Trump’s Rare Attempt to Stay on Message Ends in Disaster

Donald Trump delivered a strangely low-energy speech on Monday at a factory in York, Pennsylvania.

While the crowd at Precision Custom Components started off cheering at the former president’s compliments about Pennsylvania and promises to bolster American manufacturing, any initial enthusiasm appeared to wane as Trump proceeded through his remarks in a monotone reading voice.

“Kamala puts America last, I put America first,” Trump said, sounding completely dejected. He frowned as the crowd cheered.

For once, the former president was actually able to stay more or less on topic (although his talking points were still devoid of facts or actual policy ideas). He just seemed to hate every second of it, and the crowd responded in kind.

Trump’s claim that “caravans” of immigrants coming to the U.S. for free healthcare was met only by the echoes of his own remarks. Laments over “reckless spending” on healthcare, complaints that the supposed electric vehicle mandate is “absolutely so crazy,” and promises to clean up a supposedly graffiti-covered Washington, D.C., were met with total silence. Even promises to “liberate our workers with the largest regulatory cuts” did not evoke a single clap.

While his dulled speaking style didn’t prevent him from flying through topics, it did prevent him from getting any responses from the crowd for several minutes at a time. His awkward delivery made it unclear when the audience, or the people standing behind him, should clap, and pauses didn’t come easily or often in the Republican nominee’s speech.

In one particularly outrageous moment, Trump said, “The union—the United Auto Workers, I think the people in that union are going to vote for me overwhelmingly because I’m going to bring car industry back.”

Just last week Trump said he would fire striking workers during a conversation with billionaire technocrat Elon Musk. The next day, the United Auto Workers filed federal labor charges against Trump and Musk, accusing them of “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected concerted activity, such as strikes.”

Shawn Fain, the president of the UAW, is scheduled to speak Monday night at the Democratic National Convention. “He doesn’t have a clue, it’s sad,” Trump said about Fain, blaming him for a decline in U.S. car manufacturing. As he started to compliment military industrial manufacturers, such as the factory where he stood, he took off on another tangent.

“What would happen if we had a war? We won’t, with me. But you will have World War III, I believe, without me. But we won’t have—but what would happen if we did? And let’s say it was with China, but they give us all of our steel. So we’ll have to call China for steel so we can fight a war with them. How stupid are these people?” Trump rambled.

After stewing in Tim Walz’s “weird” label for several weeks, Donald Trump has finally cooked up a comeback: No, you.

“You know, he said we’re weird,” Trump told a small crowd in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday during an event that was supposed to focus on the economy. “That J.D. and I are weird. I think we’re extremely normal people.”

“We’re like you, we’re exactly like you,” the Epstein-socializing, family-separating, woman-hating, millionaire former reality TV star and convicted felon said about himself and his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, who became the target of an online joke that he had screwed a couch.

“He is weird,” Trump continued, referring to Walz. “Did you ever see him go on the stage and go, like, crazy? Between his movement and her laugh, there’s a lot of crazy. I’d say a step further than weird, weird is a nice word by comparison.”

But just moments earlier, Trump had failed to demonstrate how not weird he is by refusing, once again, to admit that he lost the 2020 presidential election and, later, choosing to refer to himself in the third person.

“Everyone was better off when you had a gentleman named President Donald J. Trump at the helm. Does anybody know him? Whoever he may be,” he said to muted applause.

Former Representative George Santos pleaded guilty to federal charges of wire fraud and identity theft on Monday afternoon.

The con artist and serial liar will avoid being tried on more than 23 charges, which include employment fraud, money laundering, and theft of public funds, but still faces anywhere from two to 20 years in prison.

In court Monday, Santos finally spoke truthfully and sounded contrite, a departure from his normal record of dishonesty in which he lied about his biography, his resume, and even his wardrobe.

“I accept full responsibility for my actions,” he said to the judge. “I understand my actions have betrayed the trust of my supporters and my constituents.”

As part of his plea agreement, Santos agreed to pay $373,749.97 in restitution for his crimes, and his sentencing has been postponed until February 7.

Santos’s blatant crimes led to him being expelled from Congress in December, despite Republicans controlling the House of Representatives with a narrow majority. He was ultimately replaced by Democrat Tom Suozzi in a special election in February, and briefly tried to return to Congress in a futile campaign against one of his biggest Republican detractors, Long Island Representative Nick LaLota. He has spent his time post-Congress earning money on the celebrity personalized message platform Cameo, even bringing back his drag alter ego “Kitara Ravache.”

After his guilty plea, Santos spoke to the press, telling his ex-constituents “I failed you,” seemingly choking up.

“I hope that by facing these consequences head on, I hope that I can demonstrate my commitment to change and to earning your forgiveness,” Santos said. “I do not ask for your forgiveness, as I know that must be earned through actions, not words.”

This story has been updated.

An evangelical group has come out in support of Vice President Kamala Harris, and its ads are aggressively looking to peel more members of the conservative Christian sect away from Donald Trump.

A new media spot by Evangelicals For Harris turns to the fourth verse of the first book of John for guidance on the upcoming election, pairing the “false prophet” Bible passage with several caustic clips of Trump.

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God,” the advertisement opens.

The clips include the time in 2016 when Trump claimed he could shoot someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and not lose any votes, as well as recent instances in which the Republican nominee channeled the language of Adolf Hitler, arguing that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” while elevating some of his icons, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

“Read 1 John 4. Choose Christ’s Love,” the advertisement ends.

It’s the second such ad by the group in recent weeks. On Wednesday, Evangelicals For Harris stitched a clip of the late Billy Graham urging parishioners to atone for their sins with a 2015 interview of Trump, in which the former real estate mogul said he was “not sure” he had ever asked God for forgiveness.

“That’s a tough question. I’m not sure I have,” Trump said at the time. “I just, I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”

The clip was not taken well by Graham’s son and institutional successor, who wrote on Twitter that “the liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris.”

“They even developed a political ad trying to use my father @BillyGraham’s image,” Franklin Graham said in response. “They are trying to mislead people. Maybe they don’t know that my father appreciated the conservative values and policies of President @realDonaldTrump in 2016, and if he were alive today, my father’s views and opinions would not have changed.”

But clearly, the pro-Trump sentiment is not shared throughout the religious dynasty: Billy Graham’s granddaughter, Jerushah Duford, endorsed Harris days later. Speaking during an Evangelicals For Harris Zoom call on Friday, Duford lamented how her denomination’s ongoing support of Trump has turned young people away from religion.

“In 2016, when a man bragged about assaulting women, various leaders of my faith then propped up this man as a poster boy for godly manhood and leadership,” Duford told the group. “This broke my heart as I have watched—quite frankly, for the last eight years—people who were curious about Jesus and His teachings [have] done a 180 and walked in the other direction from my faith.”

On Monday night, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will address the Democratic National Convention at 9 p.m. E.T.

Giving Ocasio-Cortez a prime-time speaking slot on the convention’s first day appears to signal an acknowledgement of the party’s left-wing contingent. The theme of Monday’s programming is “for the people.” The New York representative has not yet indicated what her speech will be about or if she will address the calls from protesters for a cease-fire and an arms embargo on Israel.

Still, the speech is a big shift in the Democratic Party. In 2020, Ocasio-Cortez virtually addressed the Democratic National Convention with a brief 90 second speech to symbolically endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for the presidential nomination.

Other speakers Monday night will include President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Representative Jamie Raskin, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Representative Jasmine Crockett, and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, among others.

You can watch a livestream of the convention, including Ocasio-Cortez’s speech, here: https://demconvention.com/watch/

House Republicans are once again trying to impeach President Joe Biden.

A nearly 300-page report prepared by the House Oversight Committee, House Judiciary Committee, and House Ways and Means Committee, and serendipitously obtained by Fox News on the first day of the Democratic National Convention, alleges that Biden committed “impeachable conduct.”

The committees claimed that Biden’s son Hunter, his brother James, and their associates had raked in more than $27 million from foreign individuals or entities since 2014, and that Biden had used his position as vice president to leverage more than $8 million in loans from Democratic donors. However, the report was unable to provide evidence that Biden himself had benefited from business dealings, or participated in any foreign business deals.

Many of the claims in the report had already been refuted by witness testimony during interviews with the House Oversight Committee last year.

The report also alleged that Biden had concealed his mishandling of classified documents after his time as vice president, although Special Counsel Robert Hur had declined to prosecute because there was not enough evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

The report comes 11 months after Republicans first announced their failed campaign to convince a majority of House members to impeach Biden. House Republicans referred Hunter and James Biden for criminal prosecution in June, after a disastrous impeachment inquiry that failed to scrounge up the slightest bit of evidence that Biden had committed any wrongdoing.

While that appeared to be a sign that House Oversight Chair James Comer’s quest to oust Biden had reached its inevitable, but anticlimactic, conclusion, apparently, that was somehow not the end of the Republicans’ feeble attempts to help Donald Trump.

“After wasting nearly two years and millions of taxpayer dollars, House Republicans have finally given up on their wild goose chase. This failed stunt will only be remembered for how it became an embarrassment that their own members distanced themselves from as they only managed to turn up evidence that refuted their false and baseless conspiracy theories,” Sharon Yang, the White House spokesperson for oversight investigations, told Fox News.

House Oversight Democrats released their own memo on Monday, refuting some of the Republicans’ long-debunked claims, including the false accusation that Biden had pushed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating a company linked to his son.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted on X, slamming the Republicans’ report. “House Democrats will continue to put people over politics. Extreme MAGA Republicans are baselessly threatening to impeach President Biden and shut down the government in September,” he wrote. “These extremists are unfit to govern.”

Donald Trump’s nephew, Fred Trump III, sees worrying signs of dementia in his uncle.

Trump III recently published a book, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, detailing his family history of dementia. He joined Sirius XM’s The Dean Obeidallah Show on Friday and warned that he’s seeing indicators in the former president, noting that his grandfather and Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr., died eight years after his own Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 1999.

“You know, Donald said, ‘Oh, my father was tiptop until the end.’ I can assure you, that was not the case,” Trump III told Obeidallah.

“I know what I saw in my grandfather,” Trump III added. “I know what I saw in Donald’s older sister, my aunt Maryanne, who in the end … I am not a doctor, I don’t pretend to be. I just, I know the warning signs from both of my grandfathers.”

In November 2023, Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry died at age 86. Trump III also mentioned that his uncle’s cousin, John Walters, had dementia, noting that “it runs in the family.”

“He looks older. And I get it.… Anybody who is in that office looks different than when they come out,” Trump III said. “But the things he’s spewing and the craziness, and he just can’t stick to a message. And he used to be able to stick to a message.”

Trump has had difficulty in his recent rallies and campaign speeches sticking to a particular topic, going off on tangents and rambling. He has trouble staying on message, drawing criticism from his fellow Republicans and leading many observers, including several mental health experts, to warn of signs of cognitive decline. If his family members are also seeing the signs, that doesn’t bode well for the former president and convicted felon.

Among the myriad of guests at this week’s Democratic National Convention are quite a few notable Republicans.

Republican Ana Navarro-Cárdenas of The View will host night two of the Democratic National Convention, she announced Sunday night on Instagram. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me,” Navarro said in the video. “I’m a little refugee girl who fled communism, who fled Nicaragua at the age of eight, found freedom, found opportunity, found a home in America, and for me to have the chance to stand on that stage and help my girl, Kamala, make history and become the Democratic nominee, it’s just such a mind-blowing moment.”

Rich Logis, an ex-MAGA activist and the founder of the group Leaving MAGA, will speak at the convention on Monday. Also in attendance will be former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger, who served Illinois’s 16th congressional district for over 10 years.

Kinzinger is scheduled to speak on Thursday just before Harris addresses the convention. Kinzinger became a target of Donald Trump after he was one of only 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over “incitement of an insurrection.” Kinzinger and former Representative Liz Cheney were the only Republicans to vote for creating the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol—and were also the only Republicans to join the committee.

Kinzinger resigned in 2022. A spokesperson for the Illinois politician told The New Republic in 2023 that the former representative “would only vote for Donald Trump if the opponent is actual Satan.”

In June, before President Joe Biden exited the race, the Democrats hired Representative Adam Kinzinger’s former chief of staff to aid Republican outreach efforts.

Last week, a burgeoning “Republicans for Harris” organized 70,000 people to join an organizing call that included Kinzinger as well as other former politicians and White House officials.

The Democratic National Convention will hold its first ever panel discussion on Palestinian human rights on Monday, the result of months of effort from activists advocating for an end to U.S. support for Israel’s deadly military onslaught in Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 people.

Panelists will include Layla Elabed, one of the founders of the Uncommitted Movement, which organized massive “uncommitted” votes during the Democratic primaries, as well as Hala Hajazi, a Democratic donor and fundraiser who has lost several family members to Israel’s ongoing military campaign. Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a Palestinian-American pediatric physician who has been working in Gaza throughout Israel’s assault, will speak, as well. 

The panel will also include Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, former U.S. Representative Andy Levin of Michigan, and Jim Zogby, the founder of the Arab American Institute. 

Elabed and her Uncommitted Movement co-chair Abbas Alawieh, who is also a DNC delegate, released an official statement from the group, thanking the DNC for working with them on the panel. 

“This is an important step toward recognizing the rightful place of human rights advocates for Palestinian rights within the Democratic Party. With this panel and throughout our current engagement at the DNC, we will use our platform to announce the cries of the majority of Democratic voters who want an end to the unconditional flow of U.S. weapons that Netanyahu is using to kill Palestinian families,” the statement said.

The group reiterated a previous request that Dr. Haj-Hassan should be invited to speak during the convention itself.

Harris’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez-Rodriguez, met privately with Alawieh in Detroit on Thursday, ahead of the convention. When Harris appeared in Detroit earlier this month, Alawieh and Elabed were invited to greet her, and they spoke candidly about the need for an arms embargo to Israel.  

While Harris indicated that she was open to meeting with them to discuss an arms embargo, her national security adviser has insisted that the vice president does not support an arms embargo, a position that is in line with the Biden administration’s policy. 

This week, 30 delegates from the Uncommitted Movement, representing the more than 730,000 Democratic voters who voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries, will attempt to engage with Democratic leaders at the DNC, pushing for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and arguing for a U.S. arms embargo to Israel. Elsewhere in Chicago, massive protests are planned for the week, as activists hope to reignite dialogue around the mass killing in Gaza, which has stretched on for nearly 11 months. 

Donald Trump decided to double down rather than explain what he meant when he denigrated the military’s highest award for valor in armed service, the Medal of Honor.

Speaking with MSNBC on Saturday, the former president repeated that he believed the honor’s civilian variant, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is “better.”

“When I say ‘better,’ I would rather in a certain way get it because people that get the Congressional Medal of Honor, which I’ve given to many, are often horribly wounded or dead,” Trump said. “They’re often dead, they get it posthumously.”

“When you get the Congressional Medal of Honor—I always consider that to be the ultimate, but it is a painful thing to get it,” Trump continued. “When you get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it’s usually for other things, like you’ve achieved great success in sports or you’ve achieved great success someplace else.”

The clarification comes after Trump, who famously avoided the Vietnam War draft with a timely diagnosis of bone spurs, infuriated veterans across the country by claiming that the Presidential Medal of Freedom was “much better” because recipients of the Medal of Honor have been “hit so many times by bullets.”

The off-color comment was made all the worse by the fact that Trump made the remark to elevate one of his top patrons, Miriam Adelson, a heavy-handed Republican donor and the richest Israeli in the world. Adelson and her husband, Las Vegas Sands billionaire Sheldon Adelson, earned Trump’s favor after they funneled $25 million to Trump’s super PACs in 2016 and donated $5 million to his inauguration. That earned them a spot on the dais, just a few rows behind Jared Kushner, as Trump was sworn in. In 2018, their contributions effectively bought Mrs. Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2019 influenced Trump to recognize Israel’s sovereignty in Golan Heights, an Israeli-occupied portion of southwest Syria that the religious state captured in 1967.

Former Trump chief of staff and retired Marine General John Kelly threw out Trump’s comparison of the two honors, telling CNN Monday that the two medals are “not even close. No equivalency of any kind.”

“Think of Normandy, Iwo Jima, Vietnam, or Fallujah,” Kelly told CNN. “The Medal of Honor is earned, not won, by incredibly brave actions on the battlefield under fire typically by very young men who joined when others did not to defend their country.”

“To the service member, the oath is sacred and taken with the understanding that one could be seriously wounded, captured, or killed in living up to the words,” Kelly continued, referring to the oaths of enlistment. “No president, member of Congress, judge, or political appointee—and certainly no recipient of the Presidential Medal—will ever be asked to give life or limb to protect the Constitution. The two awards cannot be compared in any way. Not even close.”

Both comments have drawn comparisons to other disrespectful remarks Trump flung at the military during his time in office, including a 2020 Atlantic report that caught the former president repeatedly referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”