of his backers. 
 
 Just about every possible option is now on the table. Trump could decide not to attend the next debate. That could start a GOP effort to get him to step down. Conservative independent Evan McMullin could present himself as a viable alternative to save the party. Or Trump could take the GOP down the tubes in an election that was eminently winnable — until the party nominated a lunatic.
– Hillary Clinton made the idea of a president receiving a 3am phone call famous in her 2008 race against Barack Obama, and now columnist Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post thinks she should resurrect a slightly different version for Donald Trump. Except "the question now may be: Do you want Donald Trump up at 3 a.m. tweeting crazy stuff?" Rubin is referring to Trump's flurry of tweets beginning at 3:20am Friday, the first advising, “Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying ‘sources said,’ DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies!” He then went on to ramp up his attacks on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. "His invitation for Americans to go look at a 'sex tape' is beyond bizarre and may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back of his campaign," writes Rubin. "This is plainly a man unhinged, unable to accept his defeat in the debate and—tweeting in the middle of the night—lacking any impulse control." At the Atlantic, David A. Graham suggests it's a waste of time to overthink Trump's motives here. "To ask what the strategy behind Trump’s tweets is, or to question the wisdom of the strategy, is to miss the point. There’s no strategy in play, just knee-jerk reflexes." Read Rubin's column here, or Graham's here.