Sundowning in America: Trump lies over and over again on “filling arenas” and “tens of thousands crowding outside”, and the press corps almost always plays along:
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling: Trump’s True Crowd Size Exposed in Embarrassing Video: ‘Donald Trump always insists he has the biggest crowds. The truth looks a little different: Donald Trump was an hour and a half late to his rally in Saginaw, Michigan, on Thursday, but even the extra time couldn’t muster more people to line the stadium. “Who else fills big places like this at three in the afternoon?” Trump asked the roaring crowd. But from another perspective, it was evident that the Republican presidential nominee had only filled a fraction of the event space…
Sundowning in America: Trump has reverted from ChatGPT2 to ChatGPT1-level competence at English fluency—at making one word follow another in a pattern that sounds like English speech.
He is not supposed to be talking about his fake claims to have been awarded the title of “Man of the Year”. He is supposed to be talking about the high tariffs on Chinese-made cars that he will impose. But he cannot keep focused on the questioner and the question for even fifteen seconds:
Question: What actions will you take to ensure that our jobs stay in America so we can continue to build the best cars in the world here in Michigan
Donald Trump: So pretty much as we've been saying. And what I want to do is I want to be able to. Look, your business. Years ago this area I was honored as the Man of the Year. Was maybe twenty years ago. Oh and the fake news heard about it. They said: “It never happened. It never happened". And I didn't know who it was. It was a group that honored me as Man of the Year.
The fakers back there. See the fake news. But, they said, they said: "Oh!" And they looked. And it. And you know they said it never happened.
But I swear to you it happened. It did happen. I was Man of the Year. And I came and I made a speech, and said: "Why do you allow them to take your car business away? Why do you allow it to happen they're taking your business away."
And I didn't know too much about. All I know is that they were taking your car industry away from you. They said it never happened. And lo and behold, somebody said "I remember the event". And then we found out. And we had everything. We got the awards. We had everything.
It did happen.
But I gave a speech which at the time was pretty controversial…
Nobody has ever been able to find such an award.
Trump often mentions former Republican Congressman Dave Trott when claiming that he receive this “Man of the Year” award. But Trott says that no such award was ever given. In Trott’s view, Trump likely misremembers a 2013 Lincoln Day dinner in Oakland County. Trump was invited to speak. Trump received a framed copy of the Gettysburg Address and a statuette of Abraham Lincoln. But no "Man of the Year" award was presented.
In 2023, the Oakland County Republican Party did award Trump a "Man of the Decade" honor. This was years after Trump began making his "Man of the Year" claims. It appears to be an attempt to retroactively validate his false statements and claims.
Is this actually another Trump grift? Or is it a disguised bribery scheme? My money is on the pure grift—to tell people “you have to buy a $100,000 Trump watch to get a favor from the future Trump administration” seems to be lowballing the expected bribe price:
Bryce Elder: What does Trump’s $100k watch tell us about the future of luxury goods?: ‘Think like a tourbillonaire…. The Trump Victory Tourbillon is a built-to-order watch that’s being sold direct to consumers from one website that has a marketing budget of zero, because articles like this are all the publicity it needs. There are very few operational costs to add to the $25,000 materials cost, so the operating margin is probably not much worse the ~75 per cent gross margin. If Trump sells all 147 Tourbillons that’s an estimated $11mm operating profit. That’s decent. Nor are 75 per cent margins exceptional. Morgan Stanley estimates that Moonswatch, Swatch’s co-branded fashion disposable range that has sold more than 3mn units in the past two years, has a gross margin of about 80 per cent… <https://www.ft.com/content/dc255217-dd18-4331-bf4d-347bd1776d29>
Donald Trump claims all the people walking out the door from his speeches are not leaving, but instead are going around to the stage door so that they can get their pictures taken with him after the speech:
Donald Trump: I want to explain something. The people that you see leaving. Because nobody ever leaves, and when they do, I finish up quick, believe me. But I couldn’t take pictures at the beginning. So I take them at the end. Sometimes if I’m late, the plane gets late, you get delayed. Things happen. There’s a little hurricane going on in Florida as you know. And so what they do is they say ‘oh please come up now at the end of my speech’. I said ‘don’t do that.’ [Be]cause it looks like they’re leaving. Like your husband who owns this place…
Who is the target audience for this? Or, rather, is there a target audience for this?
Donald Trump: And I say it all the time. If you want to do a movie on some of these people that you are going to be looking at in two minutes. If you want to do a movie. There is no actor in Hollywood that could play the role. There’s nobody that could do it. These actors, you know, they’re a little bit shaky. They can’t play the role. You bring in a big actor. He’s got no muscle content. Got no muscle. We need a little muscle. Then they bring in another one. But he’s got a weak face. He looks weak. No, these guys have the whole package. Unfortunately for our country. I watched one of them shouting at a judge: “I kill you! I kill you when I get out! I kill you!”. And you know the judge is like, “Huh”. He has never heard this stuff. And even the guards. You know. They want to look for a new job themselves. “I kill you!”…
Trump and Vance want to see a world in which, if you miss a menstrual period, your red-state sheriff starts watching you to make sure you carry any pregnancy to term:
Josh Marshall: Trump Camp Says State Menstrual Surveillance Programs are A-OK: ‘JD Vance is a https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/jd-vance-menstrual-surveillance-hawk…. The Biden administration pushed for updated HIPAA regulations to prevent sheriff’s departments… from pulling women’s medical records for their menstrual surveillance programs…. Vance was one of only 28 members of Congress (and only 8 senators) to sign a letter protesting the new regs, which, per the letter, “interfere with valid state laws protecting life.”… Trump spokesman Jason Miller… “[Trump has] made it very clear that he’s not going to go and weigh in and push various states on how they want to go and set up their particular rules and restrictions. That’s going to be up to the states.” So he went there. It’s totally up to the states… <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-camp-says-state-menstrual-surveillance-programs-are-a-ok/sharetoken/689979aa-a731-46f1-a61c-faaf84ab8127>
Watch how this gets sanewashed:
Donald Trump: Kamala Harris created a brand new program to fly in migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua and resettle them in American communities, including small towns all across our nation. But in particular in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Nobody can believe it. These towns have been destroyed. And the mayors of the towns and the governors of the states cannot talk about it. Because they are embarrassed they allowed it to happen. In addition, through her phone app. Something totally new now. It’s a phone app for migrants. Where migrants call in. Highly sophisticated migrants. She’s allowed virtually unlimited amounts of migrants to press a button, schedule their illegal immigration appointment at our ports of entry, and show up to be released into the interior of our country. Can anybody believe?… <https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-bizarrely-claims-migrants-have-phone-app-direct-to-kamala-harris/vi-AA1rhhl1#details>
Jeff Tiedrich: Elderly Golfer’s Latest Speech so Incoherent That Fox News Cuts Away: ‘[Trump] was in Mint Hill, North Carolina, yesterday, ostensibly to lay out his economic vision for America. how tedious was Donny’s speech? This tedious: he began speaking at 1:09pm, and at 1:38—29 minutes into his speech—Fox News decided enough was enough, and mercifully cut away <x.com/atrupar/status/1838996182061724056…. If only Fox had kept their cameras on Donny for another 45 seconds, their viewers would have witnessed this crowning moment of what the fuck <x.com/atrupar/status/1838997213994746204:
Donald Trump: ‘Now I am taking it a step further. We are going to bring the 21% rate, which everyone said we would never get, down to 15%, but only if you manufacture your product here in the USA. Just like you did when you were the furniture capital of the world. That’s why. That’s why those furniture companies. And you still have your craftsmen here. Unfortunately they are doing other jobs they don’t want to be doing than furniture.
I know the furniture guys. They don’t want to be doing other jobs. They want to be making furniture. They are artists. Those people are going to be coming back into the furniture business. Then.
Next. I’m imposing tariffs on your competition from foreign countries. All these foreign countries that have ripped us off. Which stole all of your businesses and all of your jobs years ago and took your businesses out, so now they won’t be able to compete with North Carolina, or businesses in any other state in our [pause] once-great country, soon to be greater-than-ever-before country, all of your furniture makers are going to come back, and come back bigger and stronger and better than ever before. They’re mostly gone. They’re all coming back.
This is why people in countries want to kill me. They are not happy with me. It is a risky business. This is why they want to kill me. They only kill consequential presidents. Remember that. You are not happy with what I’m saying. When they used to say they liked Barack Hussein Obama because he did nothing to help us. They say they like Biden because they don’t know if he is alive… <youtube.com/watch?v=ilkvDNhsbyg>
Sundowning in America: JD Vance appears too dumb to understand that his job is to say that if Trump becomes president all you people who vote for him will be winners, at the expense of the woke and the foreigners who will become losers. His job is not to say, like a second-class version of Paul Ryan: under Trump, once you are diagnosed with heart disease health insurance will become unaffordably expensive. His failure to grasp what the grift he has signed up for actually is suggests major limits to his cognitive skills:
Stephen Robinson: Vance keeps gaffing by actually detailing Trump's policies: ‘A smug Vance told Welker that Trump’s ACA “alternative” is “actually quite straightforward” and would “make sure that preexisting coverage conditions are covered.” But he wouldn’t leave it there. He kept talking, which rarely works well for him…. “You also want to implement some deregulatory agenda…. A 65-year-old American in good health has much different health care needs than a 65-year-old American with a chronic condition. We want to… not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same… risk pools…”. Vance is pitching a return to the bad old days when people with preexisting conditions couldn’t get coverage…. Vance[‘s one-time identity] … as a faux populist… [has been] abandoned in favor of a new identity that’s a combination of Ayn Rand economist and Ralph Reed moral scold. It’s a weird look… a smarmier Paul Ryan, which is the exact opposite message Trump wants to convey... <publicnotice.co/p/jd-vance-gaffes?post_…
As so often these days, Trump has no idea what the question he is being asked is. And so after his first five words repeating some of the question the whole thing degenerates into sub-Turing ChatGPT2-level word salad. How Trump gets from “infrastructure” to a free-floating “it” which he then interprets to mean “real estate” and then the problem becomes “rising real-estate prices” and “housing affordability”.
Q: How will you protect critical infrastructure in the US from the Chinese Communist Party?
Donald Trump: Well, we're gonna protect it by saying you can't come. You can't do it. We don’t want you buying our land and basically taking it off the market. We don’t want you doing it. And they’re buying it at levels we’ve never seen before. We don’t want you buying it. It’s a very easy thing to do… <https://x.com/atrupar/status/1838310355446964444>
A truly extraordinary degree of moral cowardice on display here. If you don’t believe him, you do not believe him—you cannot then “not not believe him”, because “do not believe him” is what you do:
JD Vance: I don’t not believe [Mark Robinson]. I don’t believe him. I just think you have to let these things sometimes play out in the court of public opinion. He’s going to make whatever arguments he wants to make. I’m sure the news media and others are going to investigate these comments further. I just think that fundamentally it’s Mark Robinson and the people of North Carolina that get to decide whether he’s their governor…
Very occasionally they do say what they think out loud, in public:
JD Vance: I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally…
What do we have to conclude about a press corps that keeps sanewashing things like this?? THE ALL CAPS ARE IN THE ORIGINAL:
Donald Trump: WOMEN ARE POORER THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE LESS HEALTHY THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE LESS SAFE ON THE STREETS THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE MORE DEPRESSED AND UNHAPPY THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, AND ARE LESS OPTIMISTIC AND CONFIDENT IN THE FUTURE THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO! I WILL FIX ALL OF THAT, AND FAST, AND AT LONG LAST THIS NATIONAL NIGHTMARE WILL BE OVER. WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTHY, CONFIDENT AND FREE! YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION, BECAUSE IT IS NOW WHERE IT ALWAYS HAD TO BE, WITH THE STATES, AND A VOTE OF THE PEOPLE - AND WITH POWERFUL EXCEPTIONS, LIKE THOSE THAT RONALD REAGAN INSISTED ON, FOR RAPE, INCEST, AND THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER—BUT NOT ALLOWING FOR DEMOCRAT DEMANDED LATE TERM ABORTION IN THE 7TH, 8TH, OR 9TH MONTH, OR EVEN EXECUTION OF A BABY AFTER BIRTH. I WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE. THEY WILL FINALLY BE HEALTHY, HOPEFUL, SAFE, AND SECURE. THEIR LIVES WILL BE HAPPY, BEAUTIFUL, AND GREAT AGAIN!…
In what sense is Mike DeWine a “supporter” of Donald Trump and JD Vance? He either works for his constituents to protect them for enemies foreign and domestic, or he words for the Dynamic Neofascist Grifting Duo. He is trying to have it both ways. But I do not think this straddle can work:
Mike DeWine: ‘As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there. … The Springfield I know is not the one you hear about in social media rumors. It is a city made up of good, decent, welcoming people. They are hard workers—both those who were born in this country and those who settled here because, back in their birthplace, Haiti, innocent people can be killed just for cheering on the wrong team in a soccer match…. I am proud of this community, and America should be, too…
Donald Trump is so delusional as to think somewhere near the U.S.-Canada border there is a giant faucet—as big as the wall of a building—that takes a full day to turn on. Donald Trump thinks this faucet, when open, carries snowmelt from the snowpacks of Canada’s Columbia and Canadian Rocky Mountains down into canals that lead to Los Angeles. Donald Trump thinks that California Governor Gavin Newsom has, for some reason, turned this faucet off. He really thinks this:
Donald Trump: ‘The reason you have no water [here in California], you have the canals, the reason you have no water is because Gavin ‘Newscomb’ didn’t want to do it. I had it all done. I had the Department of Commerce at the time, believe it or not, they’re the ones that rule on this particular issue. So you have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north, with the snow caps in Canada, and it all pouring down.
And they have essentially a very large faucet. and you turn the faucet, and it takes a day to turn it. It takes one day to turn it. It’s massive. It’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you. And you turn that, and all of the water goes into the—aimlessly into the Pacific.
And if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles. They wouldn’t have to have people not use more than 30 gallons and 32 gallons. They want to do that, you know. They’re trying to do that. And you have so much water.. And all those fields that are right now barren. The farmers would have all the water they needed. and you could revert water up into the hills, where you have all the dead forests, where the forests are so brittle…
Sundowning in America: Josh Marshall has a plausible explanation for why Donald Trump thinks Bagram is an airbase in Afghanistan and also an oilfield in Alaska that might well be bigger than all the oil in Saudi Arabia. The Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, under which there is some oil, has the acronym ANWR, pronounced “Anwar”.
Thus Josh’s guess is that ChatGPTrump went: Alaska → ANWR → Anwar → Arabic name → Bagram & oil. Never you mind that they do not speak Arabic in Afghanistan—Trump does not know that.
I do believe that this accurately captures the state of Trump’s thinking. So where are the three New York Times stories a day about how Trump’s dementia is too advanced for him to be able to plausibly fill the office of president?
Donald Trump thinks Bagram is an oil field in Alaska that “might be… bigger than all of Saudi Arabia”. Yet his word-salad ChatGPT2-class sub-Turing dementia brain also dimly knows that it is an airbase somewhere. And an oil field:
Donald Trump: ‘We were energy independent, we were soon going to be energy dominant, and we would’ve been now having so much money coming out of the energy. We just have the best. We have Bagram in Alaska. They say it might be as big, might be bigger than, all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. I got it done…. Check that one out, Bagram. Check that one out. It’s, it’s—no, think about this: Between Bagram, between—you go to ANWR, you take a look at the kind of things that we’ve given up. We should be—we should have that air base. We should have that oil…
But:
Amy McGrath: ‘Bagram was the airbase… in Afghanistan—the same base where we kept hundreds of Taliban and ISIS prisoners that Trump released back out into Afghanistan in his final year in office. He is CLUELESS folks…
JD Vance, dumb as a box of hammers:
QUICK: What are the lies they are telling about you? VANCE: One of the things they say about Donald Trump's economic policies is that they're inflationary. QUICK: But tariffs are inflationary… <https://substack.com/@aaronrupar/note/c-68743232>
For some reason, Republicans who have given their dignity to Trump have decided to draw a line in the sand—Loony Laura Loomer hugging Trump in public is, for some reason, a step too far, when nothing else has been:
Eric Blair: ‘Ok. I’m starting to wonder if there is something bigger under the surface going on with Laura Loomer. Republicans did not react this way to Pizzagate, or Chris Rufo, or S Miller. They love racism and conspiracy theories. So why are craven GOP pols like Tillis reacting like this?:
Thom Tillis: “Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chance of winning re-election. Enough… <https://bsky.app/profile/protecttruth.bsky.social/post/3l44lk2d5e62d>
JD Vance goes absolutely feral—too dumb to recognize that he is the kind of guy who yells at his children interrupting his work for a “billionaire celebrity who is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and problems of most Americans”: Donald Trump:
JD Vance: I don't think most Americans are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and problems of most Americans… <threads.net/@kamalahq/post/C_yhKOjM9vG>
Some realism about his lack of energy and cognitive chops leaks through:
Donald Trump: I don't know that I want to do another debate…
Remember what was on Donald Trump’s mind on September 11, 2001?
When someone tells you he is a demented, raving fascist who will arrest, deport, and imprison millions of immigrants and opponents, believe him—especially when he is immunized against all liability for things he colors as “official actions”:
Robert B. Hubbell: Trump suffers emotional break; media pretends it didn’t happen: ‘A major party candidate for president suffered what can only be described as an emotional break or medical emergency that resulted in a sudden acceleration in the deterioration of his already deteriorating cognitive abilities and further loss of control over his delusional impulses…. Donald Trump: “CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON'T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country…” To be clear, Trump is threatening—in advance—to impose “long-term prison sentences .. . . never before seen in this country” on lawyers, election officials, donors, voters, and politicians whom Trump views as opponents… <https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/trump-suffers-emotional-break-media>
Where did JD Vance get the idea that there is mass eating of pets by immigrants in Springfield, OH anyway? How gullible is he:
The question was: SANDER GERBER: “Mr. President, for all the details on your economic policy, as you alluded to, tariffs are the other side of sanctions. And given that China is our major trading partner with our largest imbalance and possibly our chief, security, national security threat to the United States, how can we better institutionalize trade policy and national security policy to be coordinated?”
Donald Trump: I had a great relationship with President Xi of China. Really very close relationship. Now he likes China. I like us. So. But I don't want to. He was my dear, dear friend. He's a tough guy. He's a fierce person. I say very smart.
You know, when you say he's smart, the fake news goes crazy. He said, President Xi is smart. And I say, you know, he controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. He's smart.
But we had a very good relationship with China until Covid. And when that came in, it was a whole different ballgame as far as I was concerned. And we made a great China trade deal, maybe better than the USMCA.
And I'd never talk about it because what happened with COVID for the whole world, $60 trillion in, you know, deaths, 70,000,060, nobody even knows how many deaths. And it all came out of Wuhan. So it changed my relationship.
But I think I'll have a great relationship with China. I had one before, and they respected us. But they respected us because they no longer thought we were fools. They used to think we were fools because we built China. They would take over $500 billion a year and use it for their military and other things. And we got nothing on that. We got some cheap product. We got, you can buy 19 pencils instead of two. Who the hell cares? You can buy 16 dolls for your daughter instead of two nice dolls. And we got very little out of that relationship.
They got a tremendous military power, and they still have it today. So.
But I believe we will have a very good relationship with China and with a lot of other countries that we're not getting along with too well today. And things are going to straighten, we're going to get an straightened out very quickly, very important that we get along with the rest of the world.
You know, we have things today called nuclear weapons. I rebuilt our whole military, including our nuclear capability. And so I got very familiar with it.
And, you know, I say this often because I had an uncle who was the longest serving, I believe the longest serving. I was told that by MIT, but he was at 39, I guess 41 years, longest serving professor in the history of MIT in nuclear, something he knew a lot about. And we used to talk about, and I'd say, Uncle John, there's no way he was telling me about this incredible power that was being unleashed potentially. And I say, Uncle John, you could never. And you know what? He was very modest because I've seen the destructive capability, and this world is going to have to get along because if that's ever unleashed, we already have too many countries that have at least remnants of it, some of it probably five countries, if you think.
And Kim Jong Un.
When I went to the White House after winning in 2016, I sat with President Obama, which is a ritual. And you said, and you talk. And I said, what's the biggest problem? He said, North Korea is the biggest problem. I don't think it's solvable. I said, have you tried calling him or talking to him? Actually, the answer was yes, and he wasn't responded to, but I did, and we were very safe.
It started off a little rocky, if you remember a little rocket man. I called and told me things, too. He's got a red button on his desk. I said, I have a bigger red button, and my red button works, I said. And then it started getting a little nicer. And then one day I got a call that they'd like to meet. And it was a great thing. We had a great meeting. We had two meetings, actually, two great meeting summits, and we had no problem with them.
Now they have a problem because they're not, like, in this administration. They don't respect this administration at all. So we have to get along. We have to get along. We can't have World War Three. You're going to end up in World War III, just like you should have never had Russia go in. It would have never happened. If a competent person led us, it would have never happened. He led them into it.
And I'm not blaming Biden, but you know what? What he was saying was exactly the wrong thing.
I said, we're going to have an invasion because of a lot of the rhetoric. It was stupid rhetoric, but it would have never happened. Not only for that reason. Oil was down low. You know, oil was almost at a barrel. So Putin is one of the only people. I mean, nothing's easy in life, but Putin at $100 a barrel, war works at $40 a barrel. It didn't work at all.
So we're going to get back to an intelligently run place, a place where other countries aren't using the word nuclear. That word was never talked about during my. Because I knew the power of it and I talked to Putin about it.
I talked to President Xi about it. I think we were going to. Do you remember the talk where we were going to reduce nuclear capability substantially, all three of us, we're going to start, we're going to reduce very substantially. And then we had the election. And after the election, they didn't talk about that or anything else likely.
But we have to be very, very careful because the destructive capability of nuclear, when people talk about global warming, I say the ocean is going to go down 100th of an inch within the next 400. That's not our problem.
Our problem is nuclear warming. And we better be smart, and we better have smart people at the top that know how to deal, because these people don't know how to deal.
Putin came out today. He endorsed Kamala. And I didn't know what they were supposed to call him up and say, thank you very much. I appreciate it. But he endorsed Kamala.
I have a feeling. I don't know. I don't know exactly what to say about that. I don't know if I'm insulted or he did me a favor. But we have to get along with the world. We can't have war because the destructive capability. You can be the head of the biggest bank, wherever the hell Jamie is sitting. You can be the head of the biggest bank in the world, and a couple of nukes in your bank doesn't mean a thing.
You gotta get along because this is such an important job. It's a dangerous job too. Very dangerous job. Statistically, being president is very dangerous. That throbbing feeling I have.
Oh, that throbbing feeling now. It's a very dangerous job and you have to do it right. And if you don't do it right, bad things will happen to the world. Things like you've never seen before.
Okay, thank you very much.
If Joe Biden or Kamala Harris were ever to have given such a completely inane and cognitively empty response to any question:
Interviewer: ‘What specific legislation will you commit to to make child care affordable?
Donald Trump: ‘Well, I would do that, and we're sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It's a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that, because, look, child care is child care is. Couldn't, you know, there's something, you have to have it—in this country you have to have it.
But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to—but they'll get used to it very quickly—and it's not gonna stop them from doing business with us, but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Uh, those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care, that it's going to take care.
We're gonna have—I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I'm talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about.
We're gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care, uh, is talked about as being expensive, it's, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we'll be taking in. We're going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we'll worry about the rest of the world. Let's help other people, but we're going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It's about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we're a failing nation, so we'll take care of it.
Trump the very special genius plays 91-dimensional chess:
Scott Lemieux: Project 2025 to Remain on the Shelf Until After the Election: ‘It may not have been a great idea to make your vice presidential candidate the guy who literally introduced the book you think would torpedo your campaign if people saw it, but who am I to question Donald Trump Jr.’s coke-addled political wisdom?… <https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/08/project-2025-to-remain-on-the-shelf-until-after-the-election>
Donald Trump has forgotten who the Democratic Party’s nominee for President is:
Donald Trump: ‘And by the way, New Hampshire was so badly treated by the Democrat Party and by Joe Biden and her, I can’t imagine New Hampshire voting for him. Anybody in New Hampshire—because they’re watching right now—anybody in New Hampshire that votes for Biden and Kamala, I really think, I call her Comrade Kamala because that’s what her ideology is, but you know that she did something after decades and decades and decades; it was Iowa, the first two—Iowa, New Hampshire—that’s what way people thought it was gonna be. He didn’t want to go to New Hampshire. He didn’t want to play the New Hampshire game…
The Trump campaign memo begging people not to leak has just been leaked—in less than an hour:
Ummm… Reality check for JD Vance: Lots and lots of girls like first-person shooter games too. And it is truly weird to see their dominant trope as “defending family” rather than “mastering the situation”. Yes, you can argue that there are things in hormone levels that predispose boys to want to practice using strength to master chaos, and that predispose girls to want to practice creating harmonious and effective team-family relationships. But you have to be profoundly stupid not to realize that bare is back without brother behind. The differences in fundamental biology-induced attitudes are remarkably small:
JD Vance: ‘One of the weird things about elite society is it’s deeply uncomfortable with masculinity…. This is one weird thing that conservatives don’t talk about enough.… We don’t talk enough about the fact that traditional masculine traits are now actively suppressed from childhood all the way through adulthood…. There’s something deeply cultural and biological, spiritual about this desire to defend his home and his family…. If the Chinese invade us in 10 years, they’re going to be beaten back by boys like you who practice fighting the monsters who become proud men who defend their homes…. They’re not going to be defended by the soy boys who want to feed the monsters…
The price of bacon relative to personal income per capita has only been noticeably lower than it is today for about a year in 1994-1995:
Try to parse Donald Trump’s speech today, and he presents as a random text generator with a ten-word memory: “bacon” leads to “products” which leads to “energy” which leads to “wind” which leads to “when [wind] doesn’t blow” which leads to “problem”. But there is no train of thought here at all. This presents as a very high level of cognitive deficit indeed:
Donald Trump: ‘You take a look at bacon and some of these products. Some people do not eat bacon anymore. And we are going to get the energy prices down. We get energy down. You know, this was caused by their horrible energy—wind. They want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow, we have a little problem… <https://newrepublic.com/post/185496/trump-rant-bacon-wind-power>
New convenience-store Catholic JD Vance is majorly creeped out by parochial schools:
Donald Trump has so far lost it that he really thinks that his campaign adds do not exist if he does not see his ads on his own TV in Florida:
Jeff Tiedrich: terrified elderly golfer melts all the way down on his crappy app: ‘and once again, the press utterly fails to meet the moment…. “DONALD TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN is set to run cable news ads this week so they can be seen at the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago club and surrounding environs. The South Florida expense is likely to have no impact on the course of the election. Palm Beach County is a Democratic stronghold in a Republican state that Trump has little chance of losing. But Trump’s staff is at some risk of incurring his wrath if he—and his Palm Beach pals—don’t see his ads at Mar-a-Lago, a factor that insiders say compelled the purchase… <https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/terrified-elderly-golfer-melts-all>
Donald Trump back in 2002 about the guy who may well have been his only friend:
Donald Trump: ‘I’ve known Jeff [Epstein] for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life… <threads.net/@kstatebookworm/post/C_DM__…>
Deluded & demented, Donald Trump claims he has done more for Israel than David ben Yishai or Yehudah Ha-Maccabi. I have yet to find a single Israeli willing to say that Donald Trump is “the best friend that Israel, and the Jewish people, ever had…. I have done more for Israel than any person, and it’s not even close.”If Kamala Harris were to, just once, lose her marbles to this extent…:
Donald Trump: ‘The highly overrated Jewish Governor of the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, made a really bad and poorly delivered speech talking about freedom and fighting for Comrade Kamala Harris for President, yet she hates Israel and will do nothing but make its journey through the complexities of survival as difficult as possible, hoping in the end that it will fail. Judge only by her actions! Yet Shapiro, for strictly political reasons, refused to acknowledge that I am the best friend that Israel, and the Jewish people, ever had. I have done more for Israel than any President, and frankly, I have done more for Israel than any person, and it’s not even close. Shapiro has done nothing for Israel, and never will. Comrade Kamala Harris, the Radical Left Marxist who stole the nomination from Crooked Joe, will do even less. Israel is in BIG trouble!… <https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113003710039708925>
What can anyone say, except that the New York Times and company are not in the business of noting any of the milliard things like this we see:
Well, first of all, he’s a total lightweight. And he shouldn’t be even having any access to possibly being president. The guy he’s been a terrible governor. They’ve had nothing but problems in their state. He has no capability. They call him coach. He’s a semi coach. You coach some football for a little while. This guy is a lightweight and he shouldn’t have access. And for him to say about project 25 is disgraceful. They know I have nothing to do with it. I had no idea what it was. A group of people got together. They drew up some conservative values, very conservative values, and in some case, perhaps they went over the line. Perhaps they didn’t. I have no idea what project 25 is, but they use it and they know it. Just like Charlottesville, totally discredited. They use Charlottesville. You know, Biden gets up all the time, says Charlottesville. He ran because of Charlottesville. We got he got run out of office by the Democrats. They did a coup on him. And he’s sitting someplace in California on a beach because he’s in California, crime ridden, crime ridden place. It’s not the same place. More people leaving than coming. And all of the things that these people have done. Kamala has been the worst. Everything she touched turned bad. California turned bad. San Francisco. You can’t walk into San Francisco. You barely can go into California anymore, people. It’s a state that’s in terrible, terrible crime. Trouble in every other form of trouble. Monetary troubles. It’s got nothing. Drugs all over the place. You go into Los Angeles, you can’t walk down the streets. It’s a shame between Gavin Newsom, but it was really more Kamala because she was your, district attorney in San Francisco. San Francisco is unlivable now. Unlivable 15 years ago as the most beautiful city, one of the greatest cities in the world. Today, it’s unlivable. It’s going to have to be hopefully be able to be brought back, if that’s possible. Kamala, who’s a Marxist and a radical left, frankly, she’s a radical left lunatic. And if she became president, if this country would turn out to be a big version of San Francisco or a big version of California itself. So these guys, they talk about that, they talk about all different things that they know are totally discredited. They have a thing with soldiers where I’m looking over the graves of soldiers and saying, horrible thing about dead soldiers from World War One. It was totally made up. It was a made up story. I confirmed that was confirmed, but my side of it by 26 people in the military that it never happened. They had one lunatic, talking about it, and they use it all the time. There’s nobody that loves the military more than me. Nobody did more for the military. I rebuilt the military. They gave away $85 billion of it away to Afghanistan in the dumbest and and one of the most horrible things that’s ever happened. Probably the most embarrassing moment that ever happened to a country that… [Brian Kilmeade: the last one in the room, and she was the last one in the room when that decision was made] …She was she was the last one. No chance of what she made the decision. She made the decision. And it was one of the most embarrassing decisions. Not Brian, not the fact that we got out the way they got out. I was ready to get out, but I was going to keep Bagram. That’s one of the biggest air bases in the world. It was one hour away from where China makes their nuclear weapons one hour away. Very important that we keep it. They left Bagram the biggest runway, most powerful runways cannot can handle the heaviest loads. This was designed billions and billions of dollars years ago. We gave them the keys. And now China occupies Bagram. We should have kept that. That was the one thing we should have stayed. Not because of Afghanistan, but because of China. And we gave it up. They took the soldiers out before they did. Soldiers first we left people we have to this day, we have people living there. They can’t get out. We 13 great people who I know the families, as you know, 13 great people killed 45, absolutely obliterated the arms and legs and hundreds of people killed during that day, people falling off planes, many people falling off planes from 3000ft up in the air. That’s like three times the height of the Empire State Building. President Trump you’re talking about sad to see you’re talking to them to listen to. Excuse me, but then I have to listen to a lightweight like this, get up and absolutely lie. But they all lied and they mentioned my name. I read where, and frankly, I watched where you said you groups that you said specifically I think they mentioned. Me 297 times. They mentioned the border. Once they mention crime twice, they don’t mention the economy because the economy’s horrible. They defrauded the people of our country with with the job numbers. You saw that 818,000 fake jobs they put in the roles. They thought they could keep it. They thought they were going to keep those numbers until right after the election, when they could announce a revision. But they weren’t able to do that because they had a leaker and somebody leaked the numbers. They were fraudulent job numbers, just like they have fraudulent crime numbers. The FBI didn’t include New York, Chicago and Oakland and a couple of other places that aren’t doing so well. If they would have included those numbers, they’re the worst crime numbers we’ve ever had… <https://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-rambles-off-topic-for-five-minutes-after-fox-friends-asks-him-to-reply-to-clip-of-tim-walz-dnc-speech/>
There is one thing Trump is more scared of than Melania: it is having to face reporters who ask real questions:
Paige Owens: Standing under a banner that read “Make America Safe Again” on Tuesday, Trump spoke about law and order and a so-called “Kamala crime wave” occurring at levels “nobody has ever seen before.” But when journalists tried to ask him about that claim, he got scared. According to The Detroit News, the Trump team had originally agreed to sit down for an interview with their newspaper Tuesday. However, after reporters pushed the former president about spreading lies about Michigan’s crime data, “a campaign aide said the presidential candidate no longer had time for an interview after the speech”… <https://newrepublic.com/post/185107/trump-abandons-interview-michigan-crime-talking-point>
Were this word salad to have been barfed out by a General-Purpose Transformer Large Language Model, I would judge it to have failed the turning test and not to be of human level intelligence, but just stringing words together according to some probability map:
Donald Trump: ‘Joe Bride. This guy. Is just the worst. The worst president in the history of our country will be a fading. [Long pause.] Nightmare. He’ll be a fading. A. I have fading memory. Joe Biden is forming, granting mass, think of. My life could have been so simple. I could have had 200 lawyers less. So simple. I would have had a beautiful life. But this is a beautiful life. This is far more beautiful. What’s better than being with you? Look at that beautiful lake? What is better? This or sitting on the Pacific or Atlantic. Which has sharks. You don’t have sharks. See, that is a big advantage…
No. Nobody knows what Trump is talking about:
Donald Trump: ‘We’re gonna bring up electronics, too. Electronics. We buy everything away. When you see the sophistication of the product I just saw at this place, electronics is peanuts by comparison…<youtube.com/watch?v=I1BaK6Hcexw>
Trumphole: November 24, 2015, was the day that the Trump campaign should have ended. All those who have kept it alive since are truly deplorable:
Stacey CKS: ‘Just a reminder—This should have been where it ended:
…
Grifters: JD Vance has decided to see if he can become as big and bold a constant liar as Donald Trump:
JD Vance: ‘The polls tend to radically overstate Democrats…. If you talk to insiders in the Kamala Harris campaign, they're very worried about where they are…. The American people don’t buy the idea that Kamala Harris… is going to tackle the inflation crisis…. Giving Kamala Harris control over inflation policy, it's like giving Jeffrey Epstein control over human trafficking policy… <https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1825167623383859667>
Grifters: WAIT! WHAT? I understand that things can look different to a child and a teenager than they really are, but even so?:
Jessica Winter: The Story That “Hillbilly Elegy” Doesn’t Tell: ‘Donna Morel, an attorney in San Diego… is a fact-checking hobbyist…. “Two generations ago, my grandparents were dirt-poor and in love,” Vance writes toward the start of “Hillbilly Elegy.” “They got married and moved north in the hope of escaping the dreadful poverty around them.” Bonnie and Jim Vance… Mamaw and Papaw, left their Appalachian home town… settling in Middletown, Ohio…. Vance describes Bonnie and Jim as “alone in their new city” and “isolated” from the family they felt closest to. He allows that Jim’s mother, Goldie, was “nearby,” but that Bonnie disliked her, and that she was “mostly a stranger to her own son.”…
“Hillbilly Elegy” doesn’t name Jim’s stepfather, Julius Blackmon, who had worked at Armco for years before Jim was hired there. (“Applicants with a family member working at Armco would move to the top of the employment list,” Vance notes in his memoir, without making the connection.)… Bonnie and Jim lived with Jim’s mother and stepfather at two different residences following their move to Middletown, according to the census records…. When Bonnie and Jim did get their own place, it was less than a mile away. And, when Julius Blackmon died, Jim was named the executor of his estate—yet another data point that contradicts the picture of estrangement that Vance sketches in “Elegy.”…
Bonnie and Jim’s marriage was, at times, deeply troubled—in Vance’s telling, both of his grandparents were violent, and Jim was a vicious drunk. But Vance praises them in his memoir and elsewhere for sticking it out. Later in the marriage, Vance writes in “Elegy,” they “separated and then reconciled, and although they continued to live in separate houses, they spent nearly every waking hour together.”… Bonnie and Jim—Vance’s flawed but heroic avatars of traditional marriage—entered divorce proceedings twice…. [On] March 22, 1955… Bonnie, then twenty-one, filed for divorce from Jim on grounds of “extreme cruelty” and “gross neglect of duty.”… The timing of Bonnie’s divorce petition is out of step with “Elegy,” in which Vance’s Uncle Jimmy compares the early years of his parents’ marriage to “Leave It to Beaver,” and says that, while their bond was always volatile, before the nineteen-sixties, “they were united, they were getting along with each other.”… In August, 1957, the divorce filing was dismissed “without record,” leaving no documented clue as to why. Bonnie and Jim went on to have two more children…. A quarter century after… Jim filed for divorce from Bonnie; Bonnie filed a counterclaim, and, in 1981… the court found Jim “guilty of gross neglect of duty.” Still, the couple did not divorce. Instead, they legally separated… <https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/the-story-that-hillbilly-elegy-doesnt-tell>
The line in “Hillbilly Elegy” at the end of chapter 3 about how:
Mamaw and Papaw eventually got their act together. Papaw quit drinking in 1983, a decision accompanied by no medical intervention and not much fanfare. He simply stopped and said little about it. He and Mamaw separated and then reconciled, and although they continued to live in separate houses, they spent nearly every waking hour together…
was always weird: they were legally separated for Vance’s entire life. And while there was a legal separation, was there ever a legal reconciliation?
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I am told that when he was in Iraq in the Marines JD Vance spent his time in an air-conditioned office typing up press releases. “REMF”, “Chair-Borne Infantry”, “Feather Merchant”, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Nothing could be stupider than claiming that Donald Trump exemplifies the U.S. Marine virtue of “Semper Fi”. Nothing could more demonstrate JD Vance’s REMF nature than claiming that he does so:
JD Vance: ‘I honor every member of every branch of our armed forces, but the one thing that I think the Marines really do well is we have the best motto. I’m biased with Semper Fidelis—always faithful, right? You hear Marines say it all the time, “Semper Fi”, and to me, what it means is that Marines are always faithful to our country. I want to expound upon it because I really do think that Donald Trump exemplifies that motto…
Nobody could be less like the positive self-image of the Marines than Donald Trump:
Donald Trump: ‘We gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It’s much better than the Congressional Medal of Honor because soldiers get the Congressional. And they’re in very bad shape because they've been hit so many times by bullets or they're dead. She gets it and she's a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal…
RE: Vance as a REMF. I have to admit I spent my military career as a REMF. Too young for Vietnam, too old for the War on Terror. I recall Robert Heinlein wrote an SF novel once "The Glory Road." The hero was a veteran. He noted there are two departments in the military: the Fairy Godmother Department and the Practical Joke Department. Sometimes your personnel file ends up in one department, sometimes the other. With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see that for me, it was Fairy Godmother all the way. So if you're a REMF like Vance, you should count your blessings and keep your mouth shut.
RE: Vance as a REMF. I have to admit I spent my military career as a REMF. Too young for Vietnam, too old for the War on Terror. I recall Robert Heinlein wrote an SF novel once "The Glory Road." The hero was a veteran. He noted there are two departments in the military: the Fairy Godmother Department and the Practical Joke Department. Sometimes your personnel file ends up in one department, sometimes the other. With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see that for me, it was Fairy Godmother all the way. So if you're a REMF like Vance, you should count your blessings and keep your mouth shut.
Yet Another Reminder (thanks, Mr Vance!) that Cadet Bone Spurs HAS a guiding principle. And that it’s
…
“When you’re rich they let you do it”