Setting a contrast with Vice President Harris, former President Trump held a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.  The event went for just over an hour, starting with a statement of a bit over 11 minutes, and then fielding numerous questions.

TRANSCRIPT OF OPENING STATEMENT
Well, thank you very much. Appreciate your being here. Just a statement before I talk about debates. I think that our country is, right now, in the most dangerous position it's ever been in, from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint, both gangs on the street and, frankly, gangs outside of our country, in the form of other countries that are, frankly, very powerful. They're very powerful countries, and we don't know what we're doing. We have leadership that has no clue to handle them or how to handle any other situation.

You have a lot of bad things coming up. You could end up in a depression of the 1929 variety, which would be a devastating thing. Took many years, took decades, to recover from it, and we're very close to that and we're very close to a world war. In my opinion, we're very close to a world war.

We have people that don't know how to handle it. They're not respected all over the world. All over the world they're laughed at. We can't have that. The most dangerous period of time I've ever seen for our country.

With that being said, have somebody that hasn't received one vote for president, and she's running, and that's fine with me. We were given Joe Biden, and now we're given somebody else. And I think, frankly, I'd rather be running against the somebody else. That was their choice. They decided to do that because Kamala's record is horrible. She's a radical left person at a level that nobody's seen.

She picked a radical left man that is got things done that he, he has positions that are just not it's not even possible to believe that they exist. He's going for things that nobody's ever even heard of. Heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds having to do with safety. He doesn't want to have borders. He doesn't want to have walls. He doesn't want to have any form of safety for our country. He doesn't mind people coming in from prisons, and neither does he, I guess, because she's not, she couldn't care less.

She's the border czar. By the way, she was the border czar 100% all of a sudden, for the last few weeks, she's not the border czar anymore, like nobody ever said it. And I just hope that the media becomes more diligent, more honest, frankly, because if they're not going to be honest, it's going to be much tougher to bring our country back.

We have a very, very sick country right now. You saw the other day with the stock market crashing—that was just the beginning, was just the beginning. It's going to get worse. It's going to get a lot worse, in my opinion.

And fortunately, we've had some very good polls over the last fairly?really short period of time. Rasmussen came out today. We're substantially leading. And others came out today that we're leading, and in some cases substantially. I guess MSNBC came out, or CNBC came out, also with a poll that was, has us leading and leading fairly big in swing states. In some polls, I'm leading very big in swing states because they want safety.

People want safety. They want security. They want respect all around the world, for our country. They don't want this, this horrible culture that is developing a culture of no common sense. It's really a culture of no common sense, and it's not what anyone wants. We want to have a safe country. We want to have a strong military. We want low interest rates, and we want to be able to have the American dream. We want to be able to have our youth be able to buy homes, housing, get good jobs.  And we're really just at the opposite right now. It's so, it's so sad to see.

But as a border czar, she has been the worst border czar in history, in the world history. I think the number is 20 million, but whether it's 15 or 20, it's numbers that nobody's ever heard before. 20 million people came over the border in the last during the Biden Harris administration. 20 million people, and it could be very much higher than that. Nobody really knows what the number is. Nobody knows, nobody has a clue.

And the got-aways. They call them the got-aways. The got-aways are [inaud.] numbers. Somebody was quizzing me on it the other day. No, no, I don't think so, sir, I don't think so. They have no idea what those numbers are. They're much higher than you would think.

Just like far more people were killed in the Ukraine-Russia war than ever reported. Just like the October 7th would have never happened. Russia would have never Ukraine, had election result been called differently. A very bad call, but Russia would not have attacked Ukraine. October 7th in Israel would have never happened. You wouldn't have inflation. A lot of great things would have happened, but now you have millions and millions of dead people. You have people dying financially because they can't buy bacon, they can't buy food, they can't buy groceries, they can't do anything, and they're living horribly in our country right now.

With all of that being said, I think it's very important to have debates, and we've agreed with FOX on a date of September 4th. We've agreed with NBC, fairly full agreement, subject to them, on September 10th, and we've agreed with ABC on September 25th. So we have those three dates and those networks. They're very anxiously awaiting that date and those dates. So we have September, September 4th, September 10th and September 25th. We have spoken to the heads of the network, and it's all been confirmed, other than some fairly minor details, audience, some location, which, which city would we put it into? But all things that will be settled very easily, very— I think it'll be very easy.

The other side has to agree to the terms. They may or may not agree. I don't know if they're going to agree. They— she hasn't done an interview. She can't do an interview; she's barely competent and she can't do an interview.

I look forward to the debates, because I think we have to set the record straight. Why is it that millions of people were allowed to come into our country from prisons, from jails, from mental institutions, insane asylums, even insane—that's, it's a mental institution on steroids. That's what it is. When you see people that are coming into our These are institutions that are being emptied out, not in South America, all over the world, including South America. All over the world, prisons are being emptied out into our country because we have a president that's the worst president in the history of our country.

We have a vice president who is the least admired, least respected, and the worst vice president the history of our country—the most unpopular vice president. And because of political reasons or because of being politically correct, even though she never received a vote—. Don't forget she was the first one defeated. I remember it because I watched it very closely, but she was the first one. She never made it to Iowa, the first state; she never made it to Iowa.

She was the first one that was defeated. She was the nastiest to him. She was nasty with the, calling him a racist, and the school bus and all of the different things. She was very nasty to Biden, and shockingly, he appointed her, asked her to serve as Vice President. Well, I don't know if he's happy about that decision right now. This was taken away. The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden. And I'm no Biden fan, but I tell you what, from a constitutional standpoint, from any standpoint you look at, they took the presidency away.

And people were saying he lost after the debate; he couldn't win. Well, I don't know that that's true necessarily, but whether he could win or he couldn't win, he had the right to run. And they took it away. They said they're going to use the 25th Amendment. They're going to hit you hard. Either we could do it the nice— I heard. I know exactly, because I know a lot of people on the other side, believe it or not. And said, we'll do it the nice way or we'll do it the hard way. And he said, All right.

So that mean, they've really taken; what they've done is pretty incredible. And now I'm running against somebody else, and we're leading. We're leading. So I'm not complaining. I'm saying it's [inaud.] with a constitution that we cherish. We cherish this constitution. To have done it this way is pretty severe, pretty horrible. You would have thought they would have gone out to a vote, they would have had a primary system, they would have done something, but to just take it away from him, like he was a child. And he's a very angry man right now, I can tell you that he's not happy with Obama. He's not happy with Nancy Pelosi, Crazy Nancy, she is crazy too. He's not happy with any of the people that told him that you've gotta leave. He's very unhappy, very angry. And I think he also blames her. He's trying to put up a good face.

But it's a very bad thing, in terms of the country, when you do that. I'm not a fan of his, as you probably have noticed. He had a rough debate. That doesn't mean that you just take it away like that. You or you go out to a vote, you do something. He had 14 million votes. She had no votes. She got no votes.

And I think she's crashing. I think when people find out, and I think people are starting to find out what a bad job she did, a bad job she did on the border. She's trying to say she had nothing to do with the border. She had everything; she was appointed at the border, and then they said border czar. She loved that name; she loved that name, but she never went there. She went to a location once along the border, but that was a location that you would love to go and have dinner with your husband or whoever. That was a location that was not part of the problem; that was not really going to the border. So essentially, she never went to the border.

And if you listen to Tom Homan, if you listen to the great border people. Brandon Judd from the Border Patrol. If you listen to Paul, I mean so many different people. I speak to them all the time, and I did when I was president. We had the best border in the history of our country. Now we have the worst border in the history of the world. Millions of people coming in, and our country cannot sustain it. Our country is going down because of this, because of incompetent people.

So I just look forward to these debates. I think it's very important that we have them. I hope she agrees to them, September 4th, September 10th, September 25 and think they'll be very revealing; think they'll be very revealing. Do you have any questions, please.

[QUESTION OFF MIC]

I haven't recalibrated strategy at all. It's the same policies, open borders, weak on crime. She's, I think she's worse than Biden, because he got forced into the position; she was there long before. She destroyed San Francisco, she destroyed California, the AG. But as the DA she destroyed San—. She, San Francisco, friend of mine, Bob Tish, you know, all know the Tish Tish family. He was in many cities with companies. He said, The greatest city in the country, San Francisco. That was about 20 years ago, and he passed away a while ago, and he would be looking down, saying what happened? Thought it was the best city in the country.  He had divisions there, Lowe's. And he would be looking down in horror now, what he sees.

She's cash bail, weak on crime, terrible, and yet they weaponize the system against me. They have me. I got so many lawyers. Now they want to delay cases. I won the big case in Florida. I won the big case. Nobody even wrote about it. The big case, the judge was a brilliant judge. All they do is they play the ref with the judges. This judge was a fair but brilliant judge, and as you probably heard, the big documents case, I won it. Biden lost it because he didn't have presidential immunity; he didn't have the Presidential Records Act. He lost it.

The special— I call it prosecutor—Special Counsel, special prosecutor to me. He , appointed by him, appointed by Garland. He said, The man's incompetent can't stand trial, but he can for president. But we no longer have to worry about that, because we have somebody that, in my opinion, is more incompetent, couldn't pass her bar exam and lots of other things. And she should not be in a position, because if she becomes president, our country is going to be giant fail. It's going to fail. Going to be a failure, the likes of which this world has never seen.
.
Yeah, please. How about you? [CONTINUES]

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Media Failure?

ed. note.  Following the news conference there was a lot of discussion in progressive circles about the media's failure to cover Trump's performance.  It took some time, but on August 11, NPR published a piece that found 162 lies and distortions in the news conference.  (Domenico Montanaro.  "162 lies and distortions in a news conference.  NPR fact checks former President Trump."  NPR, August 11, 2024).  Below are some intial responses from progressive activists, the Harris campaign, and allies:

Tracy Sherman wrote, "I'd like to know why the media refuses to call Trump out on ANYTHING.  Today's "press conference" was a sham and the media was complicit. No pushback, ridiculous questions, and no follow up on the craziness, the word salads, the truly incomprehensible sentences and of course, the fire hose of lies.  Can you imagine what the media would have done if this had been a Biden press conference?!" 

Wally Hayman wrote, "The odd thing is, Trump stood there and lied for one straight hour and not a single reporter seemed perturbed by it. Rather, they just sat there like zombie stenographers, quietly sucking on their own brains...  The reporters' questions were so inane as to suggest they were submitted by pranksters in the audience posing as employees of actual news networks."

Barbra Steisand tweeted, "The media needs to do its job and report on Trump’s increasing incoherence. If you saw any of his recent endless press conference, it is apparent."

Robert Reich wrote a longer piece: "Why isn't the media reporting on Trump's increasing dementia?"  robertreich.substack.com, August 8, 2024.

also referenced was:  The Big Picture and Jay Kuo.  "Trump's Brain is not Okay."  The Big Picture, April 11, 2024.

Harris for President
August 8, 2024

Donald Trump took a break from taking a break to put on some pants and host a p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ 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.

But first, an important reminder on the question Donald didn’t answer: how he will vote on the Florida abortion referendum. (He has been ducking this question since April.)

We worked to pin down reality so Donald Trump, bless his heart, doesn’t have to. Here are the facts:


We had 12,000 and 15,000 people in Wisconsin and Michigan yesterday, respectively (Not 2,000.)


The ABC debate is September 10th. Not the 25th.


People have spoken to bigger crowds than Donald Trump. (Obama, Clinton, literally anyone at Lollapalooza, Coachella, the World Cup…)


January 6th was decidedly nothing like MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech. And Trump did not get a bigger crowd than Martin Luther King Jr. on that historic day.


There was famously not a “peaceful transfer” of power after the 2020 election, which Donald Trump fought to overturn. (Famously.)


Five police officers died because of January 6th.


Donald Trump said he was off the trail this week because of the Democratic convention. (That convention is not happening this week.)


Trump said they have commercials at a level no one else does. (He is being drastically outspent on the airwaves.)


Governor Josh Shapiro is actually a great guy.


Project 2025 author Tom Homan, the “father” of Trump’s cruel child separation policy, is not a person to praise.


Jewish people should not “have their head examined” for not supporting him. (That’s actually antisemitic.)


Trump said he was not complaining. He in fact very much was.


Trump does not know the difference between asylum seekers and an insane asylum.


Donald Trump does not “cherish” the Constitution.


Abortion is not “less of an issue” for voters. It is not “subdued.” It is not a “small issue” for voters, despite how much Donald Trump wants it to be.


Donald Trump did not answer the abortion question “very well in the debate.”


Everybody did not want Roe v. Wade overturned. The American people do not support states banning abortion.


After-birth abortion does not exist.


Minnesota and Virginia are not the same. 


Donald Trump doesn’t know what progressive means.


Kamala Harris does not want to take away everyone’s guns. Tim Walz is a gun owner.


Vice President Harris does not support an arms embargo on Israel.


Donald Trump could not remember Tim Walz’s name.


Donald Trump’s tax cuts are not the biggest in history.


We don’t know what “the transgender became such a big thing” is supposed to mean.


Donald Trump will cut Social Security – just like he proposed every year he was in office.


Government was not weaponized against Trump and Steve Bannon.


Mail ballots are secure.


We agree – Elon IS a different kind of guy.


There are no polls that say Donald Trump is going to win in a landslide.


The MAGA base is not 75% of the country.

American Bridge 21st Century
August 8, 2024

Donald Trump just finished a disastrous hour-long press conference at Mar-a-Lago. We watched it so you don’t have to and we’ve got the lowlights for you:

Trump doubled down on his racist attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris' ethnicity claiming it was “disrespectful” for her to embrace both her Indian and Black backgrounds.
 
Trump refused to answer a direct question on directing the FDA to ban access to mifepristone and took credit for post-Roe America, where extreme state legislatures enforce draconian abortion bans.
 
Trump refused to accept the results of the upcoming election no matter the outcome.
 
Trump went on multiple rants about the size of his rally crowds and bizarrely claimed he had larger crowd sizes than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington.
 
Within the first minute of his press conference, Trump predicted a Great Depression and World War III were imminent. 
 
Trump answered a question about combating Chinese misinformation campaigns by defending China.
“Donald Trump hasn’t held a public rally since last Saturday in Atlanta where he spoke to hundreds of empty seats at Georgia State University. If Trump’s goal was to change the conversation, he succeeded because the entire nation is now questioning his mental fitness for office,” said American Bridge 21st Century Communications Director of Presidential Campaigns, Brandon Weathersby. “This is an entitled, 78-year-old man, crumbling under the pressure of a presidential race that changed dramatically right under his nose. It’s time for members of the media to start considering if we’re watching the cognitive decline of a near-octogenarian in real-time.”