“Donald Trump’s campaign paid more than $500,000 in August to companies the brash businessman owns,” the Huffington Post reports.

“The chief beneficiaries were Trump’s aviation company and his office headquarters in Manhattan: TAG Air was paid nearly $320,000 for operating the campaign jet and Trump Tower collected nearly $170,000 in rent for the month of August. Another $23,000 went to smaller Trump properties and businesses.”

Overall, Politico reports that Trump’s presidential campaign has paid his family’s businesses more than $8.2 million.

Here are the latest state polls from the presidential race:

North Carolina: Trump 45%, Clinton 43% (PPP)

New Hampshire: Clinton 47%, Trump 38% (Monmouth)

Wisconsin: Clinton 41%, Trump 38% (Marquette)

Nevada: Trump 42%, Clinton 40% (Insights West)

Arizona: Trump 37%, Clinton 33% (Insights West)

Ohio: Trump 42%, Clinton 37% (Fox)

North Carolina: Trump 45%, Clinton 40% (Fox)

Nevada: Trump 43%, Clinton 40% (Fox)

Vanity Fair has a must-read interview with President Obama conducted by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin:

OBAMA: I found during the course of my political career on the national scene…there’s a point where the vanity burns away and you’ve had your fill of your name in the papers, or big adoring crowds, or the exercise of power. And for me that happened fairly quickly. And then you are really focused on: What am I going to get done with this strange privilege that’s been granted to me? How do I make myself worthy of it?And if you don’t go through that, then you start getting into trouble, because then you’re just [gesturing, as if climbing a ladder] clinging to prerogatives and the power and the attention. There’s an expression that my daughters use: You get thirsty.

GOODWIN: And the thirst is unquenchable.

OBAMA: And the thirst is unquenchable. And that’s what you see, I think, sometimes with somebody like a Nixon—a brilliant person who, early on, had ambitions that probably were not that different from an F.D.R., certainly not that different from an L.B.J. But that thirst overwhelms everything, and you start making decisions based solely on that.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds Hillary Clinton is maintaining her edge over Donald Trump despite recent campaign setbacks, 43% to 37%.

Key finding: “Her ability to weather controversy and hold on to a polling lead has been bolstered by some of Mr. Trump’s weaknesses, the poll found. Mr. Trump is still viewed more negatively than she is, and he has struggled to reach beyond his core support among white voters who haven’t earned college degrees.”

A new Pew Research survey shows Clinton ahead 50% to 46%.

Politico: “Democrats have some advice for Hillary Clinton at her first presidential debate: Let Trump be Trump.”

“Donald Trump’s more tightly scripted campaign of late could backfire on him when he squares off against Clinton on Monday in Hempstead, New York, Democrats believe. He won’t be able to rely on the teleprompter he’s been using of late, they say, and Trump’s only recent extended interview with The Washington Post showed that, left to his own devices, he’s apt to stumble back into controversy on issues like Barack Obama’s birthplace.”

A new Military Times poll on military personnel shows Donald Trump barely edging Gary Johnson in the presidential race, 38% to 37%, with Hillary Clinton way back at 16%.

Key finding: “Perhaps most notably, there is a sharp split between enlisted personnel and the military’s officer corps, which directs day-to-day operations and implements policy. Among the officers surveyed, Johnson is the clear choice, commanding support from 38.6 percent of respondents.”

Jonathan Chait: “Suppose one decided to disregard the mountains of evidence against Trump — his racism, misogyny, bullying, love of dictators, fraudulent business practices, constant lies, complete ignorance of policy, etc. — and focus a comparison entirely on those grounds where Clinton herself is most vulnerable: disclosure and financial ties. Even in those areas, Trump’s misdeeds dwarf hers. His refusal to share his tax returns is without modern precedent. He has used his foundation for personal profit and political bribery. He has stated that if he were elected, his children would run his company, which is based mainly on licensing his name — a recipe for flamboyant corruption on the scale of post-Soviet kleptocracy. And yet the parallel scrutiny of both sides has yielded a portrait of two nominees who, from a hazy distance, seem flawed in roughly equal measure. Clinton’s net favorable rating (negative 15) is just a bit better than Trump’s (negative 20). In polls, she clings to a narrow lead.”

“The probably fortunate news is that there is a mechanism in place to prod the public into judging the candidates against each other: the presidential debates. In fact, they are likely the last chance to alter the trajectory of the campaign.”

A new Bloomberg Purple Slice poll shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump among likely voters earning more than $100,000 a year, 46% to 42%.

“The findings may sound an alarm for Trump because they show he’s failing, at least so far, to dominate among a group of voters who historically have supported Republicans, including Mitt Romney in 2012. In that election, the group made up 28 percent of the electorate and backed Romney over President Obama by 10 percentage points.”