Trump Slurs and Stumbles Way Through Conspiracy-Laden Interview

Donald Trump just couldn’t back up his outlandish claims about voter fraud during an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman that aired Tuesday. 

During the 45-minute interview, Fridman asked Trump directly if he felt that Kamala Harris should be challenged more by the press. In response, the Republican nominee started rattling off false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

“I don’t know. I can’t believe the whole thing is happening. We had a man in there that should’ve never been in there. They kept him in a basement, they used Covid, they cheated, but they used Covid to cheat. They cheated without Covid, too,” Trump said. Moments later, the former president claimed he had “lost by a whisker” in 2020. 

Later, Fridman tried to delicately ask Trump about what he would say to convince independent voters who were “troubled by what happened in the 2020 election” to vote for him. Fridman specifically referred to Trump’s unsupported claims about widespread voter fraud, and his administration’s alleged fake electors scheme. Despite Fridman’s softball approach, Trump doubled down on his disturbing rhetoric, before quickly swerving off topic.

“I think the fraud was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud, and many people felt it was that. And they wanted answers. And when you can’t challenge an election—you have to be able to challenge it, otherwise it’s gonna get worse, not better,” Trump said. He explained that there were lots of ways to “solve this problem” to prevent noncitizens from voting, including paper ballots, same-day voting, and stricter voter identification.

In reality, there is very little evidence to suggest that noncitizen voting is a major problem in the U.S.  In 2016, noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. As it happens, the only people concocting a scheme to fake votes in the last election were in Trump’s camp.

“So, uhhhh look, we have the worst border in the history of the world. We have, coming into our country right now, millions and millions of people, at levels that nobody’s ever seen. I don’t believe any country has ever seen it. We have, coming into our country right now, millions of people. And they would use sticks and stones not to make it happen, not to let it happen,” Trump said, seeming increasingly confused as he descended into one of his typical anti-immigrant stump speeches. 

Trump went on to complain about Harris as the “border czar,” which was never her official position, and continued to tout baseless claims that countries from around the world were offloading their people from prisons, mental institutions, and insane asylums to the U.S. After about three minutes of Trump’s blatant fearmongering, Fridman tried to ask his original question a different way, so that it might actually elicit a real answer.

“So, a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election. Whether it’s media bias or big tech. Still, the claim of widespread fraud was the thing that bothers people,” Fridman said, but Trump easily bypassed his gentle phrasing.

“Well, I don’t focus on the past, I focus on the future,” Trump said, before diving into a lengthy rehashing of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was, of course, also the past.

Fridman tried one last time to get an actual response from Trump. “Let me just linger on the election a little—a little bit more. For this election, it might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election? Whether you win or lose,” Fridman asked. 

“Well I hope it’s not a close one. I don’t know how people can vote for someone who destroyed our country,” Trump said, before turning back to immigration. 

The former president’s softball interview with Fridman was littered with several particularly off moments for a low-energy Trump. 

“I get very big audiences, and you know, for many people it’s virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and half and have nobody leave,” Trump bragged at one point. “You know, it’s not an easy thing to do, and it’s an ability.”

Of course, there is some well-documented evidence that plenty of onlookers choose to cut out on Trump’s incoherent speeches early—and even Fox News doesn’t play them all the way through anymore. 

In a softball interview, Donald Trump still couldn’t answer correctly when asked about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In a wide-ranging interview with podcaster Lex Fridman released on Tuesday, Trump managed to praise Jeffrey Epstein while also claiming he “never went to his island.”

“He was a good salesman; he was, you know, a hailing, hearty type of guy,” Trump said when asked why he believes so many powerful people were close to Epstein. “He had some nice assets that he’d throw around, like islands.”

When asked about his “hesitation” on releasing documents related to Epstein, including a his client list, the former president refused to commit but said he’d “take a look at it.”

Trump then immediately began trying to excuse Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his relationship with Epstein.

“Kennedy is interesting because it was so many years ago,” Trump  said, referring to the man who admitted he flew onEpstein’s private plane twice. Trump seemed to justify the list of powerful men being kept secret all this time, adding that releasing the list “endangers certain people.”

Trump has previously waffled on declassifying the Epstein files. In June, he told Fox & Friends Weekend that he would, but he also had hesitations. “I guess I would. I think that less so because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”

At the end of the Fridman interview, Trump finished on a similar note, eventually saying he’d “be inclined” to release the files. Of course, right-wing media and influencers are already trying to claim the interview is a win. “Trump says he will release the Epstein client list if elected. The Democrat elites are shaking rn,” said Libs of TikTok, ignoring the rest of his words.

Donald Trump can’t use Isaac Hayes’s song “Hold On, I’m Coming” at his rallies anymore thanks to a federal judge in Georgia.

On Tuesday, Thomas Thrash Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, responding to a lawsuit from Hayes’s estate, issued a temporary injunction against Trump using the song “without proper license.” Trump’s campaign has been using the song to close out his speeches this year, including at the Republican National Convention.

As recently as August 9, Trump used “Hold On, I’m Coming” at a rally in Montana, but since then, he’s been using the Village People’s “YMCA,” which he also used in his 2020 presidential campaign. (Not surprisingly, they aren’t happy with Trump using their music either.)

Hayes’s estate hopes to make the measure permanent.

“We are very pleased with the court’s decision,” James L. Walker Jr., a lawyer for the Hayes estate, told The New York Times. “Donald Trump has been told he cannot use the music of Isaac Hayes without a license. That was our No. 1 goal. Now we work on the underlying trial and case.”

Trump’s campaign did get one reprieve from the judge: Recordings from previous campaign events where they used Hayes’s song can stay online. But that hardly softens the blow when there’s a long list of artists who don’t want Trump using their music. Just last week, Swedish pop group ABBA objected to Trump using their songs at a Minnesota rally.

Before that, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, Sinéad O’Connor, The Beatles, Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Foo Fighters, Guns N’ Roses, Leonard Cohen, Queen, Prince, Pharrell, the Rolling Stones, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Rihanna, Neil Young, Linkin Park, the late Tom Petty, the Village People, and Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler all banned Trump from playing their music for his campaign.

Perhaps Trump ought to stick with artists who actually support him and would want their music played at his campaign events. But then he’d be stuck with Kid Rock, Kanye West, and country music.

Donald Trump’s gaze is turned toward New Hampshire—but possibly for all the wrong reasons.

A top volunteer with the Trump campaign issued an internal message Sunday notifying fellow Trump volunteers that “the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state.” That volunteer, Tom Mountain, is reportedly no longer with the campaign.

But Trump couldn’t let the topic of the Granite State pass without attempting to drag Vice President Kamala Harris into the mud with him. In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump claimed that New Hampshire was “disrespected” by the fact that Harris “never showed up” during its presidential primary, despite the fact that Harris only became the Democratic nominee a little more than a month ago. Harris also intends to visit New Hampshire on Wednesday.

“Comrade Kamala Harris sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because of the fact that they disrespected it in their primary and never showed up,” Trump wrote. “Additionally, the cost of living in New Hampshire is through the roof, their energy bills are some of highest in the country, and their housing market is the most unaffordable in history.”

Harris has at least a five-point advantage over Trump in New Hampshire, according to a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll published August 19. Still, despite the losing edge—and the Trump campaign’s own internal kerfuffle over it—Trump insisted that New Hampshire’s concerns were still his own.

“I protected New Hampshire’s First-In-The-Nation Primary and ALWAYS will!” Trump continued. “To my friends in New Hampshire, get out and vote TRUMP. Together, we will make your State and America Strong, Safe, and Prosperous AGAIN!”

J.D. Vance’s casual misogyny seems to be a problem that just won’t go away for the Trump campaign.

The Republican vice presidential pick has ardently defended his position that childless adults should not hold positions of power as they don’t have a “direct stake” in the future of the country, deriding Democratic Party leaders as “childless cat ladies.” But even some of the most extreme far-right networks can’t get behind Vance’s toxic comments.

In a newly unearthed interview with Newsmax in 2021, the Ohio senator continued to double down on his radical take on childless Americans.

“I realized that we’re being ruled by a childless elite,” Vance said. “It’s not just that they don’t have kids. Of course a lot of people don’t have kids for different reasons. It’s that they’re proud of the fact that they don’t have kids, they think it’s bad if they have kids, they think it’s bad for the environment. They’re proud of their abortions. They shout their abortions from the rooftops.

“That is a dangerous place to live as a country,” he added.

But that didn’t sit right with at least one network host.

“J.D., so I’m curious, I take a little bit of a different stance from you and Steve, respectfully,” said Jenn Pellegrino, referring to her co-host Steve Cortes. “There’s about a quarter of the population that chooses not to have kids. Perhaps some of the hardest-working, most career-driven people that you’ll find.

“Are we not painting this group perhaps with a broad brush? Because not everybody is of that mentality, of not doing it for climate change. Some people just choose a little bit differently,” Pellegrino said. “Perhaps society is changing a little bit.”

But Vance wouldn’t be swayed. “Look, you do not have a future as a country unless you have the next generation,” he said. “So much of what’s going on on the left especially is they’ve become obsessed with the idea that having a kid is an old-fashioned thing.

“If you don’t have kids, who’s going to take care of you when you’re old?” he continued. “Who’s going to care for our elderly? Work the jobs that are necessary? If we don’t have children, then the answer is nobody.”

Watch the exchange below:

Kamala Harris’s campaign will direct $24.5 million of its record-breaking campaign intake to Democrats down the ballot, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Harris’s campaign plans to deliver $10 million each to the House and Senate Democratic campaign arms, and $2.5 million will go to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. The Democratic Governors Association will get $1 million, and another million will go to the Democratic Attorneys General Association. The Harris campaign did not specify which of its fundraising arms would be responsible for doling out the cash. 

In the first month since Harris’s candidacy was announced, her campaign raised a whopping $540 million—now it seems that it wants to spread the love. 

It’s not yet clear whether the newfound enthusiasm for the Democratic presidential ticket will successfully translate into widening support for Democratic candidates running in state legislative and other local races, but Harris’s financial support may help give downballot campaigns a boost in otherwise low-profile contests.

Harris’s support could also be key in keeping Democratic control of the Senate, especially for  states where the races have proven to be the most competitive. Those include Ohio and Montana, which are both considered to be “toss-ups.”

Montana’s Senator Jon Tester has emerged as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the country, as Donald Trump continues to excel in that state. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s race has become the most expensive in the country, with more than $300 million being spent on advertisements.

One month after The Washington Post revealed that the Egyptian government may have illegally given Donald Trump $10 million in 2017, Democrats have announced they will be investigating the allegations.

Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, led by ranking member Representative Jamie Raskin, announced in a press release Tuesday that they will be “demanding answers” from the Republican presidential nominee not only over the possible bribe from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, but also over evidence that the Justice Department, led at the time by Attorney General William Barr, covered it up.

“Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president—and a current candidate for president—took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator,” said the statement, addressing Trump. “Accordingly, we request that you immediately provide the Committee with information and documents necessary to assure the Committee and the American public that you never, directly or indirectly, politically or personally, received any funds from the Egyptian President or Government.”

According to the Post’s report, the DOJ in 2017 was investigating Sisi’s efforts to donate$10 million to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Right before the 2016 election, Trump had announced that he was personally donating $10 million to his campaign, leading some to question where the money came from.

In 2019, federal investigators found that an organization linked to Egyptian intelligence withdrew nearly $10 million in cash just five days before Trump was sworn in as president. If Trump took such a payment, it would be a major violation of federal law. However, the investigation was closed down by Trump’s Justice Department in June 2020, with the supervising prosecutor claiming there was insufficient evidence.

“Every American should be concerned about how this case ended,” one of the Post’s sources said at the time. “The Justice Department is supposed to follow evidence wherever it leads—it does so all the time to determine if a crime occurred or not.”

In their statement, House Democrats noted that Trump met with Sisi in September 2016, before the election, and called him a “fantastic guy”—odd words to describe a dictator. Trump’s praise would only grow after he was elected president, as he would refer to Sisi as his “favorite dictator.”

Trump has seemingly escaped any scrutiny or questions over a serious accusation of bribery from a foreign government since the Post’s report at the beginning of August. Now, as the presidential race enters its final months, the convicted felon won’t want to deal with another allegation of foreign involvement in his campaign, especially since he still complains about being tied to Russia. Now he might be dogged by questions about Egypt until November—possibly with some stronger evidence this time.

As right-wingers scramble to find a line of attack that’ll stick against the Democrats, they’re now accusing Kamala Harris of faking her accent in her speeches.

Donald Trump himself seems to be spearheading the new attack, with an official campaign account on Monday sharing side-by-side clips of the vice president’s speeches in Detroit and Pittsburgh, asking viewers to try to “spot the difference.”

Other Republicans amplified the talking point. “What did I just watch … what’s with this new accent? The fakeness and cringe here is off the charts,” the account Libs of TikTok posted, adding that “she changes her accent almost as fast as she changes her policy positions.”

“This is her seventh new accent in four weeks. She has literally never used this accent before. She grew up in Canada. Phoniest politician in all of politics,” Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X.

Trump’s friends tried so hard to make this take off that they even created a fake Tiger Woods quote about it, accusing Harris of speaking in a “fake black accent.”

The conversation mirrors other racist accusations from Trump and his followers about Harris not really being Black and faking her racial identity.

The same was said of Barack Obama back in 2007, with Fox News’s Steve Doocey saying, “This doesn’t sound like the accent [Obama] grew up with in Hawaii.” Obama, of course, later went on to become president.

Months ago, Republicans tried to stir up the same drama after Harris spoke to a crowd in Atlanta, accusing her of changing her accent to pander to Black Atlantans. “Earlier this week, look up the clip, she went down to Georgia and started talking with a fake Southern accent,” J.D. Vance said in a speech near Phoenix. “What the hell is that all about? Kamala Harris grew up in Canada. They don’t talk like that in Vancouver or Quebec or wherever she came from, doesn’t matter.”

Harris was born in Oakland, California, and spent her childhood in a predominantly Black neighborhood in West Berkeley with stints in Illinois and Wisconsin. She moved to Montreal when she was 12 years old. Later, she moved back to the states to attend Howard University.

Expect to see much more of the “She’s from Canada” line as Harris continues to dominate in fundraising and polling.

Two election fraudsters and MAGA conspiracy theorists, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, have been using fake names to run a start-up that promised to integrate A.I. into lobbying, according to a Politico report published Sunday.

LobbyMatic was founded in 2022 by right-wing agitator Wohl (using the alias “Jay Klein”) and his D.C. lobbyist buddy Burkman (under the name “Bill Sanders”), according to four former employees who spoke anonymously with Politico, to prevent retaliation.

Ahead of the 2020 general election, Wohl and Burkman organized a campaign of robocalls to predominantly Black neighborhoods across several states, urging residents not to attempt mail-in voting. The messages, which claimed that mail-in voting could lead to compromised personal data, mentioned Wohl and Burkman by name, making them easy to identify—and convict of telecom fraud.

The Federal Communications Commission fined the duo $5 million, and a judge in Ohio ordered them to spend 500 hours registering people to vote. In 2023, a New York federal judge found Wohl and Burkman guilty of violating the Voting Rights Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act, and in April, New York Attorney General Letitia James reached a settlement with the pair, ordering them to pay “up to $1.25 million.”

Perhaps the two fraudsters learned not to put their names on their schemes—and apparently cooked up totally new identities to start their newest venture. Still, Wohl and Burkman had difficulty keeping their new identities straight. Three former employees told Politico that there were several instances in which people, including Burkman, referred to “Jay Klein” as Jacob.

At LobbyMatic, things were not going particularly well. Former employees said that the company repeatedly missed payroll, and although its website listed job openings, Wohl said that they were not hiring.

Instead of hiring real workers, Wohl appeared to have invented a female vice president named “Pat Smith.” Wohl apparently told three employees that she didn’t exist and that it was best to use a good-looking blonde woman when trying to make introductions.

Additionally, the company, which was not officially registered in Virginia, lacked occupancy and renovation permits for its office, according to Politico.

“Jay/Jacob was out of touch with reality,” one former employee told Politico. “Working for them you knew you were never getting the full story and were often left trying to find the truth. If I had to sum up my work experience for them, I would describe them as living with their head in the clouds and in a false reality.”

That employee told Politico that they once accompanied “Sanders” to a house in Arlington, Virginia, which was actually owned by Burkman. The house’s front steps were the site of some of Wohl and Burkman’s infamous press conferences, where they elevated their outlandish conspiracy theories and smear campaigns, including but not limited to claims that Pete Buttigieg and Robert Mueller had committed sexual assault and that Senator Elizabeth Warren was having an affair with a Marine.

The employee who went to Burkman’s house told Politico that they’d grown suspicious that something was amiss after hearing Wohl referred to as Jacob and after witnessing him express reservations about obtaining business licenses. The employee eventually took a photo of their employer and did a quick reverse image search, which confirmed Wohl’s true identity.

Former employees were able to identify “Sanders” as being the same man who appeared in a 2022 Netflix crime docuseries using his real name, Burkman.

According to former employees, LobbyMatic had three brand-name clients: Toyota, drug company Lantheus, and Boundary Stone Partners, a consulting firm. Representatives from Toyota and Lantheus said they’d signed up for the company’s three-month free trial, which had since expired. Jeff Navin, a co-founder of Boundary Stone Partners, told Politico the company had tried out LobbyMatic’s service and “quickly determined the tool did not work and terminated our contract two months ago.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to drop out of the presidential race and not only endorse Donald Trump but join his transition team came after weeks of secret discussions and meetings—and one stunning phone call.

Only hours after a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at a Pennsylvania rally in July, health care entrepreneur Calley Means, who had advised Kennedy in the past, asked him over the phone to consider joining the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign, possibly as his running mate. Kennedy initially declined but then agreed to speak to Trump, setting in motion weeks of back-and-forth, culminating in Kennedy joining the Trump campaign, according to a report from The New York Times.

The two would join forces thanks to efforts from Trump’s co-campaign manager Susie Wiles and Kennedy’s campaign manager, Amaryllis Fox, his daughter-in-law. Also playing major roles were Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., as well as Omeed Malik, a businessman and donor who supported both candidates.

The Trump-Kennedy partnership couldn’t have come together without conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, though, whom Means reached out to right after his call to Kennedy. Carlson was enthusiastic, and connected Trump and Kennedy in a group text. Trump would speak on the phone with Kennedy for a half an hour after being examined at a hospital that night.

“I would love you to do something,” Trump said in the conversation, which was later leaked. “I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you. And we’re going to win.”

But a partnership still wasn’t a done deal after that conversation, with Kennedy still considering the idea. He received pushback from his wife, Cheryl Hines, a Democrat who was very critical of Trump, as well as advisers who warned him that Trump couldn’t be trusted. Kennedy then met with Trump in Milwaukee as the Republican National Convention was being held, and Kennedy began to push for a specific position if Trump was elected: secretary of health and human services.

The next day, however, Kennedy’s son, Bobby Kennedy III, posted video to X of his father’s initial phone conversation with Trump the night he was shot, alarming staffers in the Trump campaign, who now saw Kennedy as unable to be trusted. While Kennedy quickly apologized, discussions between the two camps came to a halt.

When the convention ended, though, President Biden dropped out of the race and Democrats rallied behind Vice President Kamala Harris, surprising Trump. Kennedy apologized again, and two weeks later, he and Trump were talking. They met on August 12 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, with Wiles, Fox, Trump Jr., and Malik present, and hashed out their alliance.

Last week, Trump named Kennedy to his transition team, giving him a part not just in selecting staffers for a possible presidency but also in crafting policy. The infamous anti-vaccine pseudoscience peddler will seemingly be an integral part of Trump’s White House if he wins in November. Time will tell if this will be an asset or liability to Trump in the election, but having a brain worm–addled animal carcass enthusiast on board certainly won’t make the convicted felon seem any less weird.