Sep.20

electoral-vote.com

Dem 50

   

GOP 50

TrumpWatch 2024: Was There a Full Moon This Week, Perhaps?

As long as we are on the crazypants train (that WAS the name of the Ozzy Osbourne song, right?), allow us to point out ten of the wackiest and most unhinged things Donald Trump said this week:

• He called for the broadcast license of ABC to be revoked over their handling of the debate. A debate that, you will recall, Trump claims he won.
  
  
• Also, as regards winning the debate, Trump went on Fox's Gutfeld and bragged that the audience at the debate went "crazy" for him. There was no audience, of course.
  
  
• During a campaign stop in Michigan, he announced his plan for reducing food prices: "We gotta work with our farmers. Our farmers are being decimated right now. They're being absolutely, absolutely decimated. And you know, one of the reasons is we allow a lot of farm product into our country. We're gonna have to be a little bit like other countries. We're not gonna allow so much come—we're gonna let our farmers go to work." Needless to say, reducing the amount of food imported into the country would increase prices, not bring them down.
  
  
• Yesterday, Trump declared that if he loses the election, "the Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss." Historically, it rarely turns out well when leaders with demagogic tendencies start gesticulating and vaguely blaming "the Jews" for their problems.
  
  
• Trump also said: "Israel, I believe, has to defeat [Kamala Harris]." Um, whatever that means.
  
  
• He said he plans to visit Springfield, OH, even though the Republican mayor of that town begged Trump to stay away. Trump also warned that he's taking his life into his own hands, and that he "might not make it out alive." Perhaps we misunderstood, but we thought the claim was that cats and dogs were being eaten. Is Trump worried he'll be mistaken for a cat?
  
  
• Earlier this week, it was revealed that Iran sent purloined GOP e-mails to the Biden/Harris campaign, and the blue team turned them over to the FBI and then deleted them. Trump transmuted that into this:

  WOW, JUST OUT! THE FBI CAUGHT IRAN SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN, AND GIVING ALL OF THE INFORMATION TO THE KAMALA HARRIS CAMPAIGN. THEREFORE SHE AND HER CAMPAIGN WERE ILLEGALLY SPYING ON ME. TO BE KNOWN AS THE IRAN, IRAN, IRAN CASE! WILL KAMALA RESIGN IN DISGRACE FROM POLITICS? WILL THE COMMUNIST LEFT PICK A NEW CANDIDATE TO REPLACE HER?

  The first dozen or so words of that are accurate. The remainder are a fantasy.
  
  
• Trump claimed Kamala Harris wants to bring back the military draft. She has never said anything like this, nor would it make any sense these days.
  
  
• Trump said that if California ran honest elections, he would win the state. As anyone who lives in California, or who follows California politics knows, this is a knee-slapper. Apparently, Trump's primary source for this is an assertion, by former California resident Elon Musk, that Californians love Trump. What we can tell you, as people who are or have been California residents, is that Californians love Trump... about as much as they love Musk.
  
  
• This week, while visiting Michigan, Trump broke out an old chestnut, and bragged that in 2015, he won Michigan's Man of the Year award. Nobody can find any evidence this award exists, that any award like it is being given out, or that Trump won an award of any sort in Michigan in 2015. The Trump campaign refuses to answer questions about the alleged award.
  
  
• It's not entirely new, but this week, Trump has developed a particular obsession with the idea that he's a latter-day Elvis Presley. He posted this to his $14.70-a-share social media platform:
  
  At his New York rally this week, Trump upped the ante, and claimed he is actually "greater even than Elvis" because Elvis needed a guitar to draw crowds and he (Trump) does not.

None of this is normal, and most of it is, to be blunt, kinda weird. We do not presume to know what's going on. Is the Trump campaign machine/BS engine just revving up to full capacity? Is he getting more and more desperate and unhinged because he fears he will lose (and thus, very likely, end up in prison)? Is he demonstrating the effects of age and/or mental decline?

Whatever it is, Trump produces so much of this sort of stuff that it's easy to miss most or all of it. If Joe Biden had said half of these things, or if either Kamala Harris or Tim Walz did so, there would have been wall-to-wall op-eds in The New York Times calling for their ouster from the Democratic ticket. But with Trump, politics-watchers have become so desensitized by his whackadoodlery that it barely gets noticed. We think that, once in a while, particularly after a week like this past one, it's worth taking a moment to pause and remind everyone that something here just ain't right. (Z)