Cognitive Decline? Trump Accidentally Praises Harris’s Record
Donald Trump said Kamala Harris and Joe Biden had made the country “very safe.”
![Donald Trump gestures while speaking at a press conference](http://images.newrepublic.com/3e177937c6cbe40fa7065f77f54d1880a7dd1ac9.jpeg?auto=format&fit=crop&crop=faces&q=65&w=768&h=undefined&ar=3%3A2&ixlib=react-9.0.2&w=768)
Donald Trump had a Freudian slip on live TV Thursday while discussing President Joe Biden’s administration.
In the middle of complaining about Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s foreign policy during a phone interview with Fox News, the Republican presidential nominee accidentally seemed to throw them a huge compliment.
“Most importantly, they’ve made our country very safe,” Trump said. “And internationally, they’ve made it even more safe!”
"Most importantly, they've made our country very safe. And internationally, they've made it ever more safe" -- Trump on the Biden-Harris administration 🥴 pic.twitter.com/6v8E72mvsm
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 22, 2024
But the bombastic populist regained his linguistic footing shortly afterwards.
“As bad as—when you Chicago and the cities—as bad as they are, much worse internationally. We’re going to end up in World War III because she’s incompetent,” Trump continued. “Biden sent her—Russia would have never happened with Ukraine if I were president. Israel, the attack on Israel, would have never happened. Iran had no money, they had no money to give to Hamas or Hezbollah.”
Then, the interview took a turn for the worse.
“Let me tell you a little-known fact that the press doesn’t want to talk about,” Trump told the news outlet. “Biden sent, I call her Comrade Kamala, sent comrade Kamala to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack. She went, she said, she gave her case, he attacked three days later.”
That last point ushered an immediate fact-check by the station, with Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade clarifying that there was zero evidence for Trump’s story about Harris.
“Just as a quick clarification, we don’t have confirmation that the vice president went to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin,” Kilmeade said. “I know she went over to Europe right before the incursion when Russia invaded Ukraine, and it’s a war that’s still going on right now.”
Trump has been panicking since Harris was announced as the Democrats’ presidential nominee. Since then, he has wavered on backing out of debates against her, attacked her personally, and has completely reprogrammed his campaign strategy, downsizing from large, boisterous rallies to small, supposedly narrowly focused pressers.
All the while, Trump’s numbers have plummeted. The Republican nominee has even lost some of his staunchest supporters, including white supremacists, with alt-right political pundit Nick Fuentes pulling his endorsement from Trump earlier this month under the belief that his presidential campaign is headed for a “catastrophic loss.”