Donald Trump is lucky that the big story of the day ended up being the VP debate and not what you’re about to see below. Minimum damage was done to the Trump campaign last night due to CBS not fact checking the debate. And when a moderator even deigned to point out that the Haitian immigrants that J.D. Vance made up stories about were in the country legally, Vance snapped, “The rules were you weren’t gonna fact check.” Heaven forfend that truth rears its head when Vance is promulgating one of his favorite lies. No fair.
While a non-controversial and surprisingly civil exchange took place during the debate, on the very same day, in Milwaukee, Trump was falling to pieces. You won’t see this train wreck get as much coverage as it deserves for two reasons: 1. Vance taking the edge off of Trump at the debate is what the GOP desperately needs to focus on. So expect them to do precisely that; and 2. This train wreck of Trump’s is particularly damaging and merely underscores the fact that he’s totally unfit for office.
Across two campaign events in Wisconsin on Tuesday, the former and would-be president reiterated a truth that is much more important than who won the debate: namely, that he’s morally and intellectually unfit for office.
Both Trump events were packed with outrageous defamations and lies. His targets included troops wounded abroad while he was president, which would be unthinkable in anything resembling a normal era of politics.
Vicious as Trump’s attacks were, they also managed to be muddled in ways suggesting he isn’t up to the task of being president until he’s 82 years old. Vance’s slick lying and election denialism is even more ominous given the possibility that he may end up as the country’s leader in a second, nightmarish, Trump term.
Let us pause here to consider the enormity of all this. While I think it was civilized of Tim Walz to have found common ground with J.D. Vance as he did, the downside of that is that it underscores the true horror of a second Trump term. What you saw last night is what you would see Vance do in office, slick lies and immediate retaliation against those who would expose his lies. Vance the Reasonable is his mask, masking what is in fact the Death Masque Of Democracy. That’s not hyperbole. That’s the tragic truth. The GOP is on the skids and last night Vance gave them hope for the first time in a long time.
Even lower depths were explored during Trump’s appearance later in the day in Milwaukee. Taking questions from the press, he told a reporter who asked him if he trusts the election process this time around that “I’ll let you know in 33 days” — the implication being that he would accept the results only if he wins. Riffing about immigration, he wandered off into a bizarre, woozy, blatantly racist rant about people in the Congo, a country that he boasted he did not know anything about. (“They come from the Congo in the Africa. Many people from the Congo. I don’t know what that is, but they come out of jails in the Congo.”)
Then, in a moment that would’ve driven news cycles for days had Biden done it, Trump confused the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, with the president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, and claimed his buddy Kim “is trying to kill me.”
a very confused Trump confuses Kim Jong Un with the president of Iran and claims Kim Jong Un "is trying to kill me" pic.twitter.com/yWdEuxLsok
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 1, 2024
But all of this was just warming up to a scene during the Milwaukee event that would’ve ended anyone else’s presidential campaign.
That debacle came when a reporter asked Trump if he should’ve been tougher in retaliation against Iran after they launched a 2020 missile attack on a US base in Iraq, which injured more than 100 US soldiers. The Iranian launch was in retaliation for a US drone strike which killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. More than 100 US soldiers suffered traumatic brain injuries.
Trump at the time lied about the incident, insisting that no soldiers were harmed and that he’d “heard that they had headaches.” The episode was mostly forgotten over the ensuing four years, but Trump reminded everyone about it during his news conference, peevishly responding to the reporter: “So first of all — injured. What does injured mean? Injured means — you mean because they had a headache? Because the bombs never hit the fort.”
After Trump finished downplaying serious, life-changing injuries suffered by the troops, he then attacked the reporter for not being “truthful” while mixing up Iraq and Iran.
Somehow, it got worse. Trump went on to characterize the Iranian attack as “a very nice thing” because Iran didn’t escalate further, which he suggested was the result of his toughness. Again, Trump praised Iran for a “nice” attack which seriously injured more than 100 US soldiers. (Walz highlighted these remarks from Trump during Tuesday’s debate, saying “when Iranian missiles did fall near US troops and they received traumatic brain injuries, Donald Trump wrote it off as headaches.”)
As you see from the tape above, and there’s plenty more clips where that came from, Trump is slouched over, barely able to stand at the podium and he’s exhausted and incoherent. He’s in no shape to return to the White House — not that he will actually attempt to govern, if he got there. No, what will happen instead is that J.D. Vance will make Dick Cheney look like a boy scout and Project 2025 will be implemented and the Regime Of Lies will be in office.
I pray to God it doesn’t come to that. Once again, our only cure for this disease of MAGA is to Get Out The Vote. Under no circumstances can we not make every effort humanly possible to get Harris/Walz in and put Trump/Vance in the rearview mirror.
And if you wonder for a moment just how out of it Trump is, every single day I go over to the Trump Events Calendar. And every single day it is different. Yesterday they had one event in Wisconsin, turns out two took place. Apparently Trump was more functional than expected.
Then again today, different events pop up. Team Trump is literally revising the calendar daily, on the fly. This is not happening with Harris/Walz. They go where they are scheduled to go, barring compelling reason to do otherwise.
Trump is telling us all he’s unfit for office. Let’s believe him.
In my neighborhood, several homes are now adorned with tRump signs and flags. Some of them say “you can’t fix stupid, but you can vote it out”. The other issue is equating Harris with inflation and saying “no inflation”. I just wonder where they are getting their information from. I know one of them listens to talk radio, to and from his job.
I also wonder if any of them have listened to 45 directly, or just listening to his explainers and sane-washers.
They are quite right.
We did vote the stupid out.
The wretched little man in N.K. has gotten pretty good at assassinating people. I’d say if he wanted to take von shitzinpants out, we would no longer have to put up with the idiot.
“And when a moderator even deigned to point out that the Haitian immigrants that J.D. Vance made up stories about were in the country legally, Vance snapped, “The rules were you weren’t gonna fact check.” Heaven forfend that truth rears its head when Vance is promulgating one of his favorite lies.”
If I’d been the moderator, I might have reminded Mr Vance that he, and his nominal boss, are currently facing a defamation lawsuit by the very people he’s chosen to lie about and that he might prefer to use his time trying to quit giving those people MORE fodder for their lawsuit. But, if he’s upset about that, then, by all means, the moderators will allow himself to do all the legal damage to himself he wishes.
the people he has defamed have filed CRIMINAL CHARGES against Trump and Vance. Ohio law permits citizens to do that.