The 53 wildest lines from Donald Trump's Wisconsin weekend speech
Whoa boy.
On Monday, the New York Times' Peter Baker wrote a piece headlined: “As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity.”
It’s a terrific and thoughtful article. Here’s the key bit from my perspective:
At 78, former President Donald J. Trump exhibits more energy and speaks with more volume than President Biden does at 81, but he, too, has mixed up names, confused facts and stumbled over his points. Mr. Trump’s rambling speeches, sometimes incoherent statements and extreme outbursts have raised questions about his own cognitive health and, according to polls, stimulated doubts among a majority of voters…
…The issue has been propelled back into the campaign by some of Mr. Trump’s recent public performances, most notably a meandering, hard-to-follow answer to a question on child care at the Economic Club of New York last week. Asked how he would help American working families stressed by the cost of taking care of children, Mr. Trump wandered through a thicket of unfinished sentences, non sequitur clauses and confusing logic that tied the answer to tariffs on imports.
Here, here!
Reading Peter’s piece, I found myself nodding. A lot. Because I have spent hours (and hours) going through Donald Trump’s speeches and interviews line by line. And, as far as I can tell, I am the only one who is doing this important work.
My commitment to you? I will keep doing it — every week (and sometimes multiple times a week) — between now and the election. Because what our presidential candidates say (and how they say it) matters.
This goes for Trump, mostly. Because he represents the single most radical view of the presidency (and what it should be) in a century. But, I am also committed to going through Kamala Harris’ speeches and interviews. (It’s a bit harder, candidly, because Harris does almost NO interviews with the media.)
All of which brings me to this past weekend when Donald Trump was in Wisconsin delivering a campaign speech. I got the transcript via my friends at the Listening Post.
The lines you need to see are below. This is one of a small group of paywalled posts I do. Why? Because a) I am the only doing it! and b) they take a huge amount of time and energy,
If you think closely documenting the words the people who want to be president next year is critically important, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber today. It’s $6 for a month and $60 for the year!
To the Lines!
“A lot of crowd. This is — look where that crowd goes. This is a big crowd.”
A lot of crowd! And away we go!
“And we are going to win the White House, that gorgeous, beautiful White House.”
“That White House is a real dump.” — Donald Trump, allegedly
“Under the Harris Biden regime, your government imported murderers, child predators and serial rapists from all over the planet.”
It will shock you to learn there is ZERO proof of this claim.
“You know, I used to say, and I haven't said in a while, if you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the country, and let's include vice president because she's worse than he is because she's actually a believer, he wasn't.”
So, Joe Biden is the worst president in history but Kamala Harris is worse? What’s worse than the worst? Worstest?
“First, I will end forever the weaponization of government and the abuse of law enforcement against political opponents.”
“Trump Steps Up Threats to Imprison Those He Sees as Foes.” — New York Times
“People like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, good people, were locked up for following the advice of their lawyers.”
The first thing I think of when someone says “Steve Bannon” is definitely “good person.”
“Well, sir, you challenged the election. We think you should be under indictment.”
“We challenged a corrupt election. We were right about that.”
[narrator voice] “We” were not.
“This is a big crowd, you know. You know, they were trying to say that she gets big crush. Number one, she doesn't. Number two, she buses the people in. You see the buses.”
Yes, he is obsessed with crowd size. Also, the Times did a deep dive into crowds and found that Trump and Harris draw similar numbers of people to their rallies.
“A reporter said, Sir, if you had to do it again, would you do it again? I said, Absolutely, because we're going to make America great again.”
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