Trump melts down. Is he okay?

August 9, 2024

Spoiler alert: “No, he’s not okay!” If Trump had a functional family that cared for him, they would have gently guided him away from the microphone at Thursday’s Mar-a-Lago “press conference” and given him a glass of warm milk and a comfy pair of slippers.

Instead, Trump engaged in one of the ripest acts of self-immolation in political history-- during a press conference designed to reassure nervous Republicans that he was serious about this “running for president” thing. He is not. The only open question is whether the press will give Trump 1/100th of the scrutiny they would have given Biden for the same alarming display. (Spoiler alert: No.)

No matter. We can see a pattern developing. When Trump talks to people who aren’t paid to like him, he reveals himself to be equal parts delusional, deceitful, mean, and unintelligible. (Think NABJ convention interview last week.) Trump’s advisers were right to keep him off the campaign trail and under wraps at Trump’s Fantasy Island, er, I mean, Mar-a-Lago. He makes the surly JD Vance look good in comparison.

The correct comparison is Kamala Harris knocking the ball out of the park when accepting the endorsement of the United Auto Workers Union on Thursday. Full video here: Kamala Harris speaks to auto workers. In her remarks, V.P. Harris said that she “believed in” and “trusted” the American people. She credited organized labor for securing improvements in the working conditions for all workers. It was a strong showing by Kamala Harris.

But even as Harris and Walz continued their positive appeal to voters on a six state swing, their campaign found time to issue a withering review of Trump's press conference with the title, “Donald Trump's Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference | Split Screen: Joy and Freedom vs. Whatever the Hell That Was.”

I urge you to read the entire press release (although it is in a computer-unfriendly format, come on Harris-Walz staff!), but in case you don’t, here is how it begins:

Donald Trump took a break from taking a break to put on some pants and host a press conference public meltdown.

We have a lot to say about it. Here are some initial thoughts - with more to come.

He hasn't campaigned all week. He isn't going to a single swing state this week. But he sure is mad Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are getting big crowds across the battlegrounds.

The facts were hard to track and harder to find in Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago meltdown this afternoon.

He lied. He attacked the media. He made excuses for why he's off the campaign trail.

We're here to help because his staff clearly isn't.

Let’s take a look at what the press should be covering (but is not)

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Donald Trump was delusional.

Trump demonstrated that he is detached from reality by making the following preposterous claims:

• Joe Biden’s withdrawal as a candidate was “unconstitutional.” (It wasn’t.)

• Trump's J6 insurrection rally drew more people than Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” (Verifiably false.)

• There was a “peaceful transfer of power” on January 6, 2021. (He watched the violent insurrection live on three televisions.)

• No one died in the J6 insurrection. (Five police officers and two insurrectionists died.)

• Trump's base makes up 75% of American voters. (False.)

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Trump lied continuously.

Almost everything Trump said during the press conference was a lie. Among the biggest lies were these:

• Abortion is a “small issue” that people aren’t concerned about anymore.

• “Everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned.

• He is not campaigning this week to give Democrats time to hold their convention. (The convention starts August 19.)

• Harris and Walz are only drawing 1,000 people to their rallies.

• Democrats support abortion after full term live births. (False.)

• The US is “on the verge of a depression.” (The financial markets posted their biggest gains in two years on Thursday.)

• Joe Biden drained the national petroleum reserves so they are “virtually empty.” (False.)

• Kamala Harris “wants to take away your guns.” (False.)

• Kamala Harris will “force everyone to buy an electric vehicle.” (False.)

• Trump's tax cuts were the biggest in history. (False; six other tax cuts by other presidents were larger.)

• Trump said Democrats would “destroy” Social Security and Medicare. (False.)

• Trump promised not to cut benefits or raise the retirement age for Social Security. (False; he attempted to do so every year he was president.)

• He “disapproved” of the “Lock her up” chants about Hillary Clinton. (False.)

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Trump was rude and insulting.

Trump said the following:

• “If anybody I know is Jewish and they would vote for Kamala over me, they should have their heads examined.”

• Kamala Harris is “not smart” and a “horrible person.”

• Kamala Harris was picked to appeal to “certain people.”

• Tim Walz is “into things nobody’s ever heard of.”

• Josh Shapiro is a “terrible guy” who is “not popular with many people.”

See Vanity Fair, Trump Spews Lies, Disparages Harris’s Intelligence, Insults Jews, and Rambles About “Insane Asylums” in Unhinged Press Conference.

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Trump evaded questions calling for substantive answers.

Watch this clip from Lawrence O’Donnell that demonstrates that Trump did not provide any answers on matters of substance. O’Donnell’s commentary shames reporters who reported that “Trump answered questions” at the press conference. He did not. He responded in Elvish gibberish—which the reporters in attendance obediently transcribed and published. See Aaron Rupar,  Lawrence on Trump's non-answers.

For example, Trump refused to say whether he would order the FDA to suspend access to mifepristone and refused to say how he would vote on Florida’s constitutional amendment restoring access to abortion and reproductive healthcare.

Trump resorted to his “infrastructure week” gambit, saying he would hold a press conference in the future to let us know whether he supports reproductive rights of women Florida. Infrastructure week never arrived—nor will the promised news conference on Trump's position on Florida’s constitutional amendment on the ballot in November.

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Here’s my point:

I have spent too much time on this issue because Trump's press conference was objectively worse than Joe Biden’s debate performance. By a wide margin. As Jennifer Rubin posted,

[The] press should report this as incoherent, displaying mental deterioration. He is unwell. The refusal to explain how unhinged he is and instead to normalize is reprehensible.  

But in addition to the raw display of delusion and mental illness, Trump's “press conference” did not answer questions and consisted almost entirely of lies. And yet, the toughest criticism from the NYTimes lead article was,

“His wide-ranging remarks were sometimes meandering.”

All I can say is, “**** *** ****** ****!”

Did the NYTimes reporters attend the same news conference as the rest of the world???? True, Maggie Haberman and friends did acknowledge that Trump engaged in “evasion” regarding some questions and occasionally gave answers that were “incoherent,” but the general tone was, “This is Trump being Trump,” or as the NYTimes reporters put it, “Much of the news conference was consumed by familiar remarks.”

The news conference should result in demands for Trump to step aside—just as a single debate resulted in calls for Joe Biden to step aside. Sadly, the press will continue the double-standard treatment of Trump that enabled his initial election and post-January 6 rehabilitation. But some commentators in other news outlets are calling the major media to task, especially Lawrence O’Donnell.

As Lawrence O’Donnell explained in a scathing monologue on Thursday, the journalists at the event asked questions that were largely irrelevant, insipid, and ignorant. They did not challenge him on anything of substance about his criminal convictions, Project 2025, or his obvious lies about everything.

I urge you to watch the entire 20-minute segment by Lawrence O’Donnell in which he condemns the reserved, timid performance by the journalists at the Mar-a-Lago press conference. Lawrence: 'Stupidest' candidate Trump did not answer reporters' questions (msnbc.com). Please watch this segment to understand the moral collapse of the press corps covering Trump.

Why? Because the pathetic treatment by the journalists in attendance portends the pathetic performance we should continue to expect from the media as they give Trump a free pass.

No matter. Democrats are done being told by journalists and the media what they should believe. Democrats have taken their fate into their own hands and will not be deterred by a media interested only in horse races and sound-bites.

Democrats know they have a winning ticket and don’t need pollsters, pundits, or the press to tell them what to do. They know. They are demonstrating their resolve and enthusiasm every day—much to the chagrin of a sputtering press.

The even better news is that Trump and his campaign have yet to figure out how to deal with the positive, joyful approach, competence, and strategic brilliance of the Harris Walz campaign. Indeed, Trump's “press conference” on Thursday was supposed to be his breakout moment. Instead, he gave us an on-screen “breakdown” moment in which he dissolved into incoherence and delusion.

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Trump campaign effort to “Swiftboat” Tim Walz fails to gain traction—except at some major media outlets.

Trump's campaign manager is Chris LaCivita. He served as a campaign consultant for George W. Bush in the effort to “Swiftboat” Democratic candidate John Kerry in 2004. The “Swiftboating” effort against Kerry was bank-rolled by Harlan Crow—the billionaire best friend of Justice Thomas. See MSNBC, Trump-Vance adds Swift-boating and birtherism to smear tactics against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Twenty years later, LaCivita is directing a similar attack on Tim Walz, claiming that he retired from the National Guard after 24 years to avoid deployment to Iraq. That claim is false.

The true facts are that Walz announced his retirement (to run for Congress) months before his unit was informed that it would be deployed to Iraq a year later. Moreover, the National Guard could have refused Walz’s request if the retirement would have affected the appropriate force levels for the deployment. The National Guard granted Walz’s retirement request.

For an excellent summary of the true facts, I highly recommend Adam Kinzinger’s Substack, The Swiftboating of Walz is Sick, Inaccurate, and Will Fail.

But as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo wrote today, the New York Times and WaPo have taken Chris LaCivita’s Swiftboating clickbait. See Talking Points Memo, Times and WaPo Jump On Board Trump Camp Swift Boating of Walz.

As Marshall writes,

The Post’s and the Times‘ pieces on Tim Walz service record are more egregious and spurious than you’re probably able to imagine. The accusations come from two members of his unit who are clearly MAGA partisans and who floated them during his 2022 reelection campaign for Minnesota governor in coordination with Walz’s Republican opponent.

The attacks aren’t just “like” the Swift Boat attacks from 2004. They’re literally the work of the same guy. Chris LaCivita was the strategist who ran the Swift Boat attacks in 2004 and cut the commercials. He’s now the co-manager of the Trump campaign. He started this and then handed it off to Vance. [¶]

I’m not surprised the Trump campaign is going there. I mean, they’re vicious degenerates and professional liars. But even more generally, campaigns put out lots of tendentious attacks. “Fair” isn’t part of the political campaign framework.

But we should expect a lot better from the country’s leading dailies, especially charges directly from a campaign that contain so many red flags. Once a major paper picks up a hit and gives it credulous coverage it stops being a campaign attack and becomes a “story.” It’s a very specific kind of editorial decision.

As I’ve explained in other posts, there’s been a growing push, especially at the Times but more generally, that Harris’s campaign momentum has been going on too long and needs to come to an end.

Please re-read that last paragraph: The New York Times has decided that the enthusiastic reception for Kamala Harris’s candidacy has gone on too long and wants it to end.

So, just as the Times’ editors decided to trash Joe Biden for refusing to sit down for an interview with its publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, they have now decided to take Tim Walz down a notch because . . . well, because they won’t sell as many newspapers if Harris and Walz build an insurmountable lead in the next month.

As I wrote several days ago, when the obituary of the New York Times is written, its shameful editorial decisions in covering the 2016 (“But her emails”) and 2024 (“Insurrection? Felonies? What about Biden’s stutter and age?) will be a proximate cause of its demise.

The good news is that veterans’ groups are not buying the Swiftboating attempt—which is alienating and offending other veterans who admire Walz’s career in the National Guard. See Statement of VoteVets Chairman and Iraq War Veteran Jon Soltz on Tim Walz being selected as Vice President Harris's Running Mate and VoteVets Makes Historic First-Ever Endorsement for President - VoteVets.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. qualifies in Texas

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has qualified for the ballot in sixteen states, including Texas. While Democrats worried greatly about the effect of an RFK Jr. candidacy on Joe Biden’s prospects, current polling shows that RFK Jr. is eroding support for Trump in the Harris v. Trump race. See WaPo, RFK Jr. and the third-party effect are now hurting Trump.

Since Trump supporters funded RJK Jr. as a stealth anti-Biden candidate, the lesson is—once again—”Be careful what you wish for.”

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Opportunities for Reader engagement

Join a 30-minute Zoom call with “Dems Make Life Better.”

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If you can't make the meeting, it's easy to get started on your own at the Dems Make Life Better website. 

As our future vice president says, "We can sleep when we're dead.” Let’s wear our Dem pride wherever we go and win this!

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Join Swing Left San Gabriel Valley and Jessica Craven to discuss Project 2025

"What Project 2025 Is All About with Jessica Craven"

We all know to some extent the dangers that Project 2025 poses to our government and to the people of the United States. But do we know enough to discuss those dangers with people who have little if any knowledge about this plan? Because knowledge is power, Swing Left San Gabriel Valley is inviting you to a tutorial on Project 2025, which will be delivered by the one and only Jessica Craven. The event will be on Zoom on Thursday, August 15 at 5:30 pm Pacific, 8:30 pm Eastern.

During our meeting, Jessica will discuss Project 2025, explain why knowing about it matters, and describe what actions we can take to prevent a takeover of our country. After Jessica speaks, there will be a Q&A.  

Sign up here.

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Concluding Thoughts

If that’s all they got, Republicans are in deep trouble—as they should have been all along. Trump stepped up to the plate today because he believed “I alone can save the campaign.” Instead, he inflicted another significant injury on his prospects with independents and fed-up Republicans.

We knew that these attacks would come and we should have expected that the press would return to form as soon as possible. There may be more, but one would expect Republicans to lead with their worst. The attacks thus far have failed to break the stride of V.P. Harris and Governor Walz and are backfiring against Trump and Vance.

We still have the Democratic Convention to look forward to—which will be joyful for many reasons. We should expect great speeches from Joe Biden, Tim Walz, and Kamala Harris. And the entertainment should be a step up from Kid Rock, Russell Brand, and Hulk Hogan!

So, we have endured the first attacks and have come out strong and (apparently) unscathed. In the process, Trump raised serious questions about his mental state. Now, if we could only get the major media outlets to apply the same standard of scrutiny they applied to Joe Biden . . . .

We genuinely have every reason to be hopeful but no reason to be complacent.

Talk to you tomorrow!

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Below is the Cocoon Nebula, a nursery for “young stellar objects”—i.e., stars in formation. The nebula is 4,000 light-years from Earth and is 15 light-years in diameter. The massive central star (visible in the photo) provides the energy for the emitted and reflected light that makes the nebula visible to Earth-based telescopes. Taken from my backyard in Los Angeles, CA with a 60-minute exposure using a Celestron Origin telescope.