Very Stable Genius Trump Can’t Remember Event That Just Happened

It’s common for politicians on the campaign trail to make a show of sampling the local cuisine to look more like an “everyman.” So when Donald Trump was in Philadelphia, of course, he got a cheesesteak. But then, he did something unusual.

Trump had stopped by Tony and Nick’s Steaks Saturday to grab one of Philly’s famous sandwiches. An interviewer asked him about it, and the convicted felon contradicted himself in his answer.

“Ohhh, that was good,” Trump said. “I haven’t sampled it yet, but I will.”

Why would Trump answer the question in that way? Clearly, he wouldn’t know the sandwich was “good” unless he had tried some, but maybe he just loved the experience of having his order taken. And why not eat a hot, melty sandwich right away? It doesn’t taste as good when it’s cold.

But the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has always been weird about food. He loves eating fast food such as McDonald’s because he reportedly has a fear of being poisoned and thinks those places are “safer.” He’s posted staged photos that call into question whether he eats fried chicken with a knife and fork, or even at all. In 2011, he was famously called out by Jon Stewart for eating chain-store pizza with a knife and fork. Maybe Trump didn’t want to make a mess by eating a hot, melty cheesesteak.

Or maybe he forgot if he ate it or not. Trump has shown numerous signs of cognitive decline in recent months, whether it’s fumbling through speeches at rallies, ranting about boats and sharks, or making bizarre, nonsensical claims about migrants. He continues to brag about acing a cognitive test, but he changes the details every time he relates the story. MeidasTouch even made a supercut of several of his gaffes, including him mixing up Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley.

Maybe Trump ought to be a little more careful taking shots at Joe Biden and claiming he’ll be on drugs at Thursday’s presidential debate. After all, Biden’s pretty clear about what he enjoys eating.

CNN commentator and former New York Representative Lee Zeldin made a mess of a simple question about political violence ahead of the first presidential debate.

When CNN’s Kasie Hunt asked Zeldin if he thought Donald Trump was “living up to what you say, that leaders should use rhetoric that discourages political violence,” Zeldin, a former New York gubernatorial candidate, talked in circles around the question, evidently still bound by the party diktat that Trump’s conduct is beyond reproach.

“Well, listen, there’s a lot that I would say, you know, as far as President Trump, what he has said, stuff that President Biden has said, that is not maybe you know, what my particular style is, but President Trump is a fighter. You know, he is, he is on offense. I’m sure he’ll be on offense again on Thursday.… Again, not just talking about what, I, my preference is for that positive, uplifting message. But I do think that a lot of people also want to see that contrast outlined. And this is high stakes. Talking about the president of the United States,” Zeldin said.

The verbal contortion act, aside from its shameless refusal to engage with Trump’s long history of encouraging political violence, was not exactly an incisive bit of analysis.

And Zeldin, who unsuccessfully ran against current New York Governor Kathy Hochul to replace Andrew Cuomo, should know the implications of violent political rhetoric better than most; he was attacked while giving a speech on the campaign trail in 2022. Party loyalty, however, seems to have overridden firsthand experience.

Judge Aileen Cannon is considering throwing out a collection of sealed notes on Trump’s behavior that practically prove that he knowingly stole and withheld classified documents from the U.S. government after he left office.

The notes, written by Trump’s former lead attorney Evan Corcoran two months before the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, describe a man who knew that he had taken troves of sensitive documents from the government and who then continued to knowingly conceal the documents from federal investigators, out of concern that being caught with them could result in criminal charges.

“He raised a question as to, if we gave them additional documents now, would they, would they, the Department of Justice, come back and say well, why did you withhold them, and try to use that as a basis for criminal liability or to make him look bad in the press,” Corcoran wrote of a May 2022 interaction with Trump, according to documents reviewed by ABC News.

Cannon is hearing arguments Tuesday on how strongly prosecutors can lean on the note package, and whether the case could be dismissed outright based on the role the notes play in the prosecution’s case.

A quick refresh: The National Archives requested as early as May 2021—just four months after he left office—that Trump return the missing documents to the government. Months later, a Trump representative would admit that 12 boxes of such material were at Mar-a-Lago. The National Archive ultimately retrieved 15 boxes, 14 of which included classified information, though some of the documents were discovered to have been torn up by Trump upon their retrieval. By May 2022, the Justice Department had obtained a subpoena for “any and all” classified documents at Trump’s residence, expecting the documents by the end of the month.

After Trump failed to respond to the subpoena, three FBI agents and DOJ counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt traveled to Mar-a-Lago in June to iron out the dispute. When they arrived, Trump’s attorney handed over an envelope double-wrapped in tape that they said held more classified documents and, despite being made aware that the boxes holding the sensitive documents were being held in a storage room at the resort, the agents were given “no opportunity … to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained.”

Meanwhile, Trump has practically confessed that he took the sensitive records. In an interview on Newsmax earlier this year, Trump claimed point blank that he actually did take the classified documents, describing the process of shamelessly packing them away while leaving office.

“I took ’em very legally,” Trump told the far-right network in March. “And I wasn’t hiding them.”

Trump faces 42 felony charges in the case related to willful retention of national security information, corruptly concealing documents, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Meanwhile, the Trump-appointed judge overseeing the case has slow-walked the trial so aggressively that she has been accused by legal experts of attempting to postpone it indefinitely. Last week, Judge Aileen Cannon began hearing arguments not related to Trump’s actions—but instead on whether special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment to the case, and its subsequent prosecution, was constitutional.

If Trump wins the election in November, he could potentially pardon himself, considering all of the alleged crimes are federal charges.

Donald Trump’s campaign is hard at work manufacturing a reason for him to skip Thursday’s presidential debate, and his latest tactic is the most ridiculous one yet.

Trump and his former White House doctor Representative Ronny Jackson, who reportedly kept the former president’s administration “awash in speed,” have repeatedly suggested that President Joe Biden will take performance-enhancing drugs before the debate, as part of their crusade to undermine the event and give Trump a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Now they’ve elevated their own bonkers conspiracy theory even further: Trump posted a letter to Truth Social on Monday that Jackson supposedly sent to the White House demanding Biden submit to a drug test before the debate.

“I demand that you submit to a clinically validated drug test in order to reassure the American people that you are mentally fit to serve as President and not relying on performance enhancing drugs to help you with your debate performance,” Jackson wrote. The pill-pushing Texas Republican demanded that the results of the president’s drug test be made public.

In his letter, Jackson echoed Trump’s and right-wing media’s insistence that Biden is suffering from cognitive decline, including a reference to a video of Biden that had been doctored to make him appear to wander away from a group at the G7 conference, and Robert Hur’s damning report casting public doubt on Biden’s memory. Hur’s characterization of their interview has been contested by the White House.

All of this concocted drama around drug use, as well as claims that CNN will host a biased debate, positively reek of desperation to get the former president out of Thursday night’s presidential showdown. It’s not surprising, as Trump is not suited to actual debate: His speech is often erratic and incoherent, and he’s prone to going off on tangents. Plus, Trump has historically taken a hit in the polls after debating with Democrats, in 2016, and again in 2020. While Trump loves to hype up a crowd, he’s just not that convincing when he’s sharing the stage.

It also appears that Jackson may soon want to focus on problems of his own. The House Ethics Committee announced Monday that it will review a report from a congressional watchdog that discovered “substantial reason” to believe that Jackson had converted thousands of dollars of campaign money for his own personal use.

Jackson was demoted by the U.S. Navy in 2022 after the Pentagon inspector general found that he regularly drank on the job, berated his subordinates, and acted inappropriately. Last year, Jackson was filmed unleashing a profanity-laced tirade on a Department of Public Safety officer.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Donald Trump’s classified documents case, once again has made a decision that appears to help the former president and convicted felon—and legal experts are calling her out. 

On Tuesday, Cannon will continue to divert the trial’s focus to whether special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment to investigate and prosecute Trump’s mishandling of classified documents is even constitutional. Legal experts, including Trump’s former lawyer Ty Cobb, have blasted Cannon’s decision to entertain Trump’s motion against the special counsel, pointing out the mountains of legal precedent affirming the appointment’s legality under the Constitution.

MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman, a former federal prosecutor, took Cannon to task on Deadline: White House Monday afternoon, calling her aptitude into question. 

“There’s no question she’s inexperienced. And she does not have the tools to handle a case that is this complicated. That’s clear. There’s, you know, everyone’s seen that,” Weissman said.  “We also do have the fact that the Eleventh Circuit, a conservative circuit that she is in, reversed her not once, but twice. And those were conservative judges who just thought she was absolutely bonkers in terms of her rulings.

“And of course, both times that she was overturned, her rulings were for Trump. It’s not like she’s inexperienced and sometimes she gets it right for Trump and sometimes she gets it right or wrong for the government. They’re always siding with Donald Trump and it’s very, very hard at this point to see her as being anything other than partisan,” Weissman added. 

Cannon’s actions in the classified documents case have constantly served Trump’s interests from the start, giving weight to the accusation that she is prone to exploitation. When the case was initially handed to her, more senior judges in her circuit urged her to turn over the case to a judge with more trial experience, but she refused. 

Cannon has also agreed to hear pretrial motions that have slowed down proceedings, including the one questioning Smith’s appointment. She’s thrown out parts of the case, and her willingness to entertain every motion from Trump’s team, no matter how frivolous, has postponed the trial indefinitely.