Trump Abandons Interview After Question on His Favorite Talking Point

As Donald Trump returned to Michigan to speak about crime, he deliberately ignored the truth: Crime is down. 

Standing under a banner that read “Make America Safe Again” on Tuesday, Trump spoke about law and order and a so-called “Kamala crime wave” occurring at levels “nobody has ever seen before.” But when journalists tried to ask him about that claim, he got scared.

According to The Detroit News, the Trump team had originally agreed to sit down for an interview with their newspaper Tuesday. However, after reporters pushed the former president about spreading lies about Michigan’s crime data, “a campaign aide said the presidential candidate no longer had time for an interview after the speech.”

Data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t show any crime wave phenomenon. In the two years since the former president left office, violent crime has continued to drop and return to pre-pandemic levels.

Michigan specific data also fails to show any spike in violent crime under a Democratic administration. Homicides in Detroit are down to their lowest total since 1966, according to police data reviewed by The Detroit News. But Trump doesn’t want to talk about that. So much so that he’s dodging interviews with local journalists about crime.

“Facts don’t matter when it comes to him,” Democratic state Representative Tyrone Carter, a former sheriff, told The Detroit News. “It’s about telling a story that benefits you.”

Far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer made shallow attacks against former Donald Trump aide Stephanie Grisham, who called the former president out at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night for mocking his base. But the failed politician couldn’t deny the truth of what Grisham was saying.

Grisham, a former White House press secretary, revealed that Trump “mocks his supporters behind closed doors,” and claimed that Melania Trump had refused to call for peaceful protests as the January 6 riot was unfolding. Grisham also voiced her support for Vice President Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention.

Loomer, ever the pro-Trump hate-poster, didn’t like that one bit.

“Another traitor who got rich off Donald Trump and then turned on him on J6,” Loomer wrote in a post on X. “I guess she started eating uncontrollably ever since she quit Trump. She must have gained about 75 pounds since she ‘resigned.’”

“Now she’s voting for @KamalaHarris. That’s what happens when you hit the wall,” Loomer wrote.

It’s not unusual for Loomer’s criticisms to take on a personal, substanceless approach to their subjects. Last month, she landed in hot water for calling former Representative Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt, “brain dead.”

But Grisham held her ground, hitting back against Loomer’s attack. “I’ve actually hit menopause, which sucks a ton & yes it’s a weight struggle,” Grisham wrote on X. “Def not rich either—I run a non-profit animal sanctuary & could barely afford the blazer I wore tonight. BUT…I told the truth & plan to keep doing so.”

Mercedes Schlapp, Trump’s former White House Director of Strategic Communications, also failed to refute Grisham’s damning claims about Trump, similarly opting to attack Grisham personally. On stage, Grisham had said she hadn’t held a briefing at the White House because, “Unlike my boss, I never wanted to stand at the podium and lie.”

“Grisham is lying,” Schlapp wrote in a post on X. “No one in the White House had the confidence in her to effectively answer reporters’ questions at the podium.”

No matter what happens in the 2024 elections, J.D. Vance will be making money.

The Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio senator is pulling in massive royalties from the sales of his first memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which returned to the top spot on The New York Times bestseller list after Vance was named Donald Trump’s running mate. Meanwhile, he also has an $8 million deal for a book sequel, which he secured back in 2017, reports Variety.

According to his financial disclosures, Vance made $823,132 in royalties from his first book’s sales in 2020 and 2021, but less than $50,000 in 2023. He’s expected to rake in much more than that in 2024 thanks to his political ascendancy. According to HarperCollins, the book sold 650,000 copies in the first few days after Trump picked Vance.

Vance also got a portion of the $45 million that Netflix paid for the book’s movie rights in 2019. The movie has returned to Netflix’s top 10 in the weeks since Vance returned to the national spotlight.

These revelations shed more light on the incentives Vance had to join Trump’s ticket. Even if Trump loses the election in November, Vance still stands to make money, with another book on the horizon promising more royalties, assuming people would want to read it. Like Vance, Trump is represented by Hollywood talent agency WME, which helped the former president earn more than $400 million from NBC’s The Apprentice, and money from lucrative ad deals.

But unlike Vance, Trump’s old moneymakers aren’t popular these days. His old reality show and its spin-off, Celebrity Apprentice, aren’t available on any streaming platforms. His signature book, The Art of the Deal, was only a bestseller thanks to Trump gaming the system and has since been discredited by its ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz. He’s had to resort to making money off of new schemes, like the $300,000 in royalties he made from hawking Bibles. Will he still be able to rake in money if he loses?

Night two of the Democratic National Convention was all about building a sense of unity among Americans. The star-studded lineup urged patience as people work out their political differences to rally behind presidential candidates who will fight for the good of the American people rather than for their own benefit. But it also included several memorable quips that didn’t land anywhere near the high road.

During an impassioned speech formally endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Barack Obama cut Donald Trump down to size, referring to the Republican nominee’s act as “stale,” calling his unmoderated bloviating “dangerous,” and describing his behavior in office as singularly self-serving and intentionally divisive.

But Obama also included one jab at Trump that is likely to stick with him: a comment on his so-called “crowd size.”

“Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago,” Obama said. “It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he is afraid of losing to Kamala.”

“There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” he added, bringing his hands together to illustrate Trump’s “tiny size” while feigning shock at the crowd’s uproar.

A group of retired Teamsters took the stage at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night, in a move that both signaled their support for Kamala Harris and a subtle snub to their leader, who had backed Donald Trump last month.

Senator Gary Peters from Michigan initially appeared on stage, but he was just the opening act.

“On the other hand, we have Donald Trump and J.D. Vance,” Peters said, comparing the Republican ticket to Harris and Tim Walz. “And let’s be clear. If they win, if they win, working people like my friends here from the Teamsters will pay the price.”

As he spoke, more than two dozen Teamsters entered on stage, standing on either side of him.

“Their Project 2025 agenda is the same old same old. Gut overtime pay. Cut health care programs. And give billions in tax breaks to billionaires!” Peters said.

“We, we cannot let that happen. And we will not let that happen!”

Peters turned over the stage to Kenneth Stribling, a retired Teamster and president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions. Stribling spoke about learning that his monthly pension would be reduced in half in 2025, and organizing with other retirees to make it right.

“Finally, we had a breakthrough. After 50 days in office, the Biden-Harris administration passed the American Rescue Plan, including the Butch Lewis Act. They got it done without one single Republican vote in Congress. They saved over one million pensions, including 33,000 from my state Wisconsin. 52,000 from Pennsylvania. 61,000 from Michigan,” Stribling said.

“As president, I know Kamala Harris will have our backs. She will fight for our retirement, social security, and Medicare.”

Last month, Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, became the first union leader to speak at the Republican National Convention, during which he painted Trump as an “ally for the working class.” A month or so later, Trump praised Elon Musk for firing striking workers, and O’Brien condemned the comment, calling it “economic terrorism.”

O’Brien reportedly did not hear back from the DNC about his request to speak.

As of Tuesday, two local Teamsters unions and a regional council on the West Coast had announced that they had endorsed Harris, despite the fact that Teamsters International has not endorsed her—a clear sign of dissension with O’Brien.

Former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham had a lot to say about Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday. Taking the podium, Grisham who described herself as an original “true believer” and one of Trump’s closest advisers, said that “behind closed doors Trump mocks his supporters” and calls them “basement dwellers.”

It also seems like Trump believes his followers aren’t too bright either. “He used to tell me ‘it doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, just say it enough and people will believe you.’”

“He has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth,” said Grisham. She also explained that her decision to never hold a White House briefing had to do with Trump’s lack of care about the truth. “Unlike my boss, I never wanted to stand at the podium and lie.”

She also exposed texts between herself and Melania Trump during the January 6 insurrection. “Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness & violence?” Grisham texted. Melania Trump allegedly replied with just one word: “No.”

Other Republicans speaking at the DNC include Ana Navarro-Cárdenas of The View, host of night two of the convention, former Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, former Pence adviser Olivia Troye, and a three-time Trump voter working in construction, Kyle Sweetser, who spoke earlier Tuesday.

“I started to see Trump’s tariff policy in action, costs for construction workers like me were starting to soar,” Sweetser said. “I realized Trump wasn’t for me, he was for lining his own pockets.”

“Now I’m not left-wing, period.” he added, “but I believe our leaders should bring out the best in us. Not the worst. That’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris.”

The Georgia state elections board is making changes to its voter certification process, and the Republican National Committee is in full support.

On Monday, the Georgia board approved a new rule by a 3–2 vote to allow local officials to investigate vote totals after Election Day, opening the door for new obstacles in certifying election results. Now, any member on a county’s board of elections can “examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results,” which could create chaos after an election.

The Republican National Committee’s co-chair, Michael Whatley, praised the measure in a statement, saying, “These steps by the State Election board are critical to securing the election in Georgia and correcting its long history of chaos.”

Three Republicans on the board have been praised by Donald Trump, who lost the state in 2020 and famously told Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him 11,780 votes to overturn the results. Those same three members were hit with an ethics complaint last week by a former chair of the Fulton County Board of Elections, Cathy Woolard, who accused them of breaking the law in their efforts to help Trump disrupt the coming election.

Since 2020, Georgia has had the highest number of certification refusals anywhere in the country—and remains the likely epicenter for Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2024. Trump still faces charges for allegedly trying to overturn his 2020 election results in the state, but the case is currently in limbo over efforts to oust Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis. 

The RNC is totally under Trump’s control, having backed Whatley and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to serve as the committee’s co-chairs. The RNC’s support of Georgia’s new rule means that the former president and convicted felon is also applauding the move.

The RNC is sparing no effort to lock up Georgia in the GOP’s favor, also backing the state’s Republicans in a federal lawsuit over the alleged removal of nearly 1,000 voters from the rolls. With elections less than three months away, Democrats should be keeping a close eye on the GOP’s legally questionable efforts in Georgia.

Donald Trump gave his second sleepy address in as many days Tuesday during a stop in Howell, Michigan, diverting from his winding rant about crime to complain that women don’t seem to like him very much. 

During Trump’s low-energy speech, which was hosted in a shiny white garage at the Livingston County Sheriff’s office in front of parked police SUVs, the convicted felon candidate desperately attempted to frame his opponent, a former prosecutor, as being too lenient on crime. 

Trump alleged that Kamala Harris was “the ringleader for this pro-crime and anti-police crusade. It’s a real anti-police crusade. They just have it out for the police. Nobody knows why.”

He also called Harris “one of the first Marxist prosecutors in America” and “the godmother of sanctuary cities.”

Trump continued to falsely claim that Harris was responsible for passing a law that allows shoplifters in California to steal up to $950 in goods without being prosecuted, which Trump first claimed during his wild press conference last week in Bedminster, New Jersey.

“So, guys are walking into stores with calculators,” Trump said, turning to the officers standing behind him. “Did you know that they have calculators? They’re adding it up, they want to make sure they’re under $950. But it didn’t matter because they didn’t prosecute the ones that went over it.”

The Golden State’s penal code says nothing of the sort. Instead, it states that shoplifters who steal under $950 are charged with a misdemeanor, and those who steal more are charged with a felony. Even if the law said what Trump keeps insisting it does, which it doesn’t, it’s not clear that Harris had anything to do with the law being passed, or with “that horrible shoplifting epidemic” he blamed her for. 

While Trump’s speech was meant to focus on crime and safety, he was miraculously able to deliver the exact same talking points he’d made at every speaking event for the past week. He did make one new, but ultimately unsurprising claim, about his apparent lack of support from female voters.

The Republican nominee promised that if elected to the White House, he would stop the “plunder, rape, slaughter, and destruction of our American suburbs,” before detouring into a rant about women voters.  

“I think that women living in the suburbs—I keep hearing about ‘the suburban woman doesn’t like Trump,’ well, I think it’s a fake poll because why wouldn’t they like me? I keep the suburbs safe,” Trump claimed, arguing that women should be grateful that he kept undocumented immigrants out of their communities. 

“I think that they like me a lot, I think it’s a lot of fake polls,” Trump insisted, claiming he had “won the big one,” despite what polls had predicted. Trump went on to argue that for women voters, safety was the most important issue. 

“Women want to have safety. They want to have a strong military. They want to have a strong police force. They want to be in the house, and they want to be safe. They don’t want to have people pouring into their doors and you can’t do anything about it. Right?” 

As the crowd clapped, Trump mused, “I hope they like my personality.”

He thought about it for a moment. “I have a nice personality. But to me, it wouldn’t be very important, the personality. They want to be safe,” Trump said. 

Rather than actually craft a message that appeals to female voters, who could reasonably be disturbed by any part of Trump and J.D. Vance’s lackluster platform, including their overtly misogynistic rhetoric, Trump has repeatedly tried to woo women with his racist anti-immigrant fear-mongering. 

On Sunday, Trump shared a post on his Truth Social account showing video footage of a line of people of color walking on a dirt road with the caption, “If you’re a woman you can either vote for Trump or wait until one of these monsters goes after you or your daughter.”

Trump’s attempts to convince women to vote for him have been falling flat, and female voters have been moving steadily to the left, or as far away from Trump as they can manage. A New York Times/Siena poll published Saturday found that Kamala Harris had opened up a significant gender gap in some key battleground states, earning a 14-point lead over Trump among likely women voters in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, a group that had been evenly split between Joe Biden and Trump in May.

Trump’s speech had no shortage of the fear-mongering one has come to expect from the former president, even if he delivered it at a lower-energy frequency than normal.  He went on to repeat his oft-issued threat, that the world was on the precipice of World War III. 

He claimed he would never allow the military to become woke, before randomly turning to the officers standing behind him. “Do you promise you’ll never be woke? I don’t see a lot of wokeness, there’s not a lot of wokeness,” Trump said. “I don’t think so.”

Donald Trump thinks it should be “illegal” for the public to criticize the Supreme Court justices who rule in his favor.

In a bizarre speech over the weekend, between a bad Emmanuel Macron impression and claiming that he is better looking than Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump made a frightening declaration: He believes that those who criticize his judges should be punished.

“I really think it’s illegal what they do, with judges and justices. They’re playing the ref,” Trump said at a Saturday rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. “Remember the term. Playing the ref with our judges and justices should be punishable by very serious fines and beyond that.”

But even as others get their First Amendment rights taken from them, Trump thinks he should still have a right to criticize the courts. “The New York court system is totally corrupt,” Trump said in the same Saturday speech, referring to the court that convicted him of 34 felonies in his hush-money trial. His rants about the judge, the prosecutors, and the witnesses in that trial were so extreme that he was slapped with a gag order back in March, part of which still remains in place.

Trump’s suggestion comes as the Supreme Court’s conservative justices are under greater scrutiny after multiple reports of corruption and ties to far-right groups. Last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced articles of impeachment against Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

J.D. Vance argued Tuesday that access to firearms should only be restricted for those convicted of a crime—meaning that those under restraining orders should still be able to purchase weapons.

During a press conference in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Vance was asked what he thought about restricting firearms access for those convicted of stalking. Vance answered the question, and then some.

“Well look, I think that we certainly don’t want violent criminals to have access to weapons, and that includes people, I think, who have been convicted of stalking. But I think it’s important to say convicted,” Vance replied.

“And what a lot of those of us who are pro-Second Amendment, what we don’t want is, you know, we don’t want somebody to have their gun rights taken away when they haven’t actually been to court of law. Whether it’s a First Amendment right, a Second Amendment right, you are entitled to due process in this country,” Vance explained.

“Certainly, people who are convicted of a crime, they should not be able to carry a firearm. But people who have not gone through due process, they still have their rights,” he said.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court upheld a New York law prohibiting domestic abusers under restraining orders from carrying firearms, with one lone dissenter: Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas argued that the government could not “strip the Second Amendment right of anyone subject to a protective order—even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime.”

In the majority opinion, Chief Supreme Court Justice Roberts found that the New York law was in line with constitutional law. “Our tradition of firearm regulation allows the government to disarm individuals who present a credible threat to the physical safety of others,” Roberts wrote.