https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/truth-about-trumps-press-conference/679425/?gift=wt4z9SQjMLg5sOJy5QVHInNifcDpby7tahR1qUdiuVc
His obvious emotional instability is frightening, not funny.
Weird doesn't even begin to capture it.
One of them will likely go down in history, hundreds of years from now, recognized as a notable military commander.
The other will be "that guy who wanted to be 'Rich Hitler'"
I learnt today that in 1940 there was a series of terrorist attacks around New York. It was a group calling themselves the Christian Front, and was led by a catholic priest called Father Coughlin. They blew up the biggest dynamite factory in the US and three other armament factories. They were part financed by the Nazis.
The FBI amassed a ton of evidence and plans of mass murder of jews and serving troops. Dispite this, the jgovernment fucked up the prosecution and all were acquitted.
I learned about this recently from Rachel Maddow’s Ultra podcast. It’s a crazy story and really puts current events into a better perspective. Highly recommended.
It really is equal measures sad and frightening the amount of leeway mainstream media gives Trump. If they can't actively call him out, live fact-check him and ask follow-up questions then is it too much to ask for them to at least accurately describine his words and deeds? This normalization of absurdity is doing him a significant favour.
Then things got even weirder.
Trump claimed that former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown said bad things about Harris while he and Trump were on a helicopter together. Oh—and the helicopter was in trouble:
We thought maybe this was the end. We were in a helicopter, going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing. And Willie was—he was a little concerned.
So I know him, but I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But he told me terrible things about her. But this is what you’re telling me, anyway, I guess. But he had a big part in what happened with Kamala. But he—he, I don’t know, maybe he’s changed his tune. But he—he was not a fan of hers very much, at that point.
Brown has not had to change his tune, because none of this ever happened. Trump may have confused *Willie *Brown with former California Governor JerryBrown, with whom Trump once shared an uneventful helicopter ride. (One might think they’re hard to mix up: Willie Brown is Black; Jerry Brown is white.) In any case, trying to untangle the half-cooked pasta of a Trump story isn’t really worth the effort. The issue is that a former president is frighteningly delusional, and if any other candidate had done this—Biden was roasted over stories that were obscure but turned out to be true—it would dominate the news with understandable alarm about the well-being of the candidate.
We’re getting a hair closer to where we need to be wrt speaking plainly and honestly about trump, but we’re still a long way off.
Where are the 80 articles saying he has dementia and that the republicans don’t know what to do about it?
Rupert Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post
David Zaslav runs CNN
These guys are all Trump stans.
It’s almost like it’s planned, because you could speculate that he meant Jerry brown. And then you could go ask Jerry brown what he said about Kamala. And he probably won’t say anything because he’ll just say the story wasn’t about him. So again Trump gets away with unchecked lies.
Instead, The *New York Times *ran this headline: “Trump Tries to Wrestle Back Attention at Mar-a-Lago News Conference.” The *Washington Post *said: “Trump Holds Meandering News Conference, Where He Agrees to Debate Harris.” The British paper *The Independent *got closer with: “Trump Holds Seemingly Pointless Press Conference Filled With False Claims,” but CNNwent with “Trump Attacks Harris and Walz During First News Conference Since Democratic Ticket Was Announced.”
All of these headlines are technically true, but they miss the point: The Republican nominee, the man who could return to office and regain the sole authority to use American nuclear weapons, is a serial liar and can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy.
Donald Trump is not well. He is not stable. There’s something deeply wrong with him.
Any of those would have been important—and accurate—headlines.
Devil's advocate: being serious for years and nothing really stuck. Trivializing him by calling them weird seems to be working. Maybe taking the piss out of them is the better messaging to get the broad electorate to think less of him. 🤷♂️
I find him melting down a real feel good story. Fuck this guy. I look forward to watching him melt down and become America's biggest loser ever, if he hasn't hit that mark yet.
Man say what you want about the Atlantic, sometimes they drop absolute banger pieces like this
It will become funny the moment he loses and goes away and a decade of hindsight finally sets in on all his supporters.
It will also be kind of funny if he continues to hold the GOP hostage for another 4 years.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/20240809233608/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/truth-about-trumps-press-conference/679425/
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