Watch: Trump, 78, Lies Directly to His Fans About His Age

During a town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Trump cited a Friday report in The Wall Street Journal which noted that during his interview with the publication’s editorial board, Trump displayed “no sign of such slippage,” and had only become more “confident” and “knowledgeable,” despite the sustained incoherence the public may witness on the campaign trail. The Journal also rebranded Trump’s rambling as “discursive.”

“One thing they said that was great, ‘We watched this guy for 20 years, the one thing we know is he’s got no cognitive problem,’” Trump said. “I’ve got no cognitive!”

“She may have a cognitive problem!” he said, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris, as his supporters cheered. 

Trump said he had called for a cognitive test for all people running for president, “not based on age.” 

“You know, some of the greatest leaders in the world—and I’m not 80, and I’m not that close to 80—but in the Biden case, he’s 81 or 82,” Trump said, getting sidetracked yet again. He went on to laud Rupert Murdoch, who is 93 years old, as a “very successful” person who is also old.  

Of course Trump is 78, only two years away from being 80. If elected, he would be the oldest person elected to office. 

While the Republican nominee has called for cognitive tests, in reality, he has failed to disclose any new information about his physical and mental well-being, something which is not mandated but traditional of presidential candidates, especially ones where their age is a concern. 

Donald Trump was sued by the Central Park Five Monday for defamation over comments he made during the September 10 presidential debate in Philadelphia. The lawsuit argues Trump’s debate comments were “extreme and outrageous, and … intended to cause severe emotional distress” to the Central Park Five.

The group of five men were charged and convicted of the rape and assault of a white female jogger in New York’s Central Park in 1989, in a case that garnered national attention. The five Black and Hispanic men were just teenagers when they were convicted. More than a decade later, DNA evidence exonerated them after a serial rapist confessed to the crime, and the teens settled a $41 million lawsuit against the city in 2014.

At the time, Trump took out full-page ads for $85,000 attacking Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise, calling for the return of the death penalty in the city’s four newspapers: The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post, and New York Newsday. Years later, when he ran for president in 2016, Trump continued to claim that the five were guilty, saying, “the fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous.”

During the debate last month, Trump repeated the false claim that the five pleaded guilty, that they killed someone, and that Mayor Bloomberg agreed with him, according to the legal filing.

“Defendant Trump falsely stated that Plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime. These statements are demonstrably false,” the civil suit read. “Plaintiffs never pled guilty to any crime and were subsequently cleared of all wrongdoing. Further, the victims of the Central Park assaults were not killed.”

The lawsuit requests an unspecified amount in compensatory and punitive damages.

At the Democratic National Convention in August, members of the group spoke out against Trump, with newly elected New York City Council Member Salaam saying about the former president, “Forty-five wanted us un-alive, he wanted us dead.”

“That guy says he still stands by the original guilty verdict. He dismisses the scientific evidence rather than admit he was wrong. He has never changed and he never will,” Salaam told the Chicago audience.

“Our youth was stolen from us. Every day, as we walked into [the] courtroom people screamed at us, threatened us, because of Donald Trump,” said Korey Wise.

This story has been updated.

After manning the fry station at a McDonald’s restaurant on Sunday, Donald Trump didn’t answer a point-blank question about whether he would raise the minimum wage.

Trump took off his suit jacket, put on an apron, and watched an employee show him how to put the fries in oil, salt them, and then scoop them into boxes. Later, he took questions from reporters from the drive-through window. CBS’s Olivia Rinaldi asked the former president if “the minimum wage should be raised.”

“Well, I think this: I think these people work hard, they’re great, and I just saw something, a process that’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing to see, these are great franchises and produce a lot of jobs, and it’s great, and great people working here too,” Trump replied, avoiding the topic altogether.

Trump has obsessed over the fact that Kamala Harris worked at a McDonald’s while she was a student at Howard University, repeatedly claiming that it’s not true despite providing no evidence for his claim. Harris has often spoken of her time working at the restaurant, even telling the story in a campaign ad.

Harris’s proposed policies call for raising the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009 due to opposition from Republicans and moderate Democrats. While Trump was president, he didn’t raise or even propose increasing the minimum wage, and was skeptical of how it would help Americans during his 2020 campaign. Trump’s McDonald’s stunt is part of a pattern of appearing to sympathize with working people while enacting policies that benefit the wealthy at workers’ expense.

Donald Trump thinks that President Biden is trying to restrict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The former president said as much during an interview on an airport tarmac after landing in Detroit Friday ahead of a campaign roundtable in the suburb of Auburn Hills, telling reporters that he was about to speak to Netanyahu following Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar Thursday.

“He’s doing a good job,” Trump said about the Israeli leader. “Biden is trying to hold him back, just so you understand, Biden is more superior to the V.P. He’s trying to hold him back, and he probably should be doing the opposite, actually. I’m glad that [Netanyahu] decided to do what he had to do, but it’s moving along pretty good.”

Trump characterizing Biden as trying to “hold Netanyahu back” is absurd when the White House privately gave Israel the green light to expand its bombing campaign from Gaza to Lebanon while publicly urging a cease-fire. The idea that Netanyahu is doing a good job when the civilian death toll continues to rise in both Gaza and Lebanon raises the question of how Trump defines a “good job” too—and what he would support if he returns to the White House.

On Thursday, Kamala Harris said that Sinwar’s death represents “an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza,” adding that a cease-fire was only possible when “Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”

While this essentially repeats what the White House has been saying throughout Israel’s war, it’s quite different from Trump’s bombastic rhetoric: He has repeatedly said that Israel has to “finish the job.” The former president’s Friday comments appear to be an attempt to paint Biden, and by extension, Harris, as being less supportive of Israel than him, which flies in the face of America’s backing of Israel over the past year. The question is whether the conflict will cost either candidate critical votes in a few weeks.

Donald Trump was eager to throw his ghostwriters under the bus during an interview with Fox & Friends on Friday.

After Steve Doocy asked the Republican presidential candidate who helped him craft his mean-spirited jokes for Thursday night’s Al Smith charity dinner, Trump took to complaining about his joke writers. “I had a lot of people, a couple people from Fox actually, I shouldn’t say that. But they wrote some jokes. For the most part I didn’t like any of them,” said Trump to the Fox team.

But a network spokesperson was quick to fact-check Trump and clarified “FOX News confirmed that no employee or freelancer wrote the jokes” for the former president’s tight 10.

It appears that some of Trump’s jokes may have come from comedian Nick Di Paolo, who is not an employee or contract freelancer for the Fox News network but is a contributor to Greg Gutfeld’s late-night show. Di Paolo was fired from a previous gig for joking about school shooters.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Trump wanted to get a dig in at Fox while appearing on the network, considering his on-again-off-again relationship with Fox’s billionaire owner, Rupert Murdoch. During his Friday appearance, he criticized Fox News for airing any negative political ads against him.

“I’m going to see Rupert Murdoch,” said Trump. “I don’t know if he’s thrilled that I say it … and I’m going to tell him something very simple.… Don’t put on negative commercials for 21 days, and don’t put on … they’re horrible people that come on and lie. I’m going to say, ‘Rupert, please do it this way.’”

Additionally, Trump may be acting out against Fox News due to jealousy: The ratings for Kamala Harris’s Fox News interview boasted more than double the viewers of his appearance on the network.