The 66 wildest lines from Donald Trump's press conference

Whoa boy.

Desperately seeking to retake the attention (and momentum) in the 2024 presidential race, former president Donald Trump held an hour-long press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday afternoon.

It was a tour de something else.

I got the transcript and went through it line by line. The lines you need to see are below.

I put these “lines” posts behind the paywall because a) they are very labor intensive and b) I am the only person — I think — who is doing the work of going through what Trump and other prominent politicians are actually saying.

It’s important work — what they say is the best indicator of what they’ll do — and I hope you will decide to become a paid subscriber to this newsletter to read the lines in full.

It’s $6 a month or $60 for the year. And, thank you.

To the lines!

1. “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.”

He’s doing fine halfway through this thought. And then he says this: “Frankly gangs outside of our country in the form of other countries that are frankly very powerful.” Is he trying to craft some sort of metaphor about the world’s powers as rival gangs? Of course not. He’s just saying stuff. And away we go!

2. “We have a - we have a lot of bad things coming up.”

Well, this sounds bad.

3. “With that being said, we have somebody that hasn't received one vote for president and she's running, and that's fine with me. But we were given Joe Biden and now we're given somebody else. And I think, frankly, I'd rather be running against to somebody else.”

Does Trump not want to say Kamala Harris’ name? And, if not, why not?

4. “She's a radical left person at a level that nobody's seen.”

“Maybe it's something really cool that I don't even know about.” — Frank the Tank

5. “She picked a radical left man that is he's got things done that he's -- he has positions that are just not -- it's not even possible to believe that they exist.”

So, Tim Walz has positions that “it’s not even possible to believe that they exist”? Incredible stuff here.

6. “Heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds, having to do with safety.”

Trump is talking about Walz , who is “heavy into lots of different worlds,” here.

7. “You saw the other day with the stock market crashing, that was just the beginning. That was just the beginning. It's going to get worse. It's going to get a lot worse, in my opinion.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average went up 683 points on Thursday. The S&P 500 had its best day since 2022 — surging 2.3%.

8. “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, you know, has us leading -- and leading fairly big in swing states.”

Er…

9. “Twenty 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.”

False.

10. “And the gotaways, they call them the gotaways, the gotaways are at 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, but they're much higher than you would think.”

“Sir” alert!