Trump’s Weird, Rambling Rally Shows How Much He’s Struggling

Donald Trump capped the first week of his campaign’s so-called “reset,” already punctuated with chaotic speeches that veered off topic into personal attacks against Kamala Harris, with yet another chaotic speech that veered off topic into personal attacks.

While Trump initially seemed more interested in staying on script than his previous failed forays, he still couldn’t help but shift his speech on economic issues into immature smears and complaining.

“Joe Biden hates her, okay? Hates her. You don’t mind if I go off teleprompter for a second, do you? Joe Biden hates her,” Trump said. “This was the overthrow of a president. This was an overthrow. They went out, and I spent $100 million fighting Joe Biden.”

Trump proceeded to make several asides, diverting to his same tired lines and some particularly meandering stories. At one point, he caught himself getting off topic.

“They’ll say, ‘He was rambling.’ I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy, you know, really smart. I don’t ramble,” Trump rambled.

“Anytime I hit too hard, they say, ‘He was rambling!’ Rambling?” Trump said, incredulous.

No matter how many times his campaign may try to keep its candidate on message, Trump can’t seem to stop revisiting his worn-out attacks against Harris. He once again started talking about her laugh, claiming it was “the laugh of a lunatic.”

Trump also complained again about the photo-illustration of Harris on the cover of Time magazine, which he’d previously said made her look like the “most beautiful actress to ever live.”

Trump now claimed it was because they couldn’t get a good enough picture, and scoffed at the idea that Harris was “beautiful.”

“I am much better looking than her,” Trump said, murmuring, “Much better. Much better.”

“I am a better looking person than Kamala!” Trump shouted, as the crowd cheered. But the enthusiasm of his audience was hardly consistent.

Trump’s long-winded tales lost the crowd. He told a particularly meandering story about French president Emmanuel Macron to a mostly quiet audience. Later, he reminisced about being endorsed by renowned basketball coach Bobby Knight ahead of the 2016 election.

“He endorsed me and Indiana was mine.” Trump said, to some mild clapping.

While the former president’s lame insults may wind up his crowds, even they can’t pretend to follow his winding stories.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz showed off his football coach pep talk skills speaking to a high school football team in western Pennsylvania on Sunday.

At a campaign stop, the former high school teacher and football coach spoke on the field to Aliquippa High School football players, many of whom were likely too young to even vote, and linked the values of the sport to democracy.

“Politics isn’t that much different than this,” said Walz, who helped rebuild the Mankato West Scarlets and led them to victory in 1999. “It’s about setting a future goal and trying to reach it. It’s about doing it with dignity and hard work.”

Walz described the fourth quarter of a game where players have to trust their teammates.

“Our country’s not that different,” he continued. “Our neighbors want to be with you. Our neighbors want to do what’s right. And the more we figure out that we’re in this thing together, and we have more in common than we have separated. We’re going to do a heck of a lot better.”

He urged the students not to turn away from politics, despite political conversations feeling “pretty ugly” and “pretty negative” these days.

That negativity can be seen in many Republicans claiming that Walz is lying about coaching his winning team. One recent social media post was shared 5,000 times before it was deemed misinformation.

Clearly, the Harris campaign has a different understanding of “locker room talk” than its opponents. 

Donald Trump is looking for anything to boost his fortunes as his polls continue to drop, so he’s resorted to using A.I. to claim Taylor Swift and her fans endorsed him.

The former president and convicted felon shared several A.I.-generated photos on Truth Social Sunday, including one showing the pop star dressed like Uncle Sam, pointing forward with the text “Taylor Wants You To Vote For Donald Trump.” The post also included other A.I. photos of women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts. He captioned the post, “I accept!”

The post contained one photo of a Swift fan with a “Swifties for Trump” T-shirt, which reportedly is legitimate, The Independent reports. However, Swift herself has not made any endorsements in the 2024 election. She has spoken out against Trump in the past and opposed Republican Marsha Blackburn in her run for the U.S. Senate in 2018.

Trump is desperate for Swift’s endorsement, and has made some creepy comments about her appearance, repeatedly calling her “very beautiful.” Privately, some of his supporters earlier this year reportedly called for a “holy war” if she endorsed Joe Biden, and presumably that extends to Kamala Harris.

On social media, Trump’s attempt to gain sympathy from Swifties was quickly dismissed and criticized, with some calling for Swift to take legal action.

Republicans and the right wing have some bizarre views when it comes to Swift, inventing conspiracy theories about her and calling her a “psyop” because they can’t understand her popularity. Her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has fueled many of those conspiracies, with conservatives bewildered over her fans’ new interest in the National Football League.

Recently, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s comments criticizing “childless cat ladies” drew a large backlash from many, particularly Swift fans, as the pop star is famously a cat person. If Trump thinks that some weak deepfake images will be enough to win over Swift fans after that, he fails to realize that they know him all too well.

J.D. Vance desperately tried to downplay new polls showing Kamala Harris in the lead on Sunday—but he couldn’t back up his outlandish claims.

During an interview on Fox News, host Shannon Bream asked Vance about a New York Times/Siena Poll published Saturday that found Harris was leading Donald Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50 percent to 45 percent. The poll also found that Harris had passed Trump in North Carolina, leading him 49 percent to 47 percent, and that she had significantly narrowed the former president’s lead in Georgia and Nevada.

“What is the administration doing—the campaign doing with that data, as it comes in?” Bream asked Vance, who is not doing so well in the polls himself. “I mean, these are critical states that you’ve gotta have to have a path to 270. Are there any pivots, are there any, um, you know, reconfiguring of what you’re doing in this strategy? Because you talk about your message—but is it not landing?”

“First of all, the polls tend to radically overstate Democrats, we certainly saw that during the polling of summer of 2020 and summer of 2016. And of course, a lot of those polls were wrong when it came to Election Day,” Vance replied.

“Kamala Harris got a bit of a sugar high a couple of weeks ago, but what we’ve actually seen from our own internal data, Shannon, is that Kamala Harris has already leveled off,” Vance said. “If you talk to insiders inside the Kamala Harris campaign, they’re very worried about where they are.”

By Vance’s account, there was absolutely no reason for the campaign to change course to address Trump’s weakening polls—or the high-energy campaign that caused the shift. Behind the scenes, however, the Trump team hired several new staffers last week from old Trump campaigns, including Trump’s campaign manager from 2016, Corey Lewandowski.

Bream also asked Vance about a national Washington Post/ABC/IPSOS poll published Sunday, which found Harris to have a slight lead nationally. “Those are new numbers, so if you think the momentum is not swinging, or your internal polls are suggesting differently—every other poll that’s been released has shown great momentum in her direction,” Bream said.

“You know, Shannon, I think there are a lot of polls that actually show her stagnating and leveling off,” Vane said, claiming that Washington Post/ABC had been “a wildly inaccurate pollster in the summer of 2020.”

“And look, if you see the numbers that we’re seeing and you actually talk to the American people, I feel extremely confident that we’re gonna be in the right place come November. We can’t worry about polls, we have to run through the finish line and encourage everybody to get out there and vote,” Vance said, but he wasn’t done, he had time to sprinkle in one last conspiracy theory.

“Consistently what you’ve seen in 2016 and 2020 is that the media uses fake polls to drive down Republican turnout and to create dissension and conflict with Republican voters,” Vance said, insisting that the campaign was in a “very, very good spot.”

There is little evidence to suggest that a poll published in August could convince someone not to vote in November. If anything, a positive poll might convince someone not to vote, because they think their preferred candidate is safe, rather than a negative one convincing someone it’s a lost cause.

Since Harris began her meteoric rise in the polls, the Trump campaign has taken to the practice of disseminating “unskewed” polls, which means adjusting poll results based on the difference between election results and recalled votes of respondents, or how they claim to have voted four years ago. Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio and data consultant Tim Saler have claimed that new polls understate support for Trump in 2020, and that adjusting according to recalled votes creates a more accurate picture of Trump’s chances. Recalled votes are considered by some to be an unreliable metric.

The Trump campaign appears to have decided that if a new poll doesn’t line up with the recall record, it must be inaccurate. Using this method, the campaign has begun to claim that any poll that doesn’t find Trump in the lead is a lie.

The Democratic National Convention started off with a bang Sunday night, literally branding Trump Tower Chicago in lit-up phrases that Donald Trump isn’t likely to be too happy about.

Locals noticed projections on the side of the 96-floor glass scraper that included “Trump-Vance: Out For Themselves,” as well as “Trump-Vance: ‘Weird as Hell,’” “Harris-Walz: Fighting for You,” and “Project 2025 HQ.”

DNC leadership took responsibility for the troll, confirming to Rolling Stone that the group had rented a room across from the massive hotel and set up a high powered projector in order to accomplish the prank.

“He’s a grifter and nothing we said wasn’t the truth,” Abhi Rahman, deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee, told the Daily Beast.

“Tonight, everyone is seeing a preview of the contrast that will take center stage this week throughout the Democratic National Convention,” Rahman said in a statement that heavily criticized Project 2025. “Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz have proven records of delivering for working families, and now, they’re running to lead our country into a brighter future.”

But Trump didn’t seem to notice the prank by Monday morning, instead continuing to harp on calling Democrats a lot of socialists and communists.

“The Radical Left protesters in Chicago are going after the Democrat Party because the know they are weak and ready to break into a full blown party of Socialism or, if they really do their job, and with a little bit of luck, the Communist Party of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They are already very close and, having a Marxist trained and believing President whose father is a Marxist professor, Comrade Kamala Harris, stranger things have happened! November 5th, 2024, will be the most important day in the history of our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”