The 52 wildest lines from Donald Trump's Florida speech

Whoa boy.

Donald Trump held his first major campaign rally in more than a week on Tuesday in Florida as he sought to press his advantage over President Joe Biden.

Thanks to the GREAT Listening Post website — you need to check it out! — I got my hands on the transcript of Trump’s full speech. And I spent the morning going through it line by line.

Before we get to the lines you need to see from it, I want to make clear why I think this work is so valuable.

1. The words politicians use are, generally speaking, carefully chosen. They say what they say for a reason. And because of that we need to closely monitor what they say.

2. Donald Trump, in particular, doesn’t try to hide the ball. He tells you what he is thinking and what he plans to do. Going through his speeches and interviews then is critical to understanding what it would mean to elect him again in the fall.

3. No one else is doing this work. As far as I can tell, I am the only person doing detailed breakdowns of what Trump, Joe Biden and other prominent politicians are saying.

These posts are, I think, the most important thing I do. Candidly, to keep doing this sort of stuff, I need your support. I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to my newsletter today. It’s $6 a month or $60 for the entire year.

To the Lines!

1. “There is nowhere else I'd rather be on this beautiful, cold, very cold summer evening than right here in the middle of the 10th hole. Beautiful hole, isn't it?”

Trump was speaking from his course at Doral. And, yes, it’s always about the grift. And away we go!

2. “Look at that lake. Isn't it beautiful? [It’s] on one of the greatest golf courses on Earth.”

In 2019, Golf magazine put out a list of the best golf courses in the world. Doral did not make the top 100.

3. “And we really want to thank all of the tens of thousands of people that showed up. This is a lot of people.”

The NBC affiliate in Miami said the crowd numbered in the “thousands.”

4. “Meanwhile, the radical left Democrat Party is divided in chaos and having a full-scale breakdown, all because they can't decide which of their candidates is more unfit to be president, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden or laughing Kamala?”

The surest sign that Trump thinks Kamala Harris might wind up as his opponent this fall? The bestowing of a derogatory nickname on her.

5. “As you know, in our recent debate, and in honor of all of you, I dealt Joe Biden

   even according to the fake news media, the most decisive and overwhelming defeat in the history of presidential debates.”

This is (probably) true. All the post-debate polls showed that people believed Trump won the debate easily. Which he did. Of course, that was mostly because of how bad Biden was as opposed to how good Trump was….

6. “And that was a big crowd that was watching. That was one of the highest rated shows ever on television.”

It was not. Not even close. A little more than 51 million people watched the debate, which was significantly lower than the record audiences for past general election debates.

7. “But even CNN said, as I walked off the stage, that it was one of the greatest performances they've ever seen.”

It will stun you to learn that CNN did not, in fact, say that.

8. “They want Crooked Joe out of the race. It's a shame the way they're treating him. But don't feel sorry for him. He's a very bad guy.”

9. “Let's do another debate this week so that sleepy Joe Biden can prove to everyone all over the world that he has what it takes to be president. But this time it will be man to man, no moderators, no holds barred.”

Trump loves the UFC and the sort of bravado they have commoditized. “Man to man”! “No holds barred”! “Tables ladders and chairs”! (Ok, I made that last one up.)

10. “And in the debate, Sleepy Joe also declared that he wanted to test his skills and stamina against mine on the golf course. Can you believe this? Did you ever see him swing?”

His swing is actually pretty good!