Cognitive Decline? Trump Goes on Bonkers Rant at Border

Donald Trump seems to have a weird idea of who’s entering through our borders, claiming on Thursday that a good chunk of them are people “who don’t speak languages.”

“Everybody I speak to says how horrible it is,” Trump said, adding that there were “millions of people” arriving from “places unknown,” from “countries unknown” with no language.

That is, at best, a woefully missed opportunity for a one-of-a-kind anthropological study, or at worst, an unfortunate admission from the reputed monolinguist. Trump apparently was having a tough time recalling any of the 350 different languages spoken by U.S. communities—maybe chief among them Spanish, which ranks as the second-most-popular language in the nation, and which the vast majority of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border speak.

“We have languages coming into our country, nobody that speaks those languages,” Trump droned. “They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.”

In the last few months, Trump has made a number of increasingly worrying verbal gaffes, including claiming that he would stop banks from “debanking” Americans, mixing up former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his only remaining rival in the GOP race, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and describing his plan for America’s missile defense system by going, “Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.… Boom. OK. Missile launch. Woosh. Boom.”

He has also appeared with mysterious, unexplained red sores on his hands that political commentators couldn’t help but notice looked an awful lot like syphilis.

But have no fear: The 77-year-old wants you to know he is totally, undoubtedly, mentally all there. He recently “aced” a cognitive test that required him to correctly identify a giraffe, a tiger, and a whale. According to Trump, that meant his “mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago.” In reality, that test is meant to measure dementia or cognitive decline, and it has never included the combination of animals Trump mentioned.

Donald Trump has had to admit that he can’t afford his legal comeuppance—a punishment that might have been even worse for the self-proclaimed billionaire than the actual $454 million penalty in his New York civil fraud trial.

“Well, of course, he’s embarrassed because his entire net worth, the constant reiteration that ‘I’m worth at least $10 billion,’ maybe even more, obviously goes to his id, his ego, his super-ego,” former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen told CNN on Thursday.

“And that’s now super deflated because it’s just not true,” he continued. “They had to acknowledge that they don’t have it. It wasn’t that long ago that he stood on the stand, and he told everybody that he was worth many, many, many, many billions of dollars and has a very low debt-to-value ratio.”

Trump’s last-ditch effort to postpone paying the full amount in lieu of a $100 million bond was rejected by a New York appeals court judge on Wednesday. The judge did, however, grant some relief after Trump’s legal team argued in an 1,800-page court filing that it would be “impossible” to secure a bond covering the full amount of the multimillion-dollar ruling. The granted request will allow Trump to continue borrowing money, though the ruling is temporary until a full panel of judges deliberates on the order.

Failing to obtain a loan, however, could result in the seizure of Trump’s assets, warned New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“I mean, what is he going to do?” Cohen continued. “What’s he going to call like a J.G. Wentworth and say, ‘I need cash now’? How was he going to raise more than this half a billion?”

Justice Arthur Engoron had originally slapped a $354 million fine on Trump for committing real estate–related fraud in New York, but by last week, that sum had grown to $454.2 million thanks to added interest, which is tacking on an additional $112,000 with each passing day.

The penalty also came with an addendum that Trump cannot serve as an officer or director of a New York company for three years, including his own Trump Organization. His two adult sons were also penalized by the ruling: They were fined $4 million each and will have to stay out of New York business for two years. They will also be prevented from obtaining loans from any New York financial institutes for three years.

The story around Tyler Boebert’s arrest just keeps getting worse.

Representative Lauren Boebert’s 18-year-old son allegedly made a sex tape with a minor, according to an affidavit following his arrest on Tuesday.

The younger Boebert was arrested over “a recent string of vehicle trespass and property thefts” in Rifle, a town in Colorado’s 3rd congressional district, which his mom currently represents, said police. He is facing 22 charges, including criminal possession of a financial device and criminal possession of ID documents.

But if that wasn’t bad enough, an arrest affidavit released by the Garfield County Clerk of Court noted Tyler “supposedly made a sex tape with” one of the other suspects, a female minor. That tape was reportedly sent around to people they knew. It’s not clear from the affidavit how old Boebert or the suspect were at the time they did so.

The four suspects involved are reportedly two female minors, one male minor, and the 18-year-old Boebert.

The affidavit also sheds more light on how exactly the four friends were caught. The investigation reportedly began on February 20, when a woman informed police that someone broke into her parked car and took her wallet the day before. The wallet contained a stolen card that was then used at various locations on February 19 and 20.

Police say that Tyler and his friends were out to steal people’s wallets and credit cards in order to use them for purchases. One of the victims included a woman with a brain tumor who said she had just $75 “left to her name,” according to police.

And how were they caught? Surveillance footage from one of the stores the cohort stopped at reveals Tyler wearing a gray “Shooters Grill” hoodie—the name of his mother’s former restaurant in Rifle, Colorado.

Lauren Boebert, for her part, said in a statement that her son “will take responsibility for his actions and should be held accountable for poor decisions just like any other citizen.”

“I love my son Tyler, who has been through some very difficult, public challenges for a young man, and the subject of attention that he didn’t ask for,” she said. “It breaks my heart to see my child struggling and, in this situation, especially when he has been provided multiple opportunities to get his life on track. I will never give up on him and I will continue to be there for him.”

Still, it’s a rough spot to be in for the Colorado representative who likes to rail about the “Biden crime family” every chance she gets. She’s already facing a tough congressional bid this primary season. Beobert chose late last year to move to and run in Colorado’s 4th congressional district, a much more right-leaning seat and thus one that should theoretically be an easier election win for her. That decision followed a rather embarrassing national spectacle when she and a date were caught on security cameras groping each other, vaping, and eventually getting kicked out of a performance of Beetlejuice.

Unfortunately, things still aren’t looking good for Boebert. During a campaign event earlier this month, Republicans weren’t impressed.

“I don’t appreciate, as a Christian, people saying they’re Christian to get your vote and then turning out to be a lowlife, and now I just kind of think of her as a lowlife,” one voter told The Wall Street Journal.

It wasn’t all too long ago that political candidates would be disowned by their parties upon the discovery of ties to hate groups. But the first candidate listed on the unofficial Republican gubernatorial ballot in Missouri has been outed as a white supremacist—and nothing seems to be happening.

Darrell Leon McClanahan III’s name appeared even higher than the party’s front-runners due to the names being drawn in ballot order, with the lowest ballot numbers—such as McClanahan’s—appearing first. This is now the second time that the state Republican Party has accepted a filing fee and candidacy paperwork from McClanahan. The known white supremacist had a failed run for U.S. Senate in 2022, when he placed fifteenth in a group of 21 candidates, pulling more than 1,100 votes.

“Hey @MissouriGOP I just learned the candidate listed first on our primary ballot for Governor is a cross-burning KKK member who ran for US Senate 2 years ago and freely admits his KKK membership & white supremacist beliefs,” former Missouri State Representative Shamed Dogan wrote on social media, calling on the party to reject the “racist loser” as a candidate.

McClanahan has tried to downplay the facts, saying he is just an “honorary” member instead of a formal member of the Knight’s Party Ku Klux Klan. He identifies with the racist religious sect Christian Identity, and has attended several events hosted by the Arkansas-based Christian Identity Klan, including a cross burning in which he is pictured performing a Nazi salute beside a man clad in the KKK’s white-hooded garb. McClanahan tried to brush that off by describing the event as “religious Christian Identity Cross lighting ceremony.”

He has, however, advertised his membership in the League of the South, a white extremist group demanding a “white-dominated South,” according to the Anti Defamation League.

McClanahan also attended the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” protest—an experience that he wrote positively about for the Knights Party’s newsletter, The Torch, cataloging his descent into far-right, race-based radicalization.

In a defamation suit he filed against the ADL for aligning him with white supremacists and antisemites, McClanahan described himself as a “Pro-White man, horseman, politician, political prisoner-activist who is dedicated to traditional Christian values,” reported the RiverFrontTimes. The lawsuit has since been dismissed.

“Shamed Dogan I would like to respectfully request that you cease and desist from making defamatory statements about me on the X platform. Your statement about me being a cross-burning KKK member and white supremacist is false and damaging to my reputation,” McClanahan said in a statement to the RiverFrontTimes addressed directly to Dogan.

It is currently unclear if the Missouri Republican Party can or will reject McClanahan’s candidacy, or if he’ll make the official ballot come August.

Republicans have until the end of the year to replace Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who announced Wednesday he will step down as the longest-serving Senate leader in American history. But that hasn’t stopped GOP lawmakers from clamoring about who would take his place.

So far, the candidate pool is (perhaps unsurprisingly) looking a little monotonous, with the top three contenders all old, white men named John. They include Minority Whip John Thune, former Whip John Cornyn, and GOP Conference Chair John Barrasso.

HORRIBLE: John Thune

At 63 years old, the South Dakota senator is the youngest of the bunch. He’s also reputed to be the current favorite and most moderate of the three Johns, supporting sending more aid to Ukraine—a stance that soured many more extreme Republicans on McConnell.

Thune also has a long history of going head to head with Trump, initially endorsing Senator Tim Scott in the GOP presidential primaries over the former president, surviving a round of primary threats from Trump, and roundly criticizing him for interfering in the 2020 presidential election results. At the time, Thune argued that the former president’s effort to “undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable.”

WORSE: John Cornyn

The path to GOP leadership for the Texas senator is not as clear as it would have been two years ago, according to senior Republican aides. Out of the trio, Cornyn is the only candidate not currently in the inner sanctum of Republican leadership—though his résumé is long. Previously, the 72-year-old served as the conference’s whip from 2013 to 2019. He also served as a committee chairman and has chaired the Senate GOP’s campaign arm two times.

Cornyn offers the party a Goldilocks solution between Thune and Barrasso—he is a Trump skeptic capable of the kind of quintessential bipartisan deal-making that modern conservatives appear to loathe. In 2022, Cornyn worked with Democrats to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act after the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, putting some of the strongest gun restrictions on the books since the 1990s.

ABSOLUTE WORST: John Barrasso

The 71-year-old is the third-highest-ranking senator in the GOP. Barrasso is a strong Donald Trump ally who became the second member of the upper chamber to endorse the GOP front-runner for 2024. The Wyoming Republican could easily be considered the most conservative of the three Johns on sale. That could win him favor with a growing Trump base within the U.S. legislature, who have voiced that they would prefer a dark-horse candidate over more of the same—that is, another McConnell.

Out of the three, Barrasso is the only one lingering on whether to announce his official candidacy.

“There’s a much more important election between now and then,” he told Politico on Wednesday, referring to the general election. “And that’s the election we need to take the presidency and the Senate and the House, and that’s where my focus is.”

It remains to be seen if Trump’s favor will help—or hurt—any of the candidates.

“Trump’s support would definitely help with some senators, but it cuts the other way too,” a senior GOP leadership aide told The Daily Beast. “It probably helps more than it hurts, but this is a closed-door, secret-ballot election. It’s really not like some local primary where everyone is waiting to hear from Trump.”

Ultimately, whoever wins will need the backing of about 25 senators. “Either Cornyn or Thune could probably get there with or without Trump’s endorsement,” the aide said.

But with so much time before decisions have to be made, most Senators appear to have no clear favorites.

“Listen, I don’t have a favorite candidate—I’m persuadable,” Senator Josh Hawley told Politico.