Meltdown

Trump held a press conference yesterday. Hoo boy.

Did you catch Trump’s bonkers press conference yesterday at Mar-a-Lago? If you did, you had the privilege of watching an absolute political train wreck unfold on live TV. 

It’s clear that no one in his campaign had the power to stop Trump from getting up before cameras and spouting utter gibberish while alienating the very voters he needs to win over. 

Trump’s age and early dementia were on full display. He often couldn’t hear the questions, rambled incoherently, and made up events that definitely never happened.

He also drove the abortion wedge even deeper into his own campaign, providing great clips for Democratic ads targeted at women.

And all the work his campaign has put in to try and peel off minority voters from the Democrats was slowly undone every time Trump opened his mouth.

I’m not going to spill much digital ink debunking his many lies, as the Harris campaign already did that right after he spoke, all while putting out this rather amazing statement:

The New York Times also fact checked his statements. TL;DR version: Trump lied by falsely claiming the following:

• The size of his crowds exceeded MLK’s

• Harris wants to take away your guns

• The Strategic National Reserves are nearly empty

• The vast majority of Americans support him

• Democrats are going to destroy Social Security

• Everyone will be forced to drive an electric car

• His tax cuts were the biggest in history

• Gas is $7, $8, $9 a gallon

• Not one soldier died in 18 months in Afghanistan

• Abortions happen after birth

• No one was killed on January 6

• Inflation was caused by bad energy policies

• Harris couldn’t pass the bar exam

For today’s piece, I’ve collected some best-of (worst-of?) moments from Trump’s press conference and divided them into his political vulnerabilities for ease of processing. Specifically, I’ll discuss how the press conference did little to allay concerns over Trump’s mental state, his inability to recalibrate and campaign consistently after Biden dropped out, his continued alienation of women voters, and his trashing of inroads his campaign had made with racial minorities.

Since it’s Schadenfriday, I’ll keep things light and in the spirit of the “joyful warrior.”

Old man shouts at cloud

Out the gate, Trump appeared to have greater difficulty forming coherent thoughts than Biden ever did during his doomed debate performance. While attempting to criticize Harris’s pick of Tim Walz for VP, for example, Trump said,

She picked a radical left…man, that is, he’s got things done that, he has positions that are just, it’s not even possible to believe that they exist. He is going for things that nobody has even heard of. Heavy into the transgender world. Heavy into lots of different worlds.

Here’s a clip of that moment:

Honestly, this guy had the best take on that moment:

At another point, Trump recounted a story about former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, whom Harris once dated, and how Trump knows him “pretty well” and in fact had even shared a helicopter ride where the craft “went down” and they both thought, “Maybe this is the end.”

Two things. First, Trump once shared a helicopter with former California Governor Jerry Brown, so he got the man he was with wrong. Second, there was no rough landing of any sort. Trump made that up entirely, because his brain is now in early dementia fever dream mode.

Perhaps his brain’s disturbing ability to create false narratives explains this next set of moments.

She’s winning, but he’s in denial

With Harris on the rise but Trump seemingly frozen in place, at least while not on the golf course, one reporter asked a straight-forward question. Why wasn’t he out campaigning?

“What a stupid question,” Trump sneered. He then added, ”Because I’m leading by a lot, and I’m letting their convention go through.”

Narrator: Trump is not leading by a lot, and the Democratic National Convention isn’t until mid-August.

Trump spent a good deal of time whining about the fact that Joe Biden is no longer his opponent in the race, a development that he still can’t seem to wrap his mind around. While insisting, “I’m not complaining,” he also suggested that the effort to get Biden to withdraw was somehow violative of the Constitution (it wasn’t), and he seemed genuinely shocked that “they took the presidency away” from Biden—a massive projection of his own fears.

Yes, he was complaining.

Trump then conceded that he was now running against a new opponent but insisted, against the evidence, that he was leading her in the race. 

Here is the clip of the moment:

When asked why Harris was rising in the polls, Trump claimed it was because “she’s a woman” who “represents groups of people.” And when asked if he intended to recalibrate given that Harris was now his opponent, Trump admitted, “I haven’t recalibrated strategy at all”—something the GOP is probably going to lose a lot of sleep over and which will delight the Harris camp. After all, it’s a completely new race, and Trump can’t or won’t grasp that yet.

Let’s piss off women more

If there is one thing Trump should not be talking about, it is abortion. The crisis over reproductive care was one he directly caused when he stacked the Supreme Court, and women have been punishing the GOP at the ballot box ever since the Dobbs decision came down.

And yet, in his press conference, Trump continued to alienate women voters because he doesn’t know how not to. He claimed “everyone wanted me to get rid of Roe v. Wade” and that abortion “isn’t a big factor any more.” 

Narrator: Abortion is a big factor.

He nonsensically warned abortions are happening even after birth and even strongly suggested his FDA could ban abortion medication—a key agenda item in Project 2025.

And to prove he’s not a creepy weirdo, when Trump talked about how others wanted him to prosecute Hillary Clinton, he said, “I could have done things to her that would have made your head spin.” Here’s a clip of that moment:

Yup, I’m a racist!

The Democratic ticket’s poll numbers had been burdened by a lack of enthusiasm among a core part of its traditional base: minority voters. This was especially true among younger minority voters. 

Then Biden dropped out, and there was a chance to reset with this very group, and Harris seized it nearly perfectly. But in fairness, she had a big assist from Trump, who amazingly went before the National Association of Black Journalists and attacked Harris’s racial identity, accusing her of not actually being Black. “She happened to turn Black,” Trump said to gasps.

Add this to his debate quip about migrants taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” from Americans, and Trump has seen support among racial minorities begin to crater. 

Given that, you’d think Trump would at least attempt to repair the damage. Nope. In his press conference, Trump attacked Harris’s racial identity again, insisting that she used to claim to be Indian, and “whether it’s Indian or Black, it’s very disrespectful to both.” 

To make things even more painful for his campaign, Trump then falsely boasted that his crowds on January 6 were actually bigger than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s were back in 1963. No, really, he did.

And finally, while seemingly admitting that he was losing Black women, and presumably was prepared to write them off, he insisted that at least with white males his numbers were “through the roof” and that he was “way up.”

Speaking of white males who are “way up” for Trump, Fox’s Jesse Watters called the presser “flawless” while Newsmax proclaimed “the American people witnessed what a strong leader looks like.” So don’t expect anyone on the right to undrink the Kool-Aid, despite Trump’s bonkers performance.

But no matter. If Trump keeps acting this way—and it is virtually certain he will—he will continue to lose support among the persuadable former double haters, while Republican women in the blue wall suburbs dream about coconuts and young minority voters in the Sun Belt consider being brat this November.