“The Stupidest Person Who Has Ever Won A Nomination For President”
Trump was furious Thursday when he held his Mar-a-Lago press conference. He was counting on the stock market to be slumping as he talked. Instead, it soared over nearly 700 points (1.8%). And that wasn’t the only thing that was soaring— Kamala’s approval has been going straight up and her polling averages, both nationally and in the swing states have been surpassing Trump’s own. So, yeah, his press conference was angry, insane, meandering, filled with lies and… weird. Basically, it was an attempt for Trump to recapture media attention which has centered around Kamala and Walz for the last 2 weeks, leaving him to throw ketchup bottles at the walls. The strategy was the picked fights with reporters— and lie, about everything that came up.
Maggie Haberman, Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Swan reported that he tried “to shoehorn himself back into a national conversation” by assailing the state of the U.S. economy, describing the country as in mortal danger if he did not win the presidential election and falsely described his departure from the White House— which was preceded by his refusal to concede his election loss in November 2020 and the violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of his supporters— as a ‘peaceful’ transfer of power.”
He also spent time denigrating Kamala personally, calling her stupid and claiming she would cause a Great Depression (something only Republicans cause), whining about Biden’s decision to retire (“unconstitutional”), evading specifics brought up by reporters and sharing nutty fantasies.
On Friday, Dana Milbank noted— as many observers have— that Kamala’s campaign is joyful, high energy and optimist and Trump’s is dark, angry, hateful and low energy. At her Philly rally the crowd thundered “USA! USA!” Milbank found it “welcome reminder that Trump’s MAGA followers don’t own that chant— and they no longer own the advantage in enthusiasm. Some of the very first words out of Walz’s mouth captured the moment perfectly. ‘Thank you,’ he said to Harris, ‘for bringing back the joy.’ In the week leading up to Friday, Trump delivered one speech, in Atlanta on Aug. 3. He used the word ‘I’ 317 times. Contrast that with Harris, who referred to herself in the same way only 39 times during her Philadelphia speech. In fairness, Trump used most words more than Harris did, because he droned on for 91 minutes, compared with Harris’s 31. The former president’s speech was typical: a blend of self-praise, random attacks, lunacy and invention— with no discernible structure. ‘I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal,’ he announced, eight minutes into his speech. He lavished praise on himself: ‘Trump is right about everything... They were saying how great I was... They said, ‘He was the greatest president we ever had.’ He spent a full minute complaining that the arena operator, Georgia State University, didn’t let more people in. Twenty-five minutes later, he complained about it some more: ‘A very liberal school, I guess. Right? Not happy with the school.’ He offered his usual prophesies of doom (‘We could end up in World War III and a depression. How about that?’) and other nonsensical assertions… He said that he’ll get the economy ‘booming like it was four years ago’— when it had collapsed. He spouted a falsehood about an Algerian Olympian boxer being transgender, and claimed he was shot because people called him a threat to democracy; the shooter was a Republican with no identified political motive.”
He tried to attack Harris, but his lines were lost amid a kaleidoscope of grievances directed not just at her but at Biden, Hillary Clinton, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, prosecutors Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis, and Republicans Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and, especially, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Trump devoted the better part of 12 minutes to attacking Kemp, as well as the governor’s wife, for being “disloyal” in refusing to help overturn the 2020 election.
In contrast to that 91-minute stream-of-consciousness, it takes Walz less than three minutes to make the case against Trump. “Again and again and again, Trump weakens our economy to strengthen his own hand,” the Minnesota governor said in Philadelphia. “He mocks our laws. He sows chaos and division. And that’s to say nothing of his record as president. He froze in the face of the covid crisis. He drove our economy into the ground. And make no mistake, violent crime was up under Donald Trump. That’s not even counting the crimes he committed.”
He delivers a message on abortion rights— “There is a golden rule: Mind your own damn business”— and says not to believe Trump “when he plays dumb” about Project 2025 and its plans “to restrict our freedoms, to rig the economy to help the super rich.” Walz then dispatches Vance as an elitist: “Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community.” Walz concludes: “These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell.”
Ignoring his best instincts— “Normally, I’d rather be eaten by fire ants than sit through a Trump press conference”— Charlie Sykes “made the poor life choice of listening to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago performance. My quick take: What, in the name of all that is holy, rational, and coherent did we just listen to?… [W]e were subjected to the maunderings of a mind utterly untethered from logic, facts, and decency. Trump clearly suffers from a severe and apparently debilitating case of Crowd Envy; and we got the customary firehose of bullshit. But that’s hardly new, is it? This Trump, however, was also something else: a rattled, deflated, joyless, and frightened figure. There were the usual insults, fabrications, and lies, but this Trump seemed less menacing than simply old and tired— a man without a single drop of joie d vivre. This is Trump losing.”
He concluded that “If this had been Joe Biden, the media would have been on fire with speculation and about his cognitive decline and mental health. If Kamala Harris turned in a performance even remotely like this, it would be regarded as a full-on disaster. But since this is Trump, it’s just another Thursday.”
One of his more bizarre fantasies spun for the reporters was that he was in a helicopter with Willie Brown (he never was) that went down and nearly killed them (never happened) when Brown told him “terrible” racey gossip about dating Kamala. Brown responded, basically, by noting that Trump is delusional and his story is just “creatiive fiction.” Trump says he has a record of the trip and that he'll sue Brown or The Times or someone. He's flipped his lid.
Dan Pfeiffer wrote yesterday that “There are a few reasons that the ‘Republicans are weird’ message is so effective. First, MAGA Republican policies are weird and creepy. These old men are obsessed with people’s personal lives, health care decisions, and sex lives… The folks at Data for Progress are out with a brand new poll that shows branding Republicans as weirdos pushes on an open door. The pollsters read a series of recent Republican comments and antics. These include the intentional mispronunciation of Kamala Harris’ name, Trump questioning her racial identity, and Vance’s attacks on adults without children. Lo and behold, voters think this is all really weird stuff. In many cases, more than 70% of voters describe it as weird. The poll also found that 47% of voters describe Republicans as ‘weird,’ while only 37% describe Democrats that way.”
W was no smarter than trump. He was just a bit more affable.
Yeah. And THAT might be your fuhrer in a few months.
At what point must you conclude that THAT isn't the real problem with this shithole? I remember Barry Goldwater was "weird" and neurotic (though lucid) and he lost in one of the biggest landslides ever (in SPITE of the efforts of one hillary rodham who worked for him).
THAT has already won once. And polling so far is still problematic due to the electoral college.