How can you possibly equate the irrational, vindictive, negative, pathological lying of Trump with Harris (or any notable politician)? How can you equate Trump’s litany of wrongdoing and in particular his historically unique attempt to steal a presidential election with fraud, coercion, lying, and incitement with any other politician?
Reverse the labels with Kamala as the R and Trump as the D. Do you still see them as equivalent?
What is left for Trump to do to convince you that he is entirely unfit for office?
I am a registered Independent. I am not, nor have I been, a registered Republican for over 30 years so don't get your hopes up. I personally do not care for either of the two major parties. The problem is that nobody is allowed to dislike Biden or Harris and I certainly detest Waltz. If they do, they just have to be a RWNJ MAGA rat by default. No middle ground in your and other's minds. If that's not the case please tell me.
Because you just made a comment equating Harris with Trump.
I know that you are an independent and have never and will never vote for Trump. I suspect you would likely NOT vote for any D either. And that is fine too. Finally, not liking Harris or Trump is understandable and legit. I too can think of plenty of people I would prefer to be PotUS over Harris. But right now it is Harris or Trump and that means an individual at the right age, with her wits, sanity, etc. who will be presidential but with more liberal policies vs someone who should never be allowed to hold any public office much less the presidency.
To wit, to equate Harris with Trump is flat out incredible. Ergo my comment.
Trump’s laundry list of increasingly bizarre claims
Aaron Blake 10-12 minutes 8/12/2024
Donald Trump on Sunday claimed that a large gathering of plainly evident people who greeted Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally in a Detroit airport hangar “DIDN’T EXIST.”
“Nobody was there,” the former president claimed on Truth Social, accusing the Harris campaign of using artificial intelligence to superimpose the crowd both on the tarmac and at other rallies.
The rally was attended by reporters from The Washington Post and other outlets who observed the large crowd, which was estimated at around 15,000 people by local news outlet MLive . It was documented by plenty of video and photos, including those from many people in the crowd.
But it was merely the latest in a string of bizarre claims from the former president in recent days, weeks and months. It’s difficult to truly compare the relative ridiculousness of Trump’s claims over time, but there is no question he’s pushed the envelope in new and astonishing ways. Trump has often made false claims about crowd sizes, but this was truly taking things to a new level by claiming “nobody” was there.
Let’s recap 10 of the most recent examples.
1
Harris’s rally crowds ‘DIDN’T EXIST’ and ‘nobody was there’
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! … She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches.” ( Sunday on Truth Social )
This theory germinated after some conspiracy-minded Trump allies began analyzing the reflections on the underside of Harris’s airplane, which didn’t appear to show many people. As The Post’s Philip Bump notes , that’s in part because the plane was angled away from the crowd. But even aside from that, this rally was live-streamed and documented in real time by many people. The level of coordination and complicity in simulating a crowd across all of those accounts is too mind-boggling to consider.
And just to underscore: Trump didn’t merely say the crowd was augmented to appear bigger. He said it was wholly manufactured from “nobody.”
“ … Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.” ( May 21 on Truth Social )
“You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable … Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.” ( May 21 in a fundraising email )
This appeared to refer to newly unsealed documents from the August 2022 search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Policy language used for the search warrant stated that agents were allowed to use deadly force if they faced “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.” But that is standard language for such searches.
3
Democrats’ messaging is to blame for the assassination attempt on Trump
“Remember the words they use: ‘They are a threat to democracy.’ They’ve been saying that about me for seven years. I think I got shot because of that, okay?” ( Aug. 3 rally in Atlanta )
There remains no evidence that the July 13 shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, who wounded Trump in an assassination attempt, was incited by Democrats — much less their specific claims about Trump being a threat to democracy. Investigators are still searching for a motive , but Crooks was a registered Republican who once contributed $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project PAC. Beyond that, Trump has increasingly used the same “threat to democracy” attack against Democrats in recent weeks , despite its supposed incitement qualities.
“Does anybody really believe that Crooked Joe had Covid? No, he wanted to get out ever since June 27th, the night of The Debate, where he was completely obliterated.” ( July 21 on Truth Social )
There is zero evidence that Biden did not have covid. His doctor attested to it and described treatments Biden was receiving, and Biden’s campaign quickly canceled a planned event when it reported he had tested positive.
“Well, I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.” (Thursday news conference)
Brown, the former California state assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor, has firmly denied any such event. Nate Holden, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator who, like Brown, is Black, told Politico he was riding with Trump around 1990 when their helicopter almost crashed. But Trump has doubled down in claiming it was Brown. He claimed Friday in an angry phone call to the New York Times that he had flight records to back up his account, but his campaign hasn’t produced them .
6
Biden will try to reclaim the Democratic nomination
“What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden … CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE. He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!” ( Tuesday on Truth Social )
“I hear he’s going to make a comeback at the Democrat convention. He’s going to walk into the room, and he’s going to say, ‘I want my presidency back. I want another chance to debate Trump. I want another chance.’” ( Friday in Montana )
There is zero evidence of this, and you could certainly understand it as being the fantasy of a former president who has made clear he would prefer to still face Biden rather than Harris. Biden has also released his pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention next week, and the vast majority of them quickly pledged themselves to Harris . Trump’s comments actually came after Harris had officially secured the Democratic nomination in a virtual roll call vote.
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?” ( July 31 at the National Association of Black Journalists conference)
“From her standpoint, I think it’s very disrespectful to both, really. Whether it’s Indian or Black, I think it’s very disrespectful to both.” (Thursday news conference)
Harris’s late mother was from India, and her father is from Jamaica. Harris has long identified as both Indian American and Black, dating back decades , including in attending a historically Black college. Trump’s campaign has defended the comments by pointing to when Harris identified as Indian, as if she had to choose between the two.
“If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his [March on Washington] speech [in August 1963], his great speech, and you look at ours — same real estate, same everything — same number of people. If not, we had more.” (Thursday news conference)
As Bump noted last week, the National Park Service estimated that King’s speech drew around 250,000 people, and photographs and video of Jan. 6 make clear Trump’s wasn’t close . The House Jan. 6 committee estimated it around 53,000 .
9
Other countries are emptying their prisons and sending criminals to the United States
“The prison population all over the world is at the lowest point it’s been in many decades because they’re dumping their prisoners into our country.” ( March 4 in Richmond )
“Caracas, Venezuela, really a dangerous place. But not anymore, because in Venezuela, crime is down 72 percent. … They’re down because they’re sending their murderers to the United States of America. This is going to be very bad. And bad things are going to happen.” ( July 18 Republican National Convention speech )
“[Venezuela has] released tremendous numbers of criminals into our country. If you look at Caracas, it was known for being a very dangerous city. And now it’s very safe.” ( Aug. 5 interview with Adin Ross )
Trump has alluded to such an idea before, dating back to his 2015 campaign launch when he suggested Mexico was sending criminals across the border. But he’s greatly expanded such claims lately and is focusing on Venezuela. Immigration experts know of no such effort , whether from Venezuela or any other country. Crime has dropped in Venezuela in recent years, but not as substantially as Trump has claimed, and criminologists there attribute it to many other factors, according to PolitiFact .
10
Democrats want to allow killing babies after birth
“The problem they have is they’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth, after birth.” (June 27 debate with Biden)
“But previous to [Virginia Gov.] Glenn [Youngkin], the governor, he said, ‘The baby will be born. We will put the baby aside, and we will decide with the mother what we’re going to do.’ In other words, whether or not we’re going to kill the baby. The Minnesota gentleman [Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz], he — this guy agrees with that.” (Thursday news conference)
Seven years ago today, the torch-carrying white supremacists marched through Charlottesville shouting, “Jews will not replace us. Jews will not replace us,” over and over again.
Two days later, Donald Trump said the following in response to a reporter’s question, “But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. . . . You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down to them a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”
First of all, if you are protesting the fact that a city wants to change the name of a park from Robert E. Lee Park to something else, you are a terrible person. Either that or you are so ignorant of your country's history that you need to go back to school or at the very least pay attention to who it is you're listening to, who you’re choosing to align yourselves with. Robert E. Lee was, until recently, the greatest traitor to the United States. The only positive thing you could say about him is that he attacked us from the outside, unlike people like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, who continue to try to take us down from within.
Robert E. Lee was directly and indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths. The fact that he and Jefferson Davies, president of the Confederacy, weren’t hanged for treason is mind boggling. They fought a war against our country in order to ensure that rich white men would continue to have the right to own other human beings—to enslave them, to torture them, to rape them, to murder them—and suffered the most minimal of consequences.
“Jews will not replace us,” the white men screamed. What kind of broken, vile human being walks around in public and says those things? What kind of person believes it? It's a devastating commentary on how far we still have to go and it confirms the reality with which we still live that, in many ways, the South won the Civil War. People like Donald Trump want it to stay that way.
Democracy is on the line in this election but I keep hearing that that doesn’t resonate with a lot of people. Donald Trump is a fascist, but people don’t see the threat he poses. Instead, we need to mock him. I’ve been saying that for years—the best way to take him down, this man who thrives on, (and wouldn’t survive without) the adulation and subjugation of others, is to mock him relentlessly. Because he is a joke. But it’s not enough.
Thanks to his being empowered by a broken Republican Party, Donald is also extremely dangerous. I'm sorry if the threat of America's sliding into fascism isn't compelling enough for some people, but it’s a point that needs to be made—over and over and over again.
Maybe the problem is that so many things Donald says are offensive and un-American; so many of his actions and personal qualities render him unfit. So, let’s focus on one reason not to vote for him: At the Charlottesville rally, a man drove his car into a crowd of peaceful protestors injuring 35 people and killing Heather Heyer. She was 32 years old. Donald Trump aligns himself with the white supremacists who rallied that day in support of Robert E. Lee; he aligns himself with the kind of men who stormed our Capitol; he aligns himself with the kind of men who believe in the Lost Cause and the Great Replacement theory. He aligns himself with the kind of man who murdered Heather Heyer. That should be enough.
Trump is losing. Many hold the opinion that his recent heightened irrationality is a consequence of his desperation. I suspect the desperation you smell is very close to your political locale.
You deny that Trump is losing based on the polls (the only measure we have)?
You deny that many have opined that Trump's recent signs of desperation are based on the fact that he went from winning (per the polls) to losing (per the polls)?
You offer no facts, you deny actual facts, and then offer a feeble elementary school response pretending I was criticizing myself. ( "I know you are but what am I?" ).
In a small, 2,431 seat auditorium in Asheville, North Carolina, Donald Trump delivered what was billed as a major speech on the economy, but the event quickly devolved into a chaotic mix of grievances, personal attacks, and wild claims. The former president opened his remarks by heaping praise on North Carolina’s extremist Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, who is running for governor. Trump called Robinson a “good man,” glossing over Robinson’s long history of inflammatory and violent rhetoric. Robinson has previously claimed that “some folks need killing” when referring to political opponents, mocked gun violence survivors, and described LGBTQ+ people as "maggots" and "filth."
Trump’s speech quickly veered off-course as he launched into a rant about Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been gaining momentum in recent polls. “We have some very good polls coming out today I just heard despite all of this fake publicity about this radical left person from San Francisco,” Trump claimed, despite the fact that he has not led in any major poll in weeks. He dismissed Harris’ rising popularity, asserting, “I don't think she can possibly win. If she does, our country is finished.”
Trump seemed particularly agitated by Harris’ recent appearance on the cover of TIME magazine. “Now they are putting her on the covers of TIME Magazine with an artist sketch,” Trump fumed. “They don't use a picture. They don't use a picture, they use an artist sketch. I want to use that artist. I want to find that artist, I like him very much.”
This is not the first time Trump brought up Harris' cover. In a bizarre moment during his recent discussion with Elon Musk, Trump said he thought Harris resembled his wife, Melania. "She didn't look like Camilla [sic]," he said, slurring and adding, "but of course she's a beautiful woman."
Despite the event’s supposed focus on the economy, Trump appeared disinterested and out of his depth on the subject. “This is talking about a thing called the economy,” he rambled. “So we are doing this as an intellectual speech. You are all intellectuals today. Today we’re doing it. And we’re doing it right now.” But when he did attempt to discuss economic issues, he made puzzling remarks like, “They say the economy is the most important subject...I'm not so sure it is.”
At one point, Trump tried to take a swipe at Vice President Harris record on the U.S. economy, asking, “Why hasn't Kamala Harris brought back the jobs?” This is despite the fact that Trump left office with fewer jobs than when he entered, a first for any U.S. president since Herbert Hoover. In stark contrast, the Biden-Harris administration has added over 15 million jobs, and inflation recently fell below 3% for the first time in years.
Throughout the speech, Trump’s frustration was palpable. He took aim at Harris’ laugh, calling it “the laugh of a crazy person” and predicting that it would “come out” again. He also bizarrely claimed that Harris is attempting to abolish oil, despite U.S. oil production being at record highs under the Biden-Harris administration.
In an attempt to tout his foreign policy credentials, Trump bragged about his relationships with dictators like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un. “Putin respected us. President Xi of China respected us. Kim Jong-un of North Korea respected us,” Trump said, as if to suggest that these autocrats’ approval was a badge of honor.
The speech also included a confusing and inaccurate discussion of clean energy policies. Trump mocked Harris’ efforts to achieve net-zero emissions, saying, “You know what net zero -- they have no idea what it means by the way. Ask her what it means. We are going to go to a net zero policy. What does that mean? Uh, I have no idea.”
The former president also revisited familiar territory, predicting a 1929-style crash if Harris wins the presidency. It’s the same dire warning he gave about Joe Biden in 2020, a prediction that didn’t materialize as the U.S. economy has since experienced record job growth and stock market performance under Biden and Harris.
Trump also couldn’t resist taking a swipe at Harris’ choice for vice president, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. “The clown that she picked as a vice president, this guy is a clown. He was so bad,” Trump said, despite the fact that Walz is widely popular and was even praised by Trump himself during his presidency. Trump's selection of running mate, JD Vance, has proven to be extremely unpopular, with negative net favorability ratings and many comparing him to John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin in 2008.
Trump continued to ramble on incoherently about a variety of subjects, spewing lies about his disastrous record during the coronavirus pandemic, demeaning and threatening migrants with "mass deportation," and more.
In the end, what was supposed to be an economic address ended up being a disjointed and angry rant, filled with falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and personal attacks. If Trump’s goal was to reassure voters about his economic acumen, it’s safe to say he missed the mark.
but what is incredible is that by playing into peoples' what they wish were true, by lies and distortions, he somehow made his lies fly by for so many, it became Americas latest abortion, and a tough morning after pill to swallow what he has spit out, and the amount that have still amazes me, but hell, WTF would eye no a bout what i bare false witness to test a fye, cause inn know sentz isz wear i will re-main
I was talking about the observed behavior of Trump. His behavior is very predictable. The comedians love this clown. To do a good impression of Trump one need only move their hands back and forth horizontally and spit out cliches such as "never seen before" and "nobody knows better than me", etc.
Of course the psychological (and biological) reasons for his manifested behavior is complex. That is true of anyone. But the observable result of all that complexity is a predictable, simplistic clown.
Here is one when Trump was still in office. So many examples:
His daughter, Princess Mary, and Court Physicians Sir Henry Halford, David Dundas, and others kept detailed journals of the time in which the most powerful man in the world suffered from recurring bouts of mental illness.
Opinions vary widely on its exact origin and type, but the record of his slide from competence into long periods of insanity and delusion in which he raged, held conversations with “his imaginary company” of long-dead friends and family members, firmly believed various disasters had struck England, and lashed out, sometimes violently, at everyone around him.
The Royal Collections Trust has thousands of letters and documents from family, friends, doctors, and England’s political leadership related to what is popularly known in our era as The Madness of King George. (You're correct if you’re detecting another Rick Wilson Rabbit Hole.)
It was a problem the Royal Family and the British government vainly attempted to manage for decades. Still, it finally reached a point where the King’s decline was so marked and so permanent that his son, George IV, was declared Regent in the last decade of his reign.
The problem at the center of any monarchy was always this: if the King is there by the power of God, and if the King is mad, what can be done?
Source:
It’s time to talk about the Madness of King Donald.
The American media spent nearly 6 months in a feeding frenzy, unlike any other I’ve seen in my professional career, parsing every action word and step of Joe Biden and declaring his weakness, senility, and ill-health. They seized on his physical condition, his tentative walk, his voice growing more raspy and soft with age in hundreds of repetitive, breathless stories populated by anonymous concern trolls (always anonymous) whispering of his declining mental state, his faltering intellect, and his gaze turning toward the long night of death.
It was often one-sided and presented in an almost grotesque manner. Much of it followed the lead of The New York Times, whose coverage had all the hallmarks of senior editors (and a publisher pissed) off that Joe Biden wasn’t playing by their rules and had denied a sitdown interview.
One grim night in Atlanta ended Joe Biden‘s long and storied career.
Maybe it was time. Maybe it was unfair. Counterfactuals are to no avail.
But it happened, and Biden could not recover. He spent a few more weeks being relentlessly battered by the press and the Trump campaign. Through it all, Trump’s behavior seemed to get a treatment we’re accustomed to by now: “That’s just Trump being Trump.” “Everyone knows he’s crazy.” “It’s just his act.” The unspoken messages came through loud and clear: “ Now it’s a campaign” “This is fun!” and “We need access to Trump, so we have to roll with it.”
The grim, hard truth of the media’s double coverage standard has returned to roost on the storied tower of Mar-A-Lago like a diseased and hungry vulture. Biden’s departure broke the bothsides model’s back. If the old frame was “Old vs. Crazy,” the new frame would be "Crazy vs. Rising Star.”
And Crazy is having none of it.
The last three weeks have broken Trump’s already disturbed psyche. He cannot process the political reality that Kamala Harris is more popular, running a better campaign, raising more money, drawing much bigger crowds, moving the polls, and that the culture is swinging her way.
Trump‘s own quite obvious mental collapse is playing out in real time in front of our eyes. The news stories in the Times, Axios, and elsewhere in the past few days hit at the dysfunctional wetware between Trump’s ears, but even those are mediated by a degree of campaign spin.
To riff off the Simpson…the worst three weeks so far.
It goes on…and on…and on. Et tu, Rupert?
He’s in trouble. Nothing’s working. The moment he needs to settle down, he’s more manic than ever. More deranged. Throwing more bombs.
Do you want the pure, uncut, weapons-grade cray? Head over to Trash Social, Trump’s social media litter box, where his unhinged weekend accusations, including claiming Kamala Harris was faking her stacked-to-the-rafters with…wait for it…AI.
Oh, of course.
In the Year of Our Lord 2024 A.D., it’s perfectly plausible to believe that a major campaign rally for the Vice President of the United States of America would be faked, replaced by AI images and video. Dozens of members of the press pool were there. Thousands of event attendees posted contemporaneous photos and videos on social media. It was recorded and streamed by hundreds, if not thousands, of cameras.
This was a post by an insane person. There was no clever strategy, 47th-dimensional chess game, or droll trolling play.
It was, and he is, insane.
I’m told that word is fraught with politically incorrect baggage, but he’s insane. Mentally ill. Sick in the bone dome. Loco. Insane in the membrane.
This post sent ripples throughout the political ecosystem, on the left, right, and in the media this weekend. It was a stress test for the MAGA media faithful, knowing if they boosted it, they’d look like fools, and if they didn’t, they’d look like traitors.
Trump’s endless rantings, his alternating delusions of persecution and grandeur, his conversations with his own “imaginary company” of friends — Jim in Paris! Strong men with tears in their eyes! — are our own Madness of King Donald.
Almost every day in the last three weeks, America and, most importantly, America’s media class has been presented with Trump demonstrating behavior that is utterly disqualifying for the Presidency. In the event you’ve forgotten, it’s just our republic and representative democracy at stake. Oh, and to remind you, he’s asking to be put in charge of the nuclear arsenal, the entire military edifice, the Department of Justice, the IRS, and the intelligence agencies.
Would you let a person acting like Trump is acting use power tools, much less be President? I think not.
Any American family would recognize her as an elderly man no longer in touch with reality, incapable of managing the lives of himself or others, and deeply in need of mental health care.
And yet the enablers around him, the people who should be his caregivers, are all in for one last hustle, scam, and grab at power.
This weekend alone was a repugnant example of the grizzly choice Trump proposes upon Republicans. They remind me of competing siblings trying to stay in the good graces of a wealthy relative; Republicans are pretending everything is just fine and that Trump is normal, healthy, robust, and mentally present because the price of crossing him is excommunication and exile.
The deafening silence over Trump’s behavior reminds us of the fundamental rot inside the GOP. No one dares to go on the record. No one will say the emperor is buck naked and his nanoscale junk is swinging in the breeze. Not Mike Johnson. Not Mitch McConnell. Not any Governor. No media network in the MAGA system will tell Trump to shut up, leave the race, and get help.
If Joe Biden had at any point during his campaign claimed that Donald Trump was Photoshopping thousands of people into a rally that the mainstream media had covered with their own eyes and cameras, the Wall Street Journal , Washington Post , and New York Times ed boards would have called for him to leave the race, and rightly so.
Frank Rich called Trump’s rantings “Political suicide notes.” I couldn’t put it better myself. His press conference, his Truthings, and the rest of his capering like a lunatic means the vaunted reset, the new tone, and the better Trump are the same lies and bullshit they’ve always been.
Tonight, the mentally ill former President will appear on Twitter at 8 pm East Coast time. Anyone expecting a new tone or a serious conversation with the Ketamine Kid is in for a shock. It’s fine by me: Harris keeps working to connect with America, and Trump keeps giving us visions of the
Aging is a cruel and unrelenting process, and until we reach either the singularity and can upload our best selves into the cloud biology, medicine, genetic engineering, and a host of other technological innovations that lead us to the longevity extension velocity, we will have to face the end with resolution.
Trump, his family, his team, and his movement cannot and will not face the reality of his departed sanity. They don’t love him enough to tell him to stop.
Until they do, the Madness of King Donald will define this campaign.
P.S. If you’re interested in the George III story in full, pre-and post-madness — he was King during a tumultuous and consequential era that shaped the modern world — the best bio is Christopher Hibbert’s King George III, A Personal History is granular without being pedantic.
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Donald Trump sought Wednesday to recalibrate his presidential comeback bid with a North Carolina rally focused on the economy, but he struggled to stay focused on a topic that voters identify as a top concern.
Trump opened his speech with off-script attacks on the media and aired his grievances over the Democrats swapping Vice President Kamala Harris for President Joe Biden atop their ticket. He referred to San Francisco, where Ms. Harris was once the district attorney, as “unlivable” and went after his rival in deeply personal terms, questioning her intelligence and saying she has “the laugh of a crazy person.”
“You know why she hasn’t done an interview? She’s not smart. She’s not intelligent. And we’ve gone through enough of that with this guy, crooked Joe,” Trump said, using the nickname he often uses for Mr. Biden.
Trump said that his aides wanted him to focus on economic concerns but that he was “not sure” he agreed the economy is the most important issue of the election.
Trump spoke at Harrah’s Cherokee Center, an auditorium in downtown Asheville, with his podium flanked by more than a dozen American flags and custom backdrops that read: “No tax on Social Security” and “No tax on tips.”
Republicans had been looking for Trump to focus more on the economy than in the scattershot arguments and attacks he has made on Harris since Democrats elevated her as their presidential nominee. Twice in the past week, Trump has virtually bypassed such opportunities, first in an hourlong news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, then in a 2½-hour conversation on the social media platform X with CEO Elon Musk.
When he stayed on script Wednesday, Trump contrasted the current economy with his own presidency, asking, “Is anything less expensive under Kamala Harris and Crooked Joe?”
“Kamala has declared that tackling inflation will be a ‘Day One priority’ for her,” Trump said. "But Day One for Kamala was three and a half years ago. Why hasn’t she done it?”
Throughout his speech, Trump pingponged between his prepared remarks and familiar attacks — often deviating from the teleprompter in the middle of explaining a new economic promise when something triggered another thought. He ticked through prepared remarks crisply and quickly. The rest was his more wide-ranging style, punctuated with hand gestures and hyperbole.
More than once, he jumped from a policy contrast with Ms. Harris to taking another swipe at her home town of San Francisco. He also noted several times that it was Mr. Biden, not Ms. Harris, who earned votes from Democratic primary voters. During a section of his speech on energy, he slipped in an apparent dig at Hunter Biden, the president’s son. and his “laptop from hell.”
As soon as Trump had committed in his speech to slashing energy prices by “half, at least half” within 12 months or “a maximum of 18,” he hedged, seemingly off script: “If it doesn’t work out, you’ll say, oh well, I voted for him and he still got it down a lot.”
The latest attempt to reset his campaign comes in the state that delivered Trump his closest statewide margin of victory four years ago and that is once again expected to be a battleground in 2024. The question for the campaign is whether Trump can stick to a tight frame on the economy, especially to saddle Ms. Harris with the fallout of inflation, rather than default to his usual stemwinding and grievances.
The speech comes the same day that the Labor Department reported that year-over-year inflation reached its lowest level in more than three years in July, a potential boon for Ms. Harris in the face of Trump's attacks over inflation. Ms. Harris plans to be in North Carolina on Friday to release more details of her promise to make “building up the middle class ... a defining goal of my presidency.”
Trump pledged to sign an executive order directing Cabinet agencies to “use every tool and authority at their disposal” to bring down prices.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Americans are more likely to trust Trump over Ms. Harris when it comes to handling the economy, but the difference is slight — 45% for Trump and 38% for Ms. Harris.
Some voters who came to hear Trump said they were ready to hear him talk specifics on the economy, not because they don’t already trust him but because they want him to expand his appeal against Ms. Harris.
“He needs to tell people what he’s going to do, talk about the issues,” said Timothy Vath, a 55-year-old who drove from Greenville, S.C. “He did what he said he was going to do” in his initial term. “Talk about how he’d do that again.”
Mona Shope, a 60-year-old from nearby Candler, said Trump, despite his own wealth, “understands working people and wants what’s best for us.” A recent retiree from a public community college, Ms. Shope said she has a state pension but has picked up part-time work to mitigate against inflation. “It’s so I can still have vacations and spending money after paying my bills,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing left to save.”
In some of his off-script moments, Trump ventured into familiar misrepresentations of fact, including when he mocked wind energy by suggesting people would face power outages when the wind wasn’t blowing.
Trump has in recent weeks claimed that “you wouldn’t have had inflation” had he been reelected, ignoring the global supply chain interruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 spending boosts that included a massive aid package Trump signed as president, and the global energy price effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The former president has additionally promised an immediate fix to higher prices in another term. His principal policy proposals on that front are an uptick in drilling for oil (U.S. production has reached its highest levels ever under Mr. Biden), new tariffs on foreign imports, an extension of his 2017 tax cuts that are set to expire under the next administration, suspending taxes on income from tips and rolling back Biden-era investments in greener energy and infrastructure.
But at Mar-a-Lago, in his talk with Mr. Musk, on his own Truth Social platform and at his most recent rallies and other interviews, Trump has overshadowed his own economic agenda. He has falsely accused Ms. Harris of misrepresenting her own race and ethnicity. He has slipped back into old attacks on Mr. Biden and repeated the lie that his 2020 defeat was due to systemic voter fraud. Most recently, he's started lashing out over the size and enthusiasm of the crowds Ms. Harris is drawing on the campaign trail, even falsely claiming a photo of her rally was fabricated with AI.
Those factors have made it difficult for Trump to render a clearer policy contrast with the Democratic ticket, no matter how much his aides push the idea of such a reframing.
A Harris aide said Wednesday that the vice president welcomes any comparison Trump is able to make.
“No matter what he says, one thing is certain: Trump has no plan, no vision, and no meaningful interest in helping build up the middle class,” communications director Michael Tyler wrote in a campaign memo. Mr. Tyler pointed to the economic slowdown of the pandemic and 2017 tax cuts that were tilted to corporations and wealthy individual households, and predicted Trump’s proposals on trade, taxation and reversing Biden-era policies would “send inflation skyrocketing and cost our economy millions of jobs — all to benefit the ultra-wealthy and special interests.”
Trump veers off message again in North Carolina: Do voters care about economy or about Harris' laugh?
Donald Trump really just told a crowd in North Carolina that “America is literally a third-world country.” What the hell? He really thinks we all suck. America is the greatest country on Earth! Don’t listen to this old miserable grumpy man.
cause Trump becoming unhinged as he begins to ever increasingly slowly shut the door that will wind up slammed even more expeditiously, as he becomes ever so more evidently unhinged and in a jamb without a knob to turn back the time, and he will soon find himself locked out and in the middle of a terrible storm, all alone in a small boat, getting tossed around like a gimp without a pimp, sorta reminiscent of Nanew Nanew man Robin Williams when called out by Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting , Deer John letters making senternces that described his horrible ordeal as he was lost and alone after his wife passed, gas
lighting the way, I be leave Robin did indeed say, so
for Trump, his demise and complete collapsem then hopefully an incessant never ending repeat and relapsem, is so long overdue for this country, and all thanks to power hungry and DUWI Driven Republican Dix, who could have easily done the right thing and impeached the creep, instead, they now must sow watt they reap
always liked antDotW, and a better answer than I would have chosen, but thats cause my heart is frozen to the polls like a tongue out of cheek asz it tears that fleash that rips hard and deep to ones heart, but, I didn't see, in time, cause, like Ralphy, I shot my ii's out , kidd in till goated on T ball pitchers Kool Aide that smashed through the wall that Mexico paid to have built, up, the expectations, all to like the wall, never developed a like in, so dislike yourself out the left open barn door for those found in stable, due to golden showered corralled coral reefered two asz spawning Samon bare backed while mountain the shirtless Russian won out over our Gomer Pile of Gump in the Dark Forrest ridden hard and put a way moist and damp like a Trumped up tramp stamp that letters can't spell or send, cause letters only spell what spawning Samoin are urning to swim in the deep with the predators that reap what Death does unfortunately one day promise to deliver with sautéed onions of layers that appeal to those that wood tear the tears down the cheek of unfaced crime, for when given the time, Trump could maybe realize that he is not as fine as the course he taught in culture like a vulture circlig around one, Biden his time to head to pasture, imprisoned with the wrongs written by 45 the disaster, that convincingly showed US ALL which of the two very imperfect party's was the bigger Sir Prize to see fight the truth and all that alternate truths where they lies, from the tablecloth or the stereo type, theirs are the reasons the world was so ripe, to be so easily fed a discourse where there is such a long chronologically inappropriate increment where proximity and fate decide as of late, who arrived first and foremost the second a third quarter increased the half dollar holler from allowed, to ALOUD and shout till you hear that dollar make you holler back to the snack pack of hour youth before we lost the cavity, tha t is now a tooth, blew for all the wrong reasons...
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
All of these bizarre claims have been made in the past few weeks.
I ask myself the same question about Kamala Harris every day.
How can you possibly equate the irrational, vindictive, negative, pathological lying of Trump with Harris (or any notable politician)? How can you equate Trump’s litany of wrongdoing and in particular his historically unique attempt to steal a presidential election with fraud, coercion, lying, and incitement with any other politician?
Reverse the labels with Kamala as the R and Trump as the D. Do you still see them as equivalent?
What is left for Trump to do to convince you that he is entirely unfit for office?
You do? Do you have a similarly long list of absurd claims made by her?
He would have to say he was leaving the Republican Party and becoming a Democrat for that to happen.
I am on record numerous times on NT as having said Trump is not fit for office and you know that. So why are you even asking me that?
I am a registered Independent. I am not, nor have I been, a registered Republican for over 30 years so don't get your hopes up. I personally do not care for either of the two major parties. The problem is that nobody is allowed to dislike Biden or Harris and I certainly detest Waltz. If they do, they just have to be a RWNJ MAGA rat by default. No middle ground in your and other's minds. If that's not the case please tell me.
Because you just made a comment equating Harris with Trump.
I know that you are an independent and have never and will never vote for Trump. I suspect you would likely NOT vote for any D either. And that is fine too. Finally, not liking Harris or Trump is understandable and legit. I too can think of plenty of people I would prefer to be PotUS over Harris. But right now it is Harris or Trump and that means an individual at the right age, with her wits, sanity, etc. who will be presidential but with more liberal policies vs someone who should never be allowed to hold any public office much less the presidency.
To wit, to equate Harris with Trump is flat out incredible. Ergo my comment.
Why would you ask that question? What bizarre claims?
I'm curious why you detest Walz?
I was referring to the title of the article. I do not think Harris should be president of this country.
www.washingtonpost.com /politics/2024/08/12/trump-crowd-size-false-claims/
Trump’s laundry list of increasingly bizarre claims
Aaron Blake 10-12 minutes 8/12/2024
Donald Trump on Sunday claimed that a large gathering of plainly evident people who greeted Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally in a Detroit airport hangar “DIDN’T EXIST.”
“Nobody was there,” the former president claimed on Truth Social, accusing the Harris campaign of using artificial intelligence to superimpose the crowd both on the tarmac and at other rallies.
The rally was attended by reporters from The Washington Post and other outlets who observed the large crowd, which was estimated at around 15,000 people by local news outlet MLive . It was documented by plenty of video and photos, including those from many people in the crowd.
But it was merely the latest in a string of bizarre claims from the former president in recent days, weeks and months. It’s difficult to truly compare the relative ridiculousness of Trump’s claims over time, but there is no question he’s pushed the envelope in new and astonishing ways. Trump has often made false claims about crowd sizes, but this was truly taking things to a new level by claiming “nobody” was there.
Let’s recap 10 of the most recent examples.
1
Harris’s rally crowds ‘DIDN’T EXIST’ and ‘nobody was there’
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“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! … She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches.” ( Sunday on Truth Social )
“Look, we caught her with a fake ‘crowd.’ There was nobody there!” ( later Sunday on Truth Social )
This theory germinated after some conspiracy-minded Trump allies began analyzing the reflections on the underside of Harris’s airplane, which didn’t appear to show many people. As The Post’s Philip Bump notes , that’s in part because the plane was angled away from the crowd. But even aside from that, this rally was live-streamed and documented in real time by many people. The level of coordination and complicity in simulating a crowd across all of those accounts is too mind-boggling to consider.
And just to underscore: Trump didn’t merely say the crowd was augmented to appear bigger. He said it was wholly manufactured from “nobody.”
2
Biden prepared to have the FBI assassinate Trump
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“ … Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.” ( May 21 on Truth Social )
“You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable … Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.” ( May 21 in a fundraising email )
This appeared to refer to newly unsealed documents from the August 2022 search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Policy language used for the search warrant stated that agents were allowed to use deadly force if they faced “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.” But that is standard language for such searches.
3
Democrats’ messaging is to blame for the assassination attempt on Trump
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“Remember the words they use: ‘They are a threat to democracy.’ They’ve been saying that about me for seven years. I think I got shot because of that, okay?” ( Aug. 3 rally in Atlanta )
There remains no evidence that the July 13 shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, who wounded Trump in an assassination attempt, was incited by Democrats — much less their specific claims about Trump being a threat to democracy. Investigators are still searching for a motive , but Crooks was a registered Republican who once contributed $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project PAC. Beyond that, Trump has increasingly used the same “threat to democracy” attack against Democrats in recent weeks , despite its supposed incitement qualities.
4
Biden faked covid
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“Does anybody really believe that Crooked Joe had Covid? No, he wanted to get out ever since June 27th, the night of The Debate, where he was completely obliterated.” ( July 21 on Truth Social )
“Biden never had Covid. He is a threat to Democracy!” ( July 21 on Truth Social )
There is zero evidence that Biden did not have covid. His doctor attested to it and described treatments Biden was receiving, and Biden’s campaign quickly canceled a planned event when it reported he had tested positive.
5
Trump went down in a helicopter with Willie Brown
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“Well, I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.” (Thursday news conference)
Brown, the former California state assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor, has firmly denied any such event. Nate Holden, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator who, like Brown, is Black, told Politico he was riding with Trump around 1990 when their helicopter almost crashed. But Trump has doubled down in claiming it was Brown. He claimed Friday in an angry phone call to the New York Times that he had flight records to back up his account, but his campaign hasn’t produced them .
6
Biden will try to reclaim the Democratic nomination
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“What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden … CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE. He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!” ( Tuesday on Truth Social )
“I hear he’s going to make a comeback at the Democrat convention. He’s going to walk into the room, and he’s going to say, ‘I want my presidency back. I want another chance to debate Trump. I want another chance.’” ( Friday in Montana )
There is zero evidence of this, and you could certainly understand it as being the fantasy of a former president who has made clear he would prefer to still face Biden rather than Harris. Biden has also released his pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention next week, and the vast majority of them quickly pledged themselves to Harris . Trump’s comments actually came after Harris had officially secured the Democratic nomination in a virtual roll call vote.
7
Harris only recently identified as Black
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“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?” ( July 31 at the National Association of Black Journalists conference)
“From her standpoint, I think it’s very disrespectful to both, really. Whether it’s Indian or Black, I think it’s very disrespectful to both.” (Thursday news conference)
Harris’s late mother was from India, and her father is from Jamaica. Harris has long identified as both Indian American and Black, dating back decades , including in attending a historically Black college. Trump’s campaign has defended the comments by pointing to when Harris identified as Indian, as if she had to choose between the two.
8
Trump’s Jan. 6 crowd was bigger than MLK’s
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“If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his [March on Washington] speech [in August 1963], his great speech, and you look at ours — same real estate, same everything — same number of people. If not, we had more.” (Thursday news conference)
As Bump noted last week, the National Park Service estimated that King’s speech drew around 250,000 people, and photographs and video of Jan. 6 make clear Trump’s wasn’t close . The House Jan. 6 committee estimated it around 53,000 .
9
Other countries are emptying their prisons and sending criminals to the United States
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“The prison population all over the world is at the lowest point it’s been in many decades because they’re dumping their prisoners into our country.” ( March 4 in Richmond )
“Caracas, Venezuela, really a dangerous place. But not anymore, because in Venezuela, crime is down 72 percent. … They’re down because they’re sending their murderers to the United States of America. This is going to be very bad. And bad things are going to happen.” ( July 18 Republican National Convention speech )
“[Venezuela has] released tremendous numbers of criminals into our country. If you look at Caracas, it was known for being a very dangerous city. And now it’s very safe.” ( Aug. 5 interview with Adin Ross )
Trump has alluded to such an idea before, dating back to his 2015 campaign launch when he suggested Mexico was sending criminals across the border. But he’s greatly expanded such claims lately and is focusing on Venezuela. Immigration experts know of no such effort , whether from Venezuela or any other country. Crime has dropped in Venezuela in recent years, but not as substantially as Trump has claimed, and criminologists there attribute it to many other factors, according to PolitiFact .
10
Democrats want to allow killing babies after birth
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“The problem they have is they’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth, after birth.” (June 27 debate with Biden)
“But previous to [Virginia Gov.] Glenn [Youngkin], the governor, he said, ‘The baby will be born. We will put the baby aside, and we will decide with the mother what we’re going to do.’ In other words, whether or not we’re going to kill the baby. The Minnesota gentleman [Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz], he — this guy agrees with that.” (Thursday news conference)
This is another claim that isn’t exactly new but that Trump has increasingly stretched beyond the standard Republican talking point — particularly as the abortion issue has become a liability for the GOP. It traces back to inartful comments made by then-Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D) in 2019. Infanticide is not legal in any state, nor have any well-known Democrats actually pushed for it .
Seven years ago today, the torch-carrying white supremacists marched through Charlottesville shouting, “Jews will not replace us. Jews will not replace us,” over and over again.
Two days later, Donald Trump said the following in response to a reporter’s question, “But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. . . . You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down to them a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”
First of all, if you are protesting the fact that a city wants to change the name of a park from Robert E. Lee Park to something else, you are a terrible person. Either that or you are so ignorant of your country's history that you need to go back to school or at the very least pay attention to who it is you're listening to, who you’re choosing to align yourselves with. Robert E. Lee was, until recently, the greatest traitor to the United States. The only positive thing you could say about him is that he attacked us from the outside, unlike people like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, who continue to try to take us down from within.
Robert E. Lee was directly and indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths. The fact that he and Jefferson Davies, president of the Confederacy, weren’t hanged for treason is mind boggling. They fought a war against our country in order to ensure that rich white men would continue to have the right to own other human beings—to enslave them, to torture them, to rape them, to murder them—and suffered the most minimal of consequences.
“Jews will not replace us,” the white men screamed. What kind of broken, vile human being walks around in public and says those things? What kind of person believes it? It's a devastating commentary on how far we still have to go and it confirms the reality with which we still live that, in many ways, the South won the Civil War. People like Donald Trump want it to stay that way.
Democracy is on the line in this election but I keep hearing that that doesn’t resonate with a lot of people. Donald Trump is a fascist, but people don’t see the threat he poses. Instead, we need to mock him. I’ve been saying that for years—the best way to take him down, this man who thrives on, (and wouldn’t survive without) the adulation and subjugation of others, is to mock him relentlessly. Because he is a joke. But it’s not enough.
Thanks to his being empowered by a broken Republican Party, Donald is also extremely dangerous. I'm sorry if the threat of America's sliding into fascism isn't compelling enough for some people, but it’s a point that needs to be made—over and over and over again.
Maybe the problem is that so many things Donald says are offensive and un-American; so many of his actions and personal qualities render him unfit. So, let’s focus on one reason not to vote for him: At the Charlottesville rally, a man drove his car into a crowd of peaceful protestors injuring 35 people and killing Heather Heyer. She was 32 years old. Donald Trump aligns himself with the white supremacists who rallied that day in support of Robert E. Lee; he aligns himself with the kind of men who stormed our Capitol; he aligns himself with the kind of men who believe in the Lost Cause and the Great Replacement theory. He aligns himself with the kind of man who murdered Heather Heyer. That should be enough.
It smells like desperation here.
Trump is losing. Many hold the opinion that his recent heightened irrationality is a consequence of his desperation. I suspect the desperation you smell is very close to your political locale.
And you would be wrong,
Another mere claim with no supporting argument.
You are 100% correct, you made a claim without any basis in fact. Make a serious comment.
You deny that Trump is losing based on the polls (the only measure we have)?
You deny that many have opined that Trump's recent signs of desperation are based on the fact that he went from winning (per the polls) to losing (per the polls)?
You offer no facts, you deny actual facts, and then offer a feeble elementary school response pretending I was criticizing myself. ( "I know you are but what am I?" ).
This is incredible. He is turning his back on his parties leaders advice.
Trump Kicks Off Angry ‘Economic-Themed’ Speech by Complaining about Kamala Harris’ TIME Magazine Cover
In a small, 2,431 seat auditorium in Asheville, North Carolina, Donald Trump delivered what was billed as a major speech on the economy, but the event quickly devolved into a chaotic mix of grievances, personal attacks, and wild claims. The former president opened his remarks by heaping praise on North Carolina’s extremist Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, who is running for governor. Trump called Robinson a “good man,” glossing over Robinson’s long history of inflammatory and violent rhetoric. Robinson has previously claimed that “some folks need killing” when referring to political opponents, mocked gun violence survivors, and described LGBTQ+ people as "maggots" and "filth."
Trump’s speech quickly veered off-course as he launched into a rant about Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been gaining momentum in recent polls. “We have some very good polls coming out today I just heard despite all of this fake publicity about this radical left person from San Francisco,” Trump claimed, despite the fact that he has not led in any major poll in weeks. He dismissed Harris’ rising popularity, asserting, “I don't think she can possibly win. If she does, our country is finished.”
Trump seemed particularly agitated by Harris’ recent appearance on the cover of TIME magazine. “Now they are putting her on the covers of TIME Magazine with an artist sketch,” Trump fumed. “They don't use a picture. They don't use a picture, they use an artist sketch. I want to use that artist. I want to find that artist, I like him very much.”
This is not the first time Trump brought up Harris' cover. In a bizarre moment during his recent discussion with Elon Musk, Trump said he thought Harris resembled his wife, Melania. "She didn't look like Camilla [sic]," he said, slurring and adding, "but of course she's a beautiful woman."
Despite the event’s supposed focus on the economy, Trump appeared disinterested and out of his depth on the subject. “This is talking about a thing called the economy,” he rambled. “So we are doing this as an intellectual speech. You are all intellectuals today. Today we’re doing it. And we’re doing it right now.” But when he did attempt to discuss economic issues, he made puzzling remarks like, “They say the economy is the most important subject...I'm not so sure it is.”
At one point, Trump tried to take a swipe at Vice President Harris record on the U.S. economy, asking, “Why hasn't Kamala Harris brought back the jobs?” This is despite the fact that Trump left office with fewer jobs than when he entered, a first for any U.S. president since Herbert Hoover. In stark contrast, the Biden-Harris administration has added over 15 million jobs, and inflation recently fell below 3% for the first time in years.
Throughout the speech, Trump’s frustration was palpable. He took aim at Harris’ laugh, calling it “the laugh of a crazy person” and predicting that it would “come out” again. He also bizarrely claimed that Harris is attempting to abolish oil, despite U.S. oil production being at record highs under the Biden-Harris administration.
In an attempt to tout his foreign policy credentials, Trump bragged about his relationships with dictators like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un. “Putin respected us. President Xi of China respected us. Kim Jong-un of North Korea respected us,” Trump said, as if to suggest that these autocrats’ approval was a badge of honor.
The speech also included a confusing and inaccurate discussion of clean energy policies. Trump mocked Harris’ efforts to achieve net-zero emissions, saying, “You know what net zero -- they have no idea what it means by the way. Ask her what it means. We are going to go to a net zero policy. What does that mean? Uh, I have no idea.”
The former president also revisited familiar territory, predicting a 1929-style crash if Harris wins the presidency. It’s the same dire warning he gave about Joe Biden in 2020, a prediction that didn’t materialize as the U.S. economy has since experienced record job growth and stock market performance under Biden and Harris.
Trump also couldn’t resist taking a swipe at Harris’ choice for vice president, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. “The clown that she picked as a vice president, this guy is a clown. He was so bad,” Trump said, despite the fact that Walz is widely popular and was even praised by Trump himself during his presidency. Trump's selection of running mate, JD Vance, has proven to be extremely unpopular, with negative net favorability ratings and many comparing him to John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin in 2008.
Trump continued to ramble on incoherently about a variety of subjects, spewing lies about his disastrous record during the coronavirus pandemic, demeaning and threatening migrants with "mass deportation," and more.
In the end, what was supposed to be an economic address ended up being a disjointed and angry rant, filled with falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and personal attacks. If Trump’s goal was to reassure voters about his economic acumen, it’s safe to say he missed the mark.
I don’t find it incredibly, I find it very Trumpian.
Trump is, when all is said and done, a very predictable, simplistic individual.
but what is incredible is that by playing into peoples' what they wish were true, by lies and distortions, he somehow made his lies fly by for so many, it became Americas latest abortion, and a tough morning after pill to swallow what he has spit out, and the amount that have still amazes me, but hell, WTF would eye no a bout what i bare false witness to test a fye, cause inn know sentz isz wear i will re-main
I’m no doctor, but I wouldn’t call his pathology “simple”.
I was talking about the observed behavior of Trump. His behavior is very predictable. The comedians love this clown. To do a good impression of Trump one need only move their hands back and forth horizontally and spit out cliches such as "never seen before" and "nobody knows better than me", etc.
Of course the psychological (and biological) reasons for his manifested behavior is complex. That is true of anyone. But the observable result of all that complexity is a predictable, simplistic clown.
Here is one when Trump was still in office. So many examples:
King George III was not well.
His daughter, Princess Mary, and Court Physicians Sir Henry Halford, David Dundas, and others kept detailed journals of the time in which the most powerful man in the world suffered from recurring bouts of mental illness.
Opinions vary widely on its exact origin and type, but the record of his slide from competence into long periods of insanity and delusion in which he raged, held conversations with “his imaginary company” of long-dead friends and family members, firmly believed various disasters had struck England, and lashed out, sometimes violently, at everyone around him.
The Royal Collections Trust has thousands of letters and documents from family, friends, doctors, and England’s political leadership related to what is popularly known in our era as The Madness of King George. (You're correct if you’re detecting another Rick Wilson Rabbit Hole.)
It was a problem the Royal Family and the British government vainly attempted to manage for decades. Still, it finally reached a point where the King’s decline was so marked and so permanent that his son, George IV, was declared Regent in the last decade of his reign.
The problem at the center of any monarchy was always this: if the King is there by the power of God, and if the King is mad, what can be done?
It’s time to talk about the Madness of King Donald.
The American media spent nearly 6 months in a feeding frenzy, unlike any other I’ve seen in my professional career, parsing every action word and step of Joe Biden and declaring his weakness, senility, and ill-health. They seized on his physical condition, his tentative walk, his voice growing more raspy and soft with age in hundreds of repetitive, breathless stories populated by anonymous concern trolls (always anonymous) whispering of his declining mental state, his faltering intellect, and his gaze turning toward the long night of death.
It was often one-sided and presented in an almost grotesque manner. Much of it followed the lead of The New York Times, whose coverage had all the hallmarks of senior editors (and a publisher pissed) off that Joe Biden wasn’t playing by their rules and had denied a sitdown interview.
One grim night in Atlanta ended Joe Biden‘s long and storied career.
Maybe it was time. Maybe it was unfair. Counterfactuals are to no avail.
But it happened, and Biden could not recover. He spent a few more weeks being relentlessly battered by the press and the Trump campaign. Through it all, Trump’s behavior seemed to get a treatment we’re accustomed to by now: “That’s just Trump being Trump.” “Everyone knows he’s crazy.” “It’s just his act.” The unspoken messages came through loud and clear: “ Now it’s a campaign” “This is fun!” and “We need access to Trump, so we have to roll with it.”
The grim, hard truth of the media’s double coverage standard has returned to roost on the storied tower of Mar-A-Lago like a diseased and hungry vulture. Biden’s departure broke the bothsides model’s back. If the old frame was “Old vs. Crazy,” the new frame would be "Crazy vs. Rising Star.”
And Crazy is having none of it.
The last three weeks have broken Trump’s already disturbed psyche. He cannot process the political reality that Kamala Harris is more popular, running a better campaign, raising more money, drawing much bigger crowds, moving the polls, and that the culture is swinging her way.
Trump‘s own quite obvious mental collapse is playing out in real time in front of our eyes. The news stories in the Times, Axios, and elsewhere in the past few days hit at the dysfunctional wetware between Trump’s ears, but even those are mediated by a degree of campaign spin.
First, this piece :
To riff off the Simpson…the worst three weeks so far.
It goes on…and on…and on. Et tu, Rupert?
He’s in trouble. Nothing’s working. The moment he needs to settle down, he’s more manic than ever. More deranged. Throwing more bombs.
Do you want the pure, uncut, weapons-grade cray? Head over to Trash Social, Trump’s social media litter box, where his unhinged weekend accusations, including claiming Kamala Harris was faking her stacked-to-the-rafters with…wait for it…AI.
Oh, of course.
In the Year of Our Lord 2024 A.D., it’s perfectly plausible to believe that a major campaign rally for the Vice President of the United States of America would be faked, replaced by AI images and video. Dozens of members of the press pool were there. Thousands of event attendees posted contemporaneous photos and videos on social media. It was recorded and streamed by hundreds, if not thousands, of cameras.
This was a post by an insane person. There was no clever strategy, 47th-dimensional chess game, or droll trolling play.
It was, and he is, insane.
I’m told that word is fraught with politically incorrect baggage, but he’s insane. Mentally ill. Sick in the bone dome. Loco. Insane in the membrane.
This post sent ripples throughout the political ecosystem, on the left, right, and in the media this weekend. It was a stress test for the MAGA media faithful, knowing if they boosted it, they’d look like fools, and if they didn’t, they’d look like traitors.
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All the more anodyne if accurate headlines fall far short of rivaling the best. Matt Novak at Gizmodo hit the headline jackpot:
Pathetic Old Man Claims Crowd at Kamala Harris Rally Was Made With AI Trump's conspiracy theories keep getting weirder as the latest polls show him losing to Kamala Harris.
Trump’s endless rantings, his alternating delusions of persecution and grandeur, his conversations with his own “imaginary company” of friends — Jim in Paris! Strong men with tears in their eyes! — are our own Madness of King Donald.
Almost every day in the last three weeks, America and, most importantly, America’s media class has been presented with Trump demonstrating behavior that is utterly disqualifying for the Presidency. In the event you’ve forgotten, it’s just our republic and representative democracy at stake. Oh, and to remind you, he’s asking to be put in charge of the nuclear arsenal, the entire military edifice, the Department of Justice, the IRS, and the intelligence agencies.
Would you let a person acting like Trump is acting use power tools, much less be President? I think not.
Any American family would recognize her as an elderly man no longer in touch with reality, incapable of managing the lives of himself or others, and deeply in need of mental health care.
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And yet the enablers around him, the people who should be his caregivers, are all in for one last hustle, scam, and grab at power.
This weekend alone was a repugnant example of the grizzly choice Trump proposes upon Republicans. They remind me of competing siblings trying to stay in the good graces of a wealthy relative; Republicans are pretending everything is just fine and that Trump is normal, healthy, robust, and mentally present because the price of crossing him is excommunication and exile.
The deafening silence over Trump’s behavior reminds us of the fundamental rot inside the GOP. No one dares to go on the record. No one will say the emperor is buck naked and his nanoscale junk is swinging in the breeze. Not Mike Johnson. Not Mitch McConnell. Not any Governor. No media network in the MAGA system will tell Trump to shut up, leave the race, and get help.
If Joe Biden had at any point during his campaign claimed that Donald Trump was Photoshopping thousands of people into a rally that the mainstream media had covered with their own eyes and cameras, the Wall Street Journal , Washington Post , and New York Times ed boards would have called for him to leave the race, and rightly so.
Frank Rich called Trump’s rantings “Political suicide notes.” I couldn’t put it better myself. His press conference, his Truthings, and the rest of his capering like a lunatic means the vaunted reset, the new tone, and the better Trump are the same lies and bullshit they’ve always been.
Tonight, the mentally ill former President will appear on Twitter at 8 pm East Coast time. Anyone expecting a new tone or a serious conversation with the Ketamine Kid is in for a shock. It’s fine by me: Harris keeps working to connect with America, and Trump keeps giving us visions of the
Aging is a cruel and unrelenting process, and until we reach either the singularity and can upload our best selves into the cloud biology, medicine, genetic engineering, and a host of other technological innovations that lead us to the longevity extension velocity, we will have to face the end with resolution.
Trump, his family, his team, and his movement cannot and will not face the reality of his departed sanity. They don’t love him enough to tell him to stop.
Until they do, the Madness of King Donald will define this campaign.
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P.S. If you’re interested in the George III story in full, pre-and post-madness — he was King during a tumultuous and consequential era that shaped the modern world — the best bio is Christopher Hibbert’s King George III, A Personal History is granular without being pedantic.
Trump veers off message again in North Carolina: Do voters care about economy or about Harris' laugh? (msn.com)
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Donald Trump sought Wednesday to recalibrate his presidential comeback bid with a North Carolina rally focused on the economy, but he struggled to stay focused on a topic that voters identify as a top concern.
Trump opened his speech with off-script attacks on the media and aired his grievances over the Democrats swapping Vice President Kamala Harris for President Joe Biden atop their ticket. He referred to San Francisco, where Ms. Harris was once the district attorney, as “unlivable” and went after his rival in deeply personal terms, questioning her intelligence and saying she has “the laugh of a crazy person.”
“You know why she hasn’t done an interview? She’s not smart. She’s not intelligent. And we’ve gone through enough of that with this guy, crooked Joe,” Trump said, using the nickname he often uses for Mr. Biden.
Trump said that his aides wanted him to focus on economic concerns but that he was “not sure” he agreed the economy is the most important issue of the election.
Trump spoke at Harrah’s Cherokee Center, an auditorium in downtown Asheville, with his podium flanked by more than a dozen American flags and custom backdrops that read: “No tax on Social Security” and “No tax on tips.”
Republicans had been looking for Trump to focus more on the economy than in the scattershot arguments and attacks he has made on Harris since Democrats elevated her as their presidential nominee. Twice in the past week, Trump has virtually bypassed such opportunities, first in an hourlong news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, then in a 2½-hour conversation on the social media platform X with CEO Elon Musk.
When he stayed on script Wednesday, Trump contrasted the current economy with his own presidency, asking, “Is anything less expensive under Kamala Harris and Crooked Joe?”
“Kamala has declared that tackling inflation will be a ‘Day One priority’ for her,” Trump said. "But Day One for Kamala was three and a half years ago. Why hasn’t she done it?”
Throughout his speech, Trump pingponged between his prepared remarks and familiar attacks — often deviating from the teleprompter in the middle of explaining a new economic promise when something triggered another thought. He ticked through prepared remarks crisply and quickly. The rest was his more wide-ranging style, punctuated with hand gestures and hyperbole.
More than once, he jumped from a policy contrast with Ms. Harris to taking another swipe at her home town of San Francisco. He also noted several times that it was Mr. Biden, not Ms. Harris, who earned votes from Democratic primary voters. During a section of his speech on energy, he slipped in an apparent dig at Hunter Biden, the president’s son. and his “laptop from hell.”
As soon as Trump had committed in his speech to slashing energy prices by “half, at least half” within 12 months or “a maximum of 18,” he hedged, seemingly off script: “If it doesn’t work out, you’ll say, oh well, I voted for him and he still got it down a lot.”
The latest attempt to reset his campaign comes in the state that delivered Trump his closest statewide margin of victory four years ago and that is once again expected to be a battleground in 2024. The question for the campaign is whether Trump can stick to a tight frame on the economy, especially to saddle Ms. Harris with the fallout of inflation, rather than default to his usual stemwinding and grievances.
The speech comes the same day that the Labor Department reported that year-over-year inflation reached its lowest level in more than three years in July, a potential boon for Ms. Harris in the face of Trump's attacks over inflation. Ms. Harris plans to be in North Carolina on Friday to release more details of her promise to make “building up the middle class ... a defining goal of my presidency.”
Trump pledged to sign an executive order directing Cabinet agencies to “use every tool and authority at their disposal” to bring down prices.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Americans are more likely to trust Trump over Ms. Harris when it comes to handling the economy, but the difference is slight — 45% for Trump and 38% for Ms. Harris.
Some voters who came to hear Trump said they were ready to hear him talk specifics on the economy, not because they don’t already trust him but because they want him to expand his appeal against Ms. Harris.
“He needs to tell people what he’s going to do, talk about the issues,” said Timothy Vath, a 55-year-old who drove from Greenville, S.C. “He did what he said he was going to do” in his initial term. “Talk about how he’d do that again.”
Mona Shope, a 60-year-old from nearby Candler, said Trump, despite his own wealth, “understands working people and wants what’s best for us.” A recent retiree from a public community college, Ms. Shope said she has a state pension but has picked up part-time work to mitigate against inflation. “It’s so I can still have vacations and spending money after paying my bills,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing left to save.”
In some of his off-script moments, Trump ventured into familiar misrepresentations of fact, including when he mocked wind energy by suggesting people would face power outages when the wind wasn’t blowing.
Trump has in recent weeks claimed that “you wouldn’t have had inflation” had he been reelected, ignoring the global supply chain interruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 spending boosts that included a massive aid package Trump signed as president, and the global energy price effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The former president has additionally promised an immediate fix to higher prices in another term. His principal policy proposals on that front are an uptick in drilling for oil (U.S. production has reached its highest levels ever under Mr. Biden), new tariffs on foreign imports, an extension of his 2017 tax cuts that are set to expire under the next administration, suspending taxes on income from tips and rolling back Biden-era investments in greener energy and infrastructure.
But at Mar-a-Lago, in his talk with Mr. Musk, on his own Truth Social platform and at his most recent rallies and other interviews, Trump has overshadowed his own economic agenda. He has falsely accused Ms. Harris of misrepresenting her own race and ethnicity. He has slipped back into old attacks on Mr. Biden and repeated the lie that his 2020 defeat was due to systemic voter fraud. Most recently, he's started lashing out over the size and enthusiasm of the crowds Ms. Harris is drawing on the campaign trail, even falsely claiming a photo of her rally was fabricated with AI.
Those factors have made it difficult for Trump to render a clearer policy contrast with the Democratic ticket, no matter how much his aides push the idea of such a reframing.
A Harris aide said Wednesday that the vice president welcomes any comparison Trump is able to make.
“No matter what he says, one thing is certain: Trump has no plan, no vision, and no meaningful interest in helping build up the middle class,” communications director Michael Tyler wrote in a campaign memo. Mr. Tyler pointed to the economic slowdown of the pandemic and 2017 tax cuts that were tilted to corporations and wealthy individual households, and predicted Trump’s proposals on trade, taxation and reversing Biden-era policies would “send inflation skyrocketing and cost our economy millions of jobs — all to benefit the ultra-wealthy and special interests.”
Trump veers off message again in North Carolina: Do voters care about economy or about Harris' laugh?
He appears to be in a political death spiral.
Ever increasing weird lies and irrelevant drivel.
I cant stand JD Vance but he should replace Trump on the ticket. We shouldnt have to go through 3 more months of this.
JD isn’t qualified at all. The least qualified VP candidate in my memory. 20 months as a Senator is it.
This will be a case where good vibes beat bad vibes.
are you stating that from John, or from Don,
cause Trump becoming unhinged as he begins to ever increasingly slowly shut the door that will wind up slammed even more expeditiously, as he becomes ever so more evidently unhinged and in a jamb without a knob to turn back the time, and he will soon find himself locked out and in the middle of a terrible storm, all alone in a small boat, getting tossed around like a gimp without a pimp, sorta reminiscent of Nanew Nanew man Robin Williams when called out by Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting , Deer John letters making senternces that described his horrible ordeal as he was lost and alone after his wife passed, gas
lighting the way, I be leave Robin did indeed say, so
for Trump, his demise and complete collapsem then hopefully an incessant never ending repeat and relapsem, is so long overdue for this country, and all thanks to power hungry and DUWI Driven Republican Dix, who could have easily done the right thing and impeached the creep, instead, they now must sow watt they reap
From DotW:
always liked antDotW, and a better answer than I would have chosen, but thats cause my heart is frozen to the polls like a tongue out of cheek asz it tears that fleash that rips hard and deep to ones heart, but, I didn't see, in time, cause, like Ralphy, I shot my ii's out , kidd in till goated on T ball pitchers Kool Aide that smashed through the wall that Mexico paid to have built, up, the expectations, all to like the wall, never developed a like in, so dislike yourself out the left open barn door for those found in stable, due to golden showered corralled coral reefered two asz spawning Samon bare backed while mountain the shirtless Russian won out over our Gomer Pile of Gump in the Dark Forrest ridden hard and put a way moist and damp like a Trumped up tramp stamp that letters can't spell or send, cause letters only spell what spawning Samoin are urning to swim in the deep with the predators that reap what Death does unfortunately one day promise to deliver with sautéed onions of layers that appeal to those that wood tear the tears down the cheek of unfaced crime, for when given the time, Trump could maybe realize that he is not as fine as the course he taught in culture like a vulture circlig around one, Biden his time to head to pasture, imprisoned with the wrongs written by 45 the disaster, that convincingly showed US ALL which of the two very imperfect party's was the bigger Sir Prize to see fight the truth and all that alternate truths where they lies, from the tablecloth or the stereo type, theirs are the reasons the world was so ripe, to be so easily fed a discourse where there is such a long chronologically inappropriate increment where proximity and fate decide as of late, who arrived first and foremost the second a third quarter increased the half dollar holler from allowed, to ALOUD and shout till you hear that dollar make you holler back to the snack pack of hour youth before we lost the cavity, tha t is now a tooth, blew for all the wrong reasons...
President Biden on a bicycle ride on Sunday.
This was the day before Trump described him as "close to a vegetable".