After a couple of people fainted at Donald Trump's town hall tonight, he got flustered and decided to give up and just play a bunch of his musical faves instead of continuing:
“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said.
For 39 minutes, Trump swayed, bopped — sometimes stopping to speak — as he turned the event into almost a living-room listening session of his favorite songs from his self-curated rally playlist.
Here's the Washington Post's clip:
Trump did this for more than half an hour, just nodding at the audience as he swayed awkwardly to the music. What in God's name is going on with this man? He's crumbling practically hour by hour in front of our eyes.
This is truly weird. He does seem to be rapidly dementing into a vegetable.
+1
He’s ill.
Good thing the media is on top of the situation as much as they were when Joe Biden was showing signs of cognitive decline
/s
i think you mean you & our bloghost mr. drum need to be as on top of this as you were your demands for biden not merely to relinquish the democrat nomination but also the presidency.
"relinquish the democrat nomination"
Use of the noun "democrat" instead of the adjective "democratic" is a right-wing tell.
Smarter trolls, please.
I miss the old days when Kevin’s trolls weren’t so tedious and boring.
I mean, his handle is rather a give away, too. Lol.
Also a known regular.
@lactating
I can recommend some solid ESL programs. DM me.
The good news is that the NY Times covered it at all, although online it takes a while scrolling down the Politics page. It's actually more visible on the home page, although not the top story. It's running on a par with Harris campaigning in Pennsylvania, slanted as a she's in trouble story. (The Times loves that.)
The bad news is that the article never once speaks of cognitive decline or impairment. It's all about his bond with the extremists who attend his rallies, which of course is valid, too. But still . . .
So they took Cheungs propaganda and ran with it. Good to know the NYT is basically an extention of the Trump campaigns disinformation network. Along with all if not most of the rest of the so called MSM.
You people just don’t understand. When it comes to defending our liberty and our democracy or descending into the worst kind of fascism and racist authoritarianism, the NYT feels strongly that journalistic values demand it stay neutral.
+1
bullshit. i repeat, bullshit. trump has been exposed for what he is since he came down that escalator in 2015. hell, on national tv during the covid crisis he actually suggested that drinking chlorine or shoving a uv light up one's anal opening or down one's throat as cures for the virus and you think the NYT's journalistic standards are the problem? bullshit. the electorate is the problem.
It may demand journalist stay neutral, but headlines (not written by the journalists) and story placement are far from neutral.
That's bias.
Digby had a great post about this a few days ago.
The difference is that Biden's debate performance caused Democratic leaders and donors to freak the fuck out and move to take him off the ticket. Republican leaders and donors look at this shit and go "Excellent! He's more out of it and easier to manipulate than ever!"
Exactly. He's always been vulnerable to manipulation. Flattery goes a long way with Trump.
It's on the front page of my Washington Post digital edition. That's the good news. The bad news: WaPo and NY Times might have swayed the Democratic voters, but none of the *independent* thinkers, who will be determining our next president, pays attention to things like that.
I remain skeptical that Trump is showing significant signs of dementia. So far, everything can be explained (e.g. falsehoods, mixed up names/places, incoherent statements) as a hardened sociopath who has contempt for everybody - supporters and opponents. Probably the best example of Trump appearing to some as disordered is his reply to a question about tariffs: "100%, 200%, maybe 500%, I don't care". It's not that he's struggling to come up with a sensible answer that involves facts and details. He simply doesn't care.
I think that eventually (but unlikely before election day) he will completely wig out, on the level of taking a dump on stage or using scissors to cut the tie of any man who gets near him. That will be spectacular and fun to watch. But it's not happening now.
You are right, for better or for worse.
He's done some long form interviews (Flagrant pocast, Lex Fridman, etc) where he is obviously lucid. Dumb and lying, yes, but clearly aware of what is going on around him. The "Trump is demented" trope is not persuasive at this point and not going to stick.
Is that how dementia works? Any moment of lucidity shows that everything is fine?
I'd gotten the idea that there were highs and lows, and as the condition worsened, the lows got more frequent and longer-lasting and, well, lower.
This episode with the music could be some deeply strange whim of a capable and healthy person, I guess. But it seems rather more likely that the guy has episodes where he can't function, and what we're seeing here is a coping strategy that was hastily improvised when one of these episodes arrived at an inopportune time.
Your understanding of dementia is correct.
This is my experience as a caregiver as well.
That would suggest he'd be lucid enough to know he was losing it in the moment, which is not really how dementia works, but it is how exhaustion and anxiety work.
That would suggest he'd be lucid enough to know he was losing it in the moment, which is not really how dementia works,
I'm not so sure about that. What you say could be valid most of the time, but I believe there are absolutely dementia-affected persons who suffer episodes when they *know* something's wrong—and experience related stress and anxiety in such moments—even if they can't quite put their finger on it.
👍👍👍👍👍
And Christi Noem talked to him like a kindergarten teacher suggesting they play a song, apparently wanting him to end his random greatest hits answers. He didn't seem to know what she meant and she had to say, you know, the song you chose. (Not quotes. Not bothering.) That was the beginning of 38 minutes worth.
I have, for a long time, held the view that when Trump acts like this it is because he’s sleep deprived. As I understand it he sleeps about 4 hours per night. He has been doing a lot of traveling in the last few days and it doesn’t surprise me he is acting “out of it”. But he has been acting a lot more weird lately. Could be lack of sleep and old age or something more serious. Hard to tell with him.
Dehydration is supposed to be a common geriatric issue that can bring on dementia-like symptoms and odd behavior. And it isn't exactly an inconceivable condition for someone who's spending a lot of time in aircraft cabins or under stage lights for two or three hours at a time. I think I remember pics of him sweating pretty copiously on stage.
Urinary incontinence and dehydration can go hand in hand. You avoid drinking so you don't wet yourself, and your mind starts to wander. Saw it on Doc Martin--his solution was drinking and diapers.
Not to mention UTI's and the salt balance being thrown way off.
A man of Trump’s age who can repeatedly stand at a podium for 90 minutes without needing to pee? You may be onto something.
Diaper rumors about trump-- well, Depends, to be precise-- have been pretty prominent for months. But almost always about other incontinences.
I remember that episode, but only now that you mention it. The dehydration thing has been kind of in the news off and on over recent years.
I'm old. I need a drink.
I only average 3-4 hours of sleep per night. I'm 71 and still there. I think.
How would you be if you were traveling coast to coast giving speeches in front of thousands while wearing a suit? And in one of those stops it was over 100 degrees. In the place he was speaking it was, apparently, very hot. I’m 72 and usually sleep around 7 hours and I would be out of it for sure.
Thing is, we’ve seen him like this before. There’s lots of video with him acting like he doesn’t know where he is and just kind of wandering around. The reason he took that phony baloney “cognitive test” that he “aced” was because of rumors he had dementia. That was years ago. So, like I said, it’s really hard to tell with him. And of course he did a lot of accusation regarding Biden having dementia and as we all know with Trump every accusation is a confession.
This is exactly the point. Take dementia off the table and he's still too old to be the President. I speak as a 75 year old. I don't have the stamina for the job and the 5500+ residents of our 55+ community would largely agree.
I'd also observe that it has LONG been discussed -- and I think broadly accepted -- that the dude uses stimulants, specifically Adderall, and the fact is that stuff both wears off after a dose and becomes less effective with longtime use. He can be up and on for a specific, scheduled, short-period event but then crash. So I definitely wouldn't conclude much from occasional periods of sharpness and lucidity other than that he hasn't COMPLETELY lost it.
This makes no sense. Trump very much wants to win the election, and if he were really as cognitively healthy as you suggest, he would try to maximize his chances of winning. That would mean appearing sharp, focused and well-prepared in these situations.
Trump has a supreme narcissistic self-belief - so his own perspective appears generally what he likes is the best way. Cognitively healthy in terms of not having dementia properly speaking and being entirely well-grounded rationally are two entirely different things.
In any case the reality of is he in dementia - unknowable really from a distance - is besides the point.
A mentally declining unwell Trump political narrative, like that used on Biden is a political ploy.
Perhaps well framed, true or not, it can eat at some margins.
Trump has a supreme narcissistic self-belief - so his own perspective appears generally what he likes is the best way.
Maybe. But that hasn't stopped Trump from acting rationally in the past when his priorities are on the line. He's often been willing to mend fences with former antagonists, for example (eg Musk, DeSantis, McConnell). He's also beaten a strategic retreat on policy issues when political expediency demands. And by all appearances he's kept one step ahead of law enforcement authorities and the IRS, SEC etc for literally decades. He's not a learned or well-educated man. But at one point Trump appeared to be a shrewd one. That seems over.
Trump possesses a monstrous ego, of that there's no doubt. But it seems to me only a fool would deliberately appear so off his game in the closing stages of a very close election (when who knows what will be the difference-maker?).
Unlike a lot of Democrats, I'm not a fan of the "Why isn't Harris up by ten points?" line. I don't think the objective "fundamentals" picture is all that rosy for the Democratic brand this cycle (nor for incumbents throughout the rich world). I suspect a sharp, focused and younger GOP nominee would probably be a fairly strong favorite (imagine Harris running against Pierre Poilievre). So why does the polling so consistently show Trump behind Harris? The obvious answer is candidate quality. Again, deliberately engaging in such bizarre behavior isn't what we'd expect from a rational person in full cognitive health—not when so much is on the line (in Trump's case, quite possibly his freedom).
And Trump is nearly eighty, after all, and by all accounts has long exhibited the dietary habits (if not the drinking habits) of a sailor on shore leave. Occam's razor to me suggests cognitive decline. YMMV.
(And yes, Trump mostly appears robust in terms of bodily health, physical strength, locomotion, etc—so cognitive issues aren't as readily apparent as was the case with Biden.)
From what I hear, Trump doesn't drink alcohol.
From other posts on this thread, it appears he doesn't drink water, either.
Must be pure coke in his veins.
maybe trump just understands, as do you, that kamala is such a terrible candidate he cam sleepwalking to an electoral romp.
*can sleepwalk
Well now that IS some thoughtful and persuasive reasoning ...it hasn't been clear for some time that drum, jasper, ruralhobo, & danadecker are team trump?
"maybe trump just understands, as do you, that kamala is such a terrible candidate he cam sleepwalking to an electoral romp." Sounds like you're the closeted Trump cult member. She's no where near a horrible candidate. Trump is far worse.
I almost starting the think Lactation is Moscow-based. Or maybe even Beijing-based. There's just something a bit weirdly "off" about his troll game. Would kinda make sense.
In 2016 it was readily apparent that it least one of Kevin’s trolls was Russian based.
Oh, before then.
lol
You can point out previous elections she's lost that will support your point.
Oh, can't?
2020 democrat presidential primary.
first candidate to drop. after bloomberg news published a scathing report on her campaign boondoggle.
Which doesn't support your point at all, because that was her first national exposure and dropping out was the obviously better move.
What would have happened if she hadn't, where would she be now? In the Senate, and maybe running as someone or other's VP.
No professional here, but in years of caring for a relative with slowly advancing dementia, it's not like it's evident consistently and in all things -- there are periods of full lucidity and periods of real disconnection, and there's a lot of middle-ground as well, which become evident by contrast with the periods of full lucidity.
There's no question at all in my mind that he has deteriorated materially, and has been doing so more rapidly recently -- which also is typical according to what I've read.
It's true he doesn't care about them -- look at what he and his campaign did in CA -- but he has always taken care to SEEM to care, because he wants attention and adoration.. He has always taken cues from his crowds, tried stuff out and responded to their responses, worked on getting them worked up. Now he doesn't even do that. Plus there is his increasingly disjointed train of thought -- he always rolled along from topic to topic, but again he was "surfing the crowd." Now he's just splashing randomly in the waves and occasionally getting sucked under entirely.
I can't imagine this guy actually making decisions in a crisis. Other people would do it -- he'd effectively abdicate the Presidency. He's a security risk.
I REALLY hope there is more coverage of this sort of thing. It's something that even low-info voters will notice.
+10 for the last two paragraphs in particular.
bbleh says "I can't imagine this guy actually making decisions in a crisis. Other people would do it -- he'd effectively abdicate the Presidency. He's a security risk."
On the contrary, if he's not actually making the decisions we may be better off. Or at least would be if we still had people of the caliber of John Kelly in the government, but unfortunately we're more likely to see the likes of Steve Bannon and Mike Lindell.
I don't particularly want Stephen Miller and Michael Flynn making decisions in a crisis.
I have no idea what's going on or not with him, but generally with dementia or other aging deficits in my experience people wiil go on and on with very detailed and accurate stories from long ago. My father would, remembering events in high school while I have never had such detailed recall of that time.
Donald has been doing a whole lot of referencing movies and movie stars like Hannibal Lecter from 33 years ago or stars of the 1950's. But MAGA really means recreating the world of the 1950's when he grew up in a mansion in Forest Hills. Except without the unions or income tax rates.
He's definitely showing signs of cognitive decline, which may or may not be due to clinical dementia. I still think that he's simply so stupid, it's largely indistinguishable from dementia.
He's tired. He may have cognitive ability issues but you're right, he just doesn't care and is tired of pretending that he does. The wigging out will be when he loses and refuses to accept that fact. He will go out kicking and screaming like a mad man and take most of his cult along for the ride. January 6th will look like a peaceful campaign rally compared to what's coming.
Except Biden is the President this time. There will be no Jan. 6 in 2025. The National Guard will see to that.
It will be much worse before that. Unless it is overwhelming by Harris, there will "stochastic terrorism" campaign against election officials to try to mess it up.
Trump supporters didn't realize in 2020 that Trump really wants them to subvert the elections. They do now.
And they don't need to win the electoral college, they just need to stop certification of enough swing states that Harris doesn't have majority, and then it goes to the House and voted by state.
This is a really serious charge; a federal crime to public officials who swear an oath to fulfill those duties faithfully and honorably.
I do believe there are a few people at state levels Trump could subvert; but not enough in small communities where election officials are sworn to do an honest job will manage to flip enough blue towns to flip a state, let alone the electoral college.
Yes, the threats are real; but I suspect all they will really do is make it more difficult to find poll workers and so make the results take longer.
"This is a really serious charge; a federal crime to public officials who swear an oath to fulfill those duties faithfully and honorably."
jfc, the point isn't that Trump will be able to subborn thousands of otherwise oath-swearing upstanding public servants, it's that team MAGA has spent the past 4 years putting as many MAGA weirdos as possible into positions previously held by such public servants.
And it's also not as if every one of these MAGA fools is thinking to themselves "Haha, now that I've snuck my way into my local electoral apparatus, I will do some Crimes!"--they are a mishmash of idiots and crazies who believe that the Dems are doing a big vote fraud and/or that "illegals" are voting twice and/or that hand-recounts are superior to machine counts and/or that sharpies and ballot boxes have to be carefully, carefully and suspiciously scrutinized (esp. if the votes are from big cities full of you-know-whos), plus, yeah, some corrupt folks too.
And they don't have to, either individually or in toto, flip votes such that a 53-47 Harris tally turns into a 51-49 Trump tally. They just have to do things as stupid and mundane as noting that the hand recount took a week and yet somehow this county that Harris carried heavily has slightly different numbers than the machine count, so we'll have to do another weeklong hand recound (and maybe another after that) until we can certify.
There were no irregularities in the 2020 election, and yet somehow Trump and his merry band of crazies convinced a majority of republicans that Trump had won and that Biden had cheated. This time around, what do you think will happen if there are "legit" irregularities coming in from dozens of counties across the handful of swing states?
We have to worry about January 6th style behavior at the state level this time. There are red states already prepped to delay certification with all sorts of shenanigans.
This is one reason I have maintained that early voting is a bad idea, especially this year with people voting 45 (!) days before the actual election.
If there is any line Trump's behavior can cross that will change MAGA minds, it will be too late to have any effect because all those folks will have already cast their vote.
Hello everyone. I should have been clearer. Trump *has* declined mentally and does show symptoms of dementia. All true. For me, the important issue this election year is, "Is Trump's dementia unambiguous to the general public and the press?"
When sociopathy and dementia are comingled, it's hard to say what actions are for which reason. Especially since sociopathy is a great shield for hiding another underlying mental problem. And I think we see that when Trump occasionally has difficulty thinking, so he brings out the sociopath model and insults whoever dares to inquire.
Here’s how it’s being spun:
“Something very special is happening in Pennsylvania right now at the Trump townhall. @realDonaldTrump is unlike any politician in
history, and it's great.”
“Total lovefest at the PA townhall! Everyone was so excited they were fainting so @realDonaldTrump turned to music. Nobody wanted to leave and
wanted to hear more songs from the famous DJT Spotify playlist!”
That’s from Steven Cheung’s twitter.
This is cult and very unhealthy at this scale.
This is fair. People who come to a Trump rally don't expect disciplined discourse on policy issues: they come for the vibes. This is literally Trump vibing.
At this point the people who follow Trump seem to have a lot in common with the people who followed Rajneesh.
Frogwan Baksheesh! India's answer to Harol Hill.
Personality cults all share the same basic characteristics.
As do autocracies, which are national personality cults I guess. I doubt that Donald has studied any but manages to do everything they all do, as refined and codified for modern times (well, the 1930s) by the Austrian guy.
" I doubt that Donald has studied ..."
He apparently "from time to time" read "book of Hitler's collected speeches". It seems to be the only book he ever read.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trumps-history-adolf-hitler-nazi-writings-analysis/story?id=105810745
Yep. They harvest beans and he drives by and waves to them from one of his 100 Rolls Royces.
The irony is, so many of Trump's evangelical supporters will tell you that every non-evangelical Christian denomination, from Mormons to Seventh Day Adventists and even Catholicism, is a "cult," and then describe the exact kind of behavior they display towards Trump, tut-tutting the whole time. "Who believes this nonsense?" they'll say, without a twinge of self-awareness. It's incredible.
All political rallies are really about vibes -- getting people excited about turning out and supporting the candidate. Harris and Walz talk about what they'd like to do if elected, but a lot of it is rah-rah applause lines more than serious "discourse on policy issues." That's why it's called a rally.
WTF sort of swaying listlessly on a stage for a half hour to an easy pop playlist (consisting mostly of artists whose lawyers have sent you CDOs) is about, I have no goddamn idea. Is "dazed and confused" a vibe?
Is "Dazed and Confused" on their playlist?
Anyhow, why doesn't the media cover the Harris and/or Walz rallies as much as they cover Trump? If they did, even if there were viral moments that could come in for criticism - or especially if there were - maybe people would get a better sense of that excitement and we wouldn't be left with this impression of a fading campaign.
This is why Cheung gets the big bucks, to make this kind of lemonade . . .
lemon flavored kool-aid, perhaps
+1 to both kahner and Altoid
sounds a lot like the nytimes writeup of the closing 30 minutes of the townhall.
Mr. Cheung seems to be more of a Joseph Goebbels than Stephen Miller or Corey Lewandowski are. Which is impressive in a sad demented sort of way.
I get the impression that Mr Cheung is on loan from Kim Jung-un.
+1
Someone please take the clip in the middle and start a meme, "Hall of the Presidents TrumpBot goes haywire"
+1
Crumbling and might still win in 3 weeks.
Word has been circulating all day about Harris having agreed to a Fox sit-down with Baier and working on going on with Joe Rogan. So trump has been bad-mouthing Fox on his Truth Solipsis feed and he likely can't have an answer for the Rogan appearance because, I think, Rogan has already said he can't support him. And Rogan might be one of the few who could actually out-talk him if it came to that, so potentially a dangerous appearance if he did it.
One thing we know from experience is that trump will do and say literally anything to grab media cycles. He's already gone on forever with outrageously flagrant lies that are so out there even he might not be able to top them enough to grab attention. So it's possible this is just a different ploy to get ink and links-- NYT will headline it something about "a new chill trump" or some BS like that.
OTOH he's under exponentially more pressure than he's ever experienced in his life and for much higher personal stakes and he hasn't seemed like a guy who's able to keep himself centered. Maybe he really did zone out tonight, then.
I've expected that at some point he'll just drop a few n-bombs or start yelling in tongues or something, complete decompensation, but so far that seems to be showing up on Truth Solipsis and really nowhere else. Unless it'll take the form of more extravagant lying about anything and everything, in which case how will anyone know?
The election will be won or lost at the margins. Per my reading, the best estimates are that about 5% of voters remain undecided. if these voters break 3 to 2 for Harris, she probably wins. So, who knows what will be the decisive factors in the end? There are still three weeks left: it’s not inconceivable that this critically important issue—candidate fitness—might yet have teeth.
To me this shows his lack of stamina. He virtually gave up on the schtick. He's old and tired and it's showing.
Being the same age as Trump, this rings a bell with me. He's doing a lot of things, rally after rally, that he shouldn't have to do. The same thing, day after day. Remember, he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and he'd be fine. If he wants to cut the questions and sway to music he will be loved all the more for it. He's a god.
But no issue, no matter how critically important, will have an effect on the election except to the undecided voters (I blame early voting for most of this). My sense is that undecided voters tend to break more for Trump than for Harris, for whatever reason.
Joe Rogan seems to just go along with whatever b.s. his current guest is spewing. He rarely pushes back against the nonsense. Just look at the Terrance Howard interview. He's a platform to grift and spread conspiracy theories. Not sure why Harris would want to go on his podcast.
I think rogan never pushing back is exactly why she would want to go on. She can speak to his massive audience and he's unlikely to make strong, consistent attacks with right wing propaganda or talk over or and cut her off as much as other options to reach them. At this point, with how close the race is, it's probably worth a try. I imagine a lot of the remaining persuadable voters may have never heard harris speak outside of deceptively edited clips on fox news or right wing radio and podcasts.
I'm just afraid he will pick this interview to be serious and will push back just to prove he's not just a talking head. Time will tell.
he also seems quite stupid/ignorant, so even if he tried i'm pretty confident in harris' ability to come out on top in that battle of wits.
+1. He is very ignorant/stupid. Good point.
Because she's got our votes but she doesn't yet have their votes. Joe Rogan ain't my cup of tea, but he's got an audience of like 17 million subscribers. She's trying to get some of them.
And I say more power to her.
Rogan doesn't really know anything that doesn't have to do with steroids or MMA, so if you drill down into policy or science or whatever, he just sort of nods and goes along with whatever the guest is saying. That's how he ends up platforming so many kooks and grifters. I think he's finally realized that Terrance Howard is a few sandwiches short of a picnic, though.
Anyway, I have no problem with Harris going on the podcast. He's not going to ask her a bunch of hostile questions or anything and will probably say he's impressed with how smart she sounds.
Still 3 weeks left. General health/overall fitness for office is arguably the single most important issue. After all, even if you prefer MAGA policies, do you really not care who gets the launch codes? Here's to hoping the media properly covers this, and voters finally notice. But I just checked WaPo.com. The link (naturally!) is about seven articles from the top, in small print.
Most people really don't care who gets the launch codes, no. MAGA policies or no-MAGA policies are more important to them.
You can watch the whole thing via PBS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FhvhdVSZE
He seemed confused at the end about what was going to happen. Kristi Noem, puppy killer, had to remind him that he wanted to play a couple of songs. What were they?
First was "Time to Say Goodbye" by Bocelli and Brightman.
There's a story there in that first person he spoke towards the end of the first song. Watch it. The woman's daughter goes to shake his hand and he moves away and ignores it.
Second song, James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's Man's World".
Then he announced they were going to play YMCA, a clear violation of the Village People's demand to cease and desist.
After that, he wondered why people weren't leaving. So they played...Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2 U". Another clear violation of O'Connor's cease and desist.
EAiAC. Every accusation is a confession from Republicans. They bitched loudly about Biden being old and feeble minded. That tells me that Trump definitely has full blown dementia.
Watch Gov. Noem in those clips. The look on her face changes from "WTF" when Trump isn't looking to "sycophantic adoration" when he might look at her.
To him she's a distraction, but not in a good way.
Who cares who has the launch codes as long as it's someone who forgets them. I think a lot of people just want to vote for Something Else. Something where policy doesn't matter, or seriousness, or other things that encumber lives. What they'll get is JD Vance who must already be thinking of when he can 25th Trump.
He's worse than Trump. Trump lies constantly but with no forethought. Vance lies constantly but with conviction. Harris needs to win. A Trump win is a loss for everyone else.
Vance is also a child, politically speaking. He reads to me like somebody who wholeheartedly believes the idiocy he's speaking because, like a college student drunk on the ability to stay up until 3AM talking "philosophy" with his dorm-mates, he thinks his ideas are new and important and oh-so obvious.
He lacks the maturity or the wisdom to realize that his rapid fervent adoption and abandonment of one set of ideas followed by equally fervent adoption of another is not an indication that he's Right This Time, but that maybe he ought to be a bit more self-reflective and humble.
He's almost as much of a narcasist as Trump. Narcasists don't do self reflection and humility. Nor do most of the GOP or they'd realize that Trump has done more harm to their brand than he's done any good and would have gotten rid of him by now. They had ample opportunities to do so.
Vance is also a child, politically speaking. He reads to me like somebody who wholeheartedly believes the idiocy he's speaking because...
I can't peer into Vance's soul, so you could absolutely be right. But the vibe I personally get from him is that he's one of the most deeply cynical politicians I've ever seen. Like Ted Cruz, but quite honestly a lot smoother and more skilled. He's dangerous as fuck.
+1
To do a 180 on everything he claimed to believe just a few years ago for no other reason than sheer political opportunism, you have to the most craven, soulless motherfucker imaginable.
That's Vance!
+1
"but quite honestly a lot smoother and more skilled."
Not at all. He's ok at pitching to the audience he speaks to, but (esp. for a freaking millenial) he's very, very bad at remembering that everything you say is recorded.
A smooth, skilled politician doesn't rant about cat ladies and nationwide abortion bans on some troglodyte podcast, and then act confused when the mass news cycles are about how weird and unpopular his views are. A smooth, skilled politician doesn't double down on moronic pet-eating bullshit that alienates people interested in solutions to the real problems they face. And a smooth, skilled politician on the national stage certainly doesn't have an approval rating in the mid-thirties. Dude's a loser.
Vance is only dangerous because he's a blood-and-soil ideologue, and because idiot republicans chose even bigger idiot Trump and he--like an idiot--chose Vance, so now Vance is a coinflip away from the Naval Observatory. It's definitely not because Vance is somehow Regan redux or conservative Obama.
I'm not happy to observe this, but my observation is that Vance has rapidly gotten better on the stump, IOW a quick study when it comes to a national campaign.
He is getting more and more demented. I have seen this in old family members. This is what it looks like. If he looses the election, and the trials go on about J6 and the documents, watch his lawyers pull an insanity plea.
I have seen several clips that make me think, "this is about the time we took the car keys away and stopped letting them use the toaster alone."
Amendment 25, here we come...
They'll just shunt him off to some impressive looking side office and keep calling him Mr. President, and he'll never know the difference.
If he ever tried to use a toaster in real life he'd get his enormous tie stuck in it.
not sure you can plead guilty because I was sane when I did it but I'm not any more. I suppose they could go for not competent to stand trial, but that still means incarceration, yes?
It could be convincingly argued that he has not been competent to understand the charges against him for quite a while.
He is definitely having cognitive issues. Has had them awhile. But this seems to be indicative of exhaustion. The constant lying and name calling would take a toll on anyone. Include the fact that it's not having the desired effect proves this is him just giving up. To have a sure win slip through his fingers and be behind or tied this close to the election must also annoy him to no end. He never had the temperament to be president. He no longer has the stamina either. Not that he had much to begin with.
I don’t think he believes he is behind or tied. He was behind in the polls in 2016 and 2020 and overperformed in both elections, winning the EC in 2016. He’s likely convinced himself that he will pull it off again. But he’s also hedging his chances by working the refs furiously. In his mind, that may be less a fear that he’s losing, more a continuation of his lifelong feeling that some elite or other looks down on him, and wants to see him fail, and is working to that end. Because he’s from Queens and not the Upper East Side, or because UPenn isn’t Harvard or Yale, or whatever he thinks makes him the victim of cheaters who has to “fight like hell” to overcome them.
I don't think it's dementia. I think it's more likely the effects of long term Adderall use and sleep deprivation
Dementia? Lack of sleep? Adderall? Dehydration? Why not all of the above?
very well could be but he's always had this disorganized thinking, even as a younger man. I think he's dyslexic or has some type of intellectual disability and he refuses to admit it or correct for it.
Fetal alcohol syndrome.
He definitely can't read. If that's just because he's stubborn and refused to learn, or if he has bad dyslexia and just never admitted it or treated it, I have no idea. But it's why he never reads briefing papers or sticks to a script or a teleprompter and always chooses to veer off on one of his patented "weaves" (aka nonsensical word salad). He's functionally illiterate.
There is a reason some churches have long sessions of praise singing, usually before the sermon: The music helps believers connect with the Holy Spirit. Trump has now turned that on its head. His bumbling "sermon" came first, followed by a musical attempt to connect his true believers to a most unholy spirit.
Is this a sign of typical Trump incompetence, or have his followers become a religion that worships Trump?
The maga movement was always cult like, or cult lite. As time goes by and he gets more desperate it's evolving into a full fledged cult.
All these comments are astute but entirely beside the point they are missing. in all likelihood, a second Trump presidency will last as long as six months or however long it takes to confirm a compliant Cabinet. JD Vance is as much a creature of Leonard Leo as he is of Peter Thiel.
Trump is the key to the Whitehouse. Nothing more. He has no clue he's being used. Worse yet, he thinks he's the one in charge.
I think that's the expectation/plan for Vance and his backers.
Trump wins and brings madness and terror.
He is replaced (25A an option).
Vance steps up and delivers radical change with a calmer voice.
NYT, MSM express relief.
Then one clip with the man in black is funny. He seems bored and his clapping seems like he's just going through the motions with little to no enthusiasm. Trump isn't the only one tired of the theatrics.
I posted the following in the WaPo this morning in their article of this unsettling event:
OK, was it one of the Nazis' co-national anthems, the Deutschlandlied ("Deutschland, Deutschland über alles") or the Horst-Wessel-Lied (written by the titular "martyred" Nazi brown-shirted street thug)?
Or perhaps Die Wacht am Rhein, the 19th century German patriotic (and explicitly anti-French) song that Major Strasser and the boys sang at Rick's in Casablanca until Paul Henreid and his compatriots drowned them out with La Marseillaise. (This movie buff's favorite scene in his favorite movie. Many of the actors and the bulk of the extras in the scene were real life refugees from Nazi Europe; the emotions onscreen were real which is why it resonates so much even with viewers unaware of that fact. Unfortunately, soon many American refugees may be similarly singing in European cafes.)
Quibble, The Deutschlandlied never belonged to the Nazis, it was written a century earlier by a republican to promote unification of the fragmented German states, and adopted as the national anthem by the Weimar Republic.
I did not know that. That is one of my favorite scenes as well.
He's like the Ingrateful Dead.
The new spin off from the walking dead? The walking ingrateful dead. Or the swaying ingrateful dead. lol.
The Zombie Shuffle is the new dance that's driving kids to blindly walk off a cliff.
Whole new meaning to Dead Head.
Every time you and the rest of the media and comedians post video's of t-Rump being his demented self, it is free air time for him. He loves it. It's free! Time to just post an audio or written piece. No more photo's or video's. Why front his agenda.
This. I am tearing my hair out about all the people saying that what Kamala needs to do is just run ads of Trump saying crazy stuff. That's like advising coke to adopt an advertising campaign of giving away free pepsi.
Thinking about Noem having to put up with this for 39 minutes gives me a small amount of joy.
The Columbia to his Frankenfurter.
People look confused, not enthused.
I'm thinking the GOP is probably shifting gears right now, and hoping Trump can hang on enough to win so that they can get a President Vance.
Then when he's had enough he just wanders off.
Giving the audience what they paid for.
😄😄
Again...
Harris has to get back to happy warrior mode. Back to "we believe in America" and asking her supporters to believe in America too.
Want to attack Trump and Vance? Let others to the dementia/Fascist thing. Concentrate on their whining, the "I saw it on TV" and "You weren't going to fact check" things.
Please do this now. Get rid of Hillary's advisors...they failed last time.
and they ever popular, "Let's build a brighter future for everyone in our country", then break into "This land..."
I thought Harris’ best line of attack was against his narcissicism; when in the debate she pointed out that he talks about himself, not the American people, he replied and proved her point. Walz took this tack recently, noting TFG’s lack of concern for VP Pence’s safety, he asked the audience, ‘do you think he cares about you?’
Leaving aside for a moment speculation about what was going on in TFG’s head, what about his campaign staff? They must have freaked out — they are in a close race, and their guy is not just off script, but off in space. Yet no one dares to whisper in his ear a suggestion that he cut the dance party short and resume the town hall. Or do something that resembles campaigning. Is it that they know it’s hopeless, or do they fear a reaction that’s worse than what is happening?
They seem content on spinning even his worst behavior into positives. His base will believe whatever nonsense they tell them so his behavior is pretty much irrelevant at this point. And to be honest, most of his campaign staff are as unethical and immoral if not more so than Trump himself.
One photo making the rounds is a teleprompter message asking trump to take a couple more questions before going to the music. Makes me think the music thing was the plan all along, just that after the two people fainted he decided on the spot to go to it earlier. (Off-topic Q: what made them faint? It wasn't exactly Coachella in there. Are people allowed to bring water to his indoor venues?)
On-topic: Look at the blogosphere/bluesky realm today-- consumed with talk about trump. Mission accomplished, brainspace occupied.
I suppose this is besides the point but does anyone actually believe Ave Maria is one of Trump’s favorite songs?
2 cents
1- Americans have seen this guy for 8+ years now, and I'm still blown away why Harris (hell- ANYone) isn't up my 10 pts.
2- If GOP wins the trifecta (WH, Senate, House) "voting security measures" will be passed to make it very (read- VERY) hard for any other party to beat the GOP- ever.
Sorry Ben, it's not that we couldn't keep it. We threw it away
+1
👍👍👍👍👍
If Trump wins, he won't last more than a month as president before Vance invokes the 25th amendment. The entire cabinet will vote ith JD (how could they possibly argue against) and the Thiel puppet will take over.
The True-Trumpists will regard this as treason, and respond with extereme violence, and Vance-and-friends know this. Unless they somehow can get Trump to accept it, it is not obvious that they will do it.
There will be absolutely no incentive for Trump to resign. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose. Besides his ego won't let him.
Read fox news' story on the event.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-cuts-pennsylvania-town-hall-short-medical-emergencies-crowd
very different characterization! the right/left divide is too deep, we're a lost cause.
I think it's very simple. Trump did not want to answer any more questions. So, a few ill folks gave him the perfect out. And we all got to watch the Orange Clown break out a few zombie moves to the adoration of his fan base.
More like he didn't think he could answer more questions. This is so awkward, it can't have felt like a good thing to him.