OT: Clinton or Bush?

[Clyde_Style]

I need advice on gutter maintenance

Your deliverance is one DM away

I hope so I feel like it might come in handy. I live down the road from a small river.

Oh yeah? That's my van over there. Feel free to knock on my window and say hello

[Clyde_Style]

Trump’s Repetitive Speech Is a Bad Sign
If the debate was a cognitive test, the former president failed.
By Richard A. Friedman
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/09/trump-harris-debate-cognitive-decline/679803/

Spoiler:

Tuesday's presidential debate was, among other things, an excellent real-world test of the candidates' cognitive fitness'and any fair-minded mental-health expert would be very worried about Donald Trump's performance.

The former president has repeatedly bragged over the past several years that he has passed various mental-status exams with flying colors. Most of these tests are designed to detect fairly serious cognitive dysfunction, and as such, they are quite easy to pass: They ask simple questions such as “What is the date?” and challenge participants to spell world backwards or write any complete sentence. By contrast, a 90-minute debate that involves unknown questions and unanticipated rebuttals requires candidates to think on their feet. It is a much more demanding and representative test of cognitive health than a simple mental-status exam you take in a doctor's office. Specifically, the debate serves as an evaluation of the candidates' mental flexibility under pressure'their capacity to deal with uncertainty and the unforeseen.

Just to be clear: Although I am a psychiatrist, I am not offering any specific medical diagnoses for any public figure. I have never met or examined either candidate. But I watched the debate with particular attention to the candidates' vocabulary, verbal and logical coherence, and ability to adapt to new topics'all signs of a healthy brain. Although Kamala Harris certainly exhibited some rigidity and repetition, her speech remained within the normal realm for politicians, who have a reputation for harping on their favorite talking points. By contrast, Donald Trump's expressions of those tendencies were alarming. He displayed some striking, if familiar, patterns that are commonly seen among people in cognitive decline.

Much of the time, following Trump's train of thought was difficult, if not impossible. In response to a question from the moderator David Muir about whether he regretted anything he'd done during the January 6 insurrection, Trump said:

I have said “blood bash'bath.” It was a different term, and it was a term that related to energy, because they have destroyed our energy business. That was where bloodbath was. Also, on Charlottesville, that story has been, as you would say, debunked. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Jesse'all of these people, they covered it. If they go an extra sentence, they will see it was perfect. It was debunked in almost every newspaper. But they still bring it up, just like they bring 2025 up. They bring all of this stuff up. I ask you this: You talk about the Capitol. Why are we allowing these millions of people to come through on the southern border? How come she's not doing anything'and I'll tell you what I would do. And I would be very proud to do it.

Evading the question is an age-old debate-winning tactic. But Trump's response seems to go beyond evasion. It is both tangential, in that it is completely irrelevant to the question, and circumstantial, in that it is rambling and never gets to a point. Circumstantial and tangential speech can indicate a fundamental problem with an underlying cognitive process, such as logical and goal-oriented thinking. Did Trump realize that his answer was neither germane to the question nor logical?

Eleven days before the debate, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Trump responded to criticism of his rambling speech by claiming that it is part of a deliberate strategy to frustrate his opponents. “I do the weave,” he told the audience. “You know what the weave is? I'll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it's like'and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say: 'It's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.'” Viewers can judge for themselves whether the disjointed statements they heard during the debate cohered brilliantly in the end.

The speech Trump excuses as the “weave” is one of many tics that are starting to look less strategic and more uncontrollable. Last week, David A. Graham wrote in The Atlantic that the former president has a penchant for describing objects and events as being “like nobody has ever seen before.” At the debate, true to form, Trump repeatedly fell back on the superlative. Of the economy under his presidency: “Nobody's ever seen anything like it.” Of inflation under the Biden administration: “I've never seen a worse period of time.” Of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan: “That was one of the most incompetently handled situations anybody has ever seen.” Harris, for her part, also showed some verbal tics and leaned on tired formulations. For instance, she invited viewers more than 15 times to “understand” things. But Trump's turns of phrase are so disjointed, so unusual, and so frequently uttered that they're difficult to pass off as normal speech.

Trump's speech during the debate was repetitive not only in form but also in content. Politicians regularly return during debates to their strongest topics'that's just good strategy. Harris twice mentioned Project 2025, which voters widely disapproved of in recent polling, and insisted three times that Americans want to “move forward” or “chart a new way forward.” Trump likewise expounded at every opportunity on immigration, a weak issue for Harris. But plenty of the former president's repetitions seemed compulsive, not strategic. After praising the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, Trump spoke unprompted, at length, and without clarity about gas pipelines in the United States and Europe, an issue unlikely to connect with many voters. A few minutes later, he brought up the pipelines again. The moderators cut him off for a commercial break. Even in cases where Trump could have reasonably defended himself, he was unable to articulate basic exculpatory evidence. When Harris raised his infamous “very fine people on both sides” remark regarding the 2017 white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump could have pointed out that even at the time, he had specified, “I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists'because they should be condemned totally.” But he did not.

In psychiatry, the tendency to conspicuously and rigidly repeat a thought beyond the point of relevance, called “perseveration,” is known to be correlated with a variety of clinical disorders, including those involving a loss of cognitive reserve. People tend to stick to familiar topics over and over when they experience an impairment in cognitive functioning'for instance, in short-term memory. Short-term memory is essentially your mental sketch pad: how many different thoughts you can juggle in your mind, keep track of, and use at the same time. Given the complexity of being president, short-term memory is a vital skill.

If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness. A condition such as vascular dementia or Alzheimer's disease would not be out of the ordinary for a 78-year-old. Only careful medical examination can establish whether someone indeed has a diagnosable illness'simply observing Trump, or anyone else, from afar is not enough. For those who do have such diseases or conditions, several treatments and services exist to help them and their loved ones cope with their decline. But that does not mean any of them would be qualified to serve as commander in chief.

It can be helpful to see a trained psychiatrist break down how that man is profoundly mentally ill. This explanation doesn't dig deeply into his psychosis, but it does explain his obvious rapid state of cognitive decline which falls more under the rubric of mental acuity.

However you slice it, as a sociopathic malignant narcissist only capable of feeling genuine emotion from adulation Trump is both mentally ill and in rapid decline as well

[Clyde_Style]

Here's a perfect example of the man's inability to answer anything as he goes off on tangents. He has never answered anything anyway, but the incoherent rambling is worsening.

This is his response to a question at the Long Island rally.

BARBARA: Good evening. Good evening. President Trump. Thank you for taking our question. My name is Barbara. I’m a mom of three, a grandmother of seven, and three great grands. A registered nurse. Retired, retired nurse. So I know of course what goes into raising children and running a household. People just can’t survive now. How are you going to bring down the cost of food and groceries?

DONALD TRUMP: Good. Very good. Thank you. So we have to start always with energy. Always. I don’t want to be boring about it, but there’s no bigger subject. It covers everything. If you make donuts, if you make cars, whatever you make, energy is a big deal, and we’re going to get that. It’s my ambition to get your energy bill within 12 months, down 50%. If I can do that. I’ve done a hell of a job. 5-0, not 15, fifty.

Interest rates are going to follow and actually they’re going to follow for another reason. The economy is now not good. And interest rates, you’ll see they’ll do the rate cut and all the political stuff tomorrow, I think. And, you know, will he do a half a point? Will he do a quarter of a point?

But the reason is because the economy is not good, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to do it. But we’re going to get interest rates down and we got to work with our farmers.

Our farmers are being decimated right now. They’re being absolutely, absolutely decimated. And, you know, one of the reasons is we allow a lot of farm product into our country.

And we’re going to have to be a little bit like other countries. We’re not going to allow so much to come in. We’re going to let our farmers go to work.

And I don’t know if you remember, I love the farmers because, you know, I had many meetings as president. I had this gorgeous room with this beautiful table that seats about 35 people.

And I was with the farmers, I usually — everybody wants something. They all want subsidy. But I was with the farmers and I think you might have been there, actually, Sarah, I said, look, fellas, we’re going to get you such a beautiful subsidy, meaning I’m going to do things.

And one of the people raises and “Sir, honestly. We don’t want a subsidy.”

This is the first time this ever happened to me. Everyone wants — they want money. Why did they want to build windmills? We want money with these windmills. Ay-yi-yi.

Anyway, but you know what was amazing? He said, almost tears in his eyes. “We don’t” — they were getting decimated. “We don’t want a subsidy. We just want a, you know, a fair level playing field.”

And I said I said, nobody’s ever said that. And I have many industries and many groups of people from different things. You know, they do all different things. It’s probably the most dramatic I’ve ever seen. He didn’t want anything. All he wanted was to be able to compete fairly.

And the reason the problem we have is other countries. They treat us very badly in that way also. They really are. And, you know, sometimes the worst countries are our so-called allies.

I say so-called, because in many ways they’re not allies at all. They take advantage of us. They really take advantage.

But we’re going to do with the farmers. We’re going to do what we have to do with the farmers. We’re going to put our farmers —

And you remember the expression when I was negotiating with China, China said, well, we’re not going to deal with this because they never had anybody negotiate. They did whatever they want. They just took us like, you know, for a bunch of suckers.

But I told the farmers, it’s going to be they’re very good negotiators. You’re going to suffer for six months and then they’re going to fold. And that’s exactly what happened.

They folded and they agreed to buy $50 billion. You know, you might have heard the story. I said how much, I went to the secretary of agriculture. How much did they buy? He said 15. I thought he said 50. So when they’re ready to make a deal at 15 billion, I said, no, I want 50. That’s what they’ve been buying.

They said, No, it’s 15. I said, You said 50? And he said, No, we said 15. I said, that’s okay, ask for 50 anyway, and we got it. We got it. And they buy a lot of our products.

So we’re going to — just a great — interest rates, energy and common sense. A lot of it’s common sense, everything.

You know, I like to say we’re the party of common sense. We want to have a strong border. How about that? We want to you know, all of a sudden they’ve changed. They didn’t want any border. They said walls don’t work.

Two things work. What are the two things? Wheels and walls. You know, if I do, there’s a gorgeous computer down here. In about two weeks, it’s going to be obsolete. A friend of mine is in that business. He hates it.

He said we come up with a new model and it’s that greatest. About three and a half weeks later, the damn thing is totally obsolete. The only thing that never gets obsolete is a wall and a wheel.

And the wall is what we’re talking about now. And, you know, we built hundreds of miles of wall. We then added more than I ever said I was going to do. And then we had that bad election result, that disgusting result. And they never put it up.

You know what they did with it? They sold it for $0.05 and it was expensive wall it was exactly what the Border Patrol wanted with the antique plane plate on top, which I always hated because I didn’t like the look of it.

But, you know, they demonstrated that we had mountain climbers and a couple of drug climbers. These guys are amazing. They can they put 100 pounds of drugs on the back and they go up the wall like it’s nothing.

But they couldn’t get over the plate. So all of a sudden they said, okay, I’ll put the plate on. I didn’t like it. I liked it better without the plate, but it didn’t work quite as well.

So this is what we did. We had it. We had the best. We had a thing called Remain in Mexico. You don’t have to be a genius to know Remain in Mexico is a very good thing. And you think that was easy to get?

I think Tijuana, Mexico was probably the fastest growing city in the history of the world. Okay? They had hundreds of thousands. They couldn’t come in when they got in. They let everybody pour into our country, the border, just to finish with the border.

When I talk about energy, to me it’s exciting. But to a lot of people it’s not. But it gets exciting because we’ll bring down your costs, all that. But what people want to hear and I believe when I got elected, I believe it was the border that was the biggest thing. And I fixed it and I did a great job.

And I wanted to mention it in 2020. And my people would say, Sir, nobody cares about the border. They don’t care because I had it fixed. Now I got to fix it again. I believe the border is of the greatest interest when you look at when you look at.

When you look at what’s happening in Aurora. Okay, Take a look at Aurora. When you look at what’s happening in Ohio, the great state of Ohio, I love it. I’m way the hell up. I wish I was up 18 points in your state. But we are up. We are up. I think when people hear what I have to say, I don’t know how you can possibly lose that.

You. I’ll tell you this and I’ll say this for Michigan. If I don’t win, you will have no auto industry. Within 2 to 3 years, it’ll all be gone. And I know you got a little bit of an increase. It doesn’t mean that’s the small stuff because it’s just a temporary thing because you will not have any manufacturing plants.

China is going to take over all of your business because of the electric car and because they have the material. We don’t.

What we have is a thing called the gasoline. We have gasoline. We have so much gasoline, we don’t know what to do. They don’t have gasoline. So why are we making a product that they dominate? They’re going to dominate.

You will not have a car industry left, not even a little bit of a car industry. So and you’re going to have electric cars, but you’re going to have 7%. You’re going to have 9%, whatever it may be. And maybe someday the technology becomes so good that you can do more. I mean, you know, it’s fine.

But right now, the battery technology isn’t there for long term. I always say I love the electric car, but they don’t go far enough and they don’t do well. You know, in Iowa, it was 20 degrees below zero. When we had our great success in Iowa, we had a great and there were cars all over the place. I said, what’s wrong with those cars? They don’t work well in cold and they don’t work very well in heat.

But Elon’s going to figure it out because he’s great. He gave me the greatest endorsement. He figures everything and. And right now he’s got he’s got other things. I think he’s got to get a rocket up to get those two people out of there.

I said, Elon, let’s get going. No, they’re relying on Elon to get the two people — who would like to be up there right now saying “we’re coming back home maybe in February?”

So that was not so good. But Elon will solve the problem. He’s great, great guy. And he loves this state and he loves your whole everything you’re doing here. And he’s done a fantastic job. He really has. And if he didn’t endorse me, I would not be saying that. Okay, I have a problem. I wouldn’t be saying.

I'm sure Barbara feels better now about Trump's economic policies

[HarthorneWingo]

Trump’s Repetitive Speech Is a Bad Sign
If the debate was a cognitive test, the former president failed.
By Richard A. Friedman
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/09/trump-harris-debate-cognitive-decline/679803/

Spoiler:

Tuesday's presidential debate was, among other things, an excellent real-world test of the candidates' cognitive fitness'and any fair-minded mental-health expert would be very worried about Donald Trump's performance.

The former president has repeatedly bragged over the past several years that he has passed various mental-status exams with flying colors. Most of these tests are designed to detect fairly serious cognitive dysfunction, and as such, they are quite easy to pass: They ask simple questions such as “What is the date?” and challenge participants to spell world backwards or write any complete sentence. By contrast, a 90-minute debate that involves unknown questions and unanticipated rebuttals requires candidates to think on their feet. It is a much more demanding and representative test of cognitive health than a simple mental-status exam you take in a doctor's office. Specifically, the debate serves as an evaluation of the candidates' mental flexibility under pressure'their capacity to deal with uncertainty and the unforeseen.

Just to be clear: Although I am a psychiatrist, I am not offering any specific medical diagnoses for any public figure. I have never met or examined either candidate. But I watched the debate with particular attention to the candidates' vocabulary, verbal and logical coherence, and ability to adapt to new topics'all signs of a healthy brain. Although Kamala Harris certainly exhibited some rigidity and repetition, her speech remained within the normal realm for politicians, who have a reputation for harping on their favorite talking points. By contrast, Donald Trump's expressions of those tendencies were alarming. He displayed some striking, if familiar, patterns that are commonly seen among people in cognitive decline.

Much of the time, following Trump's train of thought was difficult, if not impossible. In response to a question from the moderator David Muir about whether he regretted anything he'd done during the January 6 insurrection, Trump said:

I have said “blood bash'bath.” It was a different term, and it was a term that related to energy, because they have destroyed our energy business. That was where bloodbath was. Also, on Charlottesville, that story has been, as you would say, debunked. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Jesse'all of these people, they covered it. If they go an extra sentence, they will see it was perfect. It was debunked in almost every newspaper. But they still bring it up, just like they bring 2025 up. They bring all of this stuff up. I ask you this: You talk about the Capitol. Why are we allowing these millions of people to come through on the southern border? How come she's not doing anything'and I'll tell you what I would do. And I would be very proud to do it.

Evading the question is an age-old debate-winning tactic. But Trump's response seems to go beyond evasion. It is both tangential, in that it is completely irrelevant to the question, and circumstantial, in that it is rambling and never gets to a point. Circumstantial and tangential speech can indicate a fundamental problem with an underlying cognitive process, such as logical and goal-oriented thinking. Did Trump realize that his answer was neither germane to the question nor logical?

Eleven days before the debate, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Trump responded to criticism of his rambling speech by claiming that it is part of a deliberate strategy to frustrate his opponents. “I do the weave,” he told the audience. “You know what the weave is? I'll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it's like'and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say: 'It's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.'” Viewers can judge for themselves whether the disjointed statements they heard during the debate cohered brilliantly in the end.

The speech Trump excuses as the “weave” is one of many tics that are starting to look less strategic and more uncontrollable. Last week, David A. Graham wrote in The Atlantic that the former president has a penchant for describing objects and events as being “like nobody has ever seen before.” At the debate, true to form, Trump repeatedly fell back on the superlative. Of the economy under his presidency: “Nobody's ever seen anything like it.” Of inflation under the Biden administration: “I've never seen a worse period of time.” Of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan: “That was one of the most incompetently handled situations anybody has ever seen.” Harris, for her part, also showed some verbal tics and leaned on tired formulations. For instance, she invited viewers more than 15 times to “understand” things. But Trump's turns of phrase are so disjointed, so unusual, and so frequently uttered that they're difficult to pass off as normal speech.

Trump's speech during the debate was repetitive not only in form but also in content. Politicians regularly return during debates to their strongest topics'that's just good strategy. Harris twice mentioned Project 2025, which voters widely disapproved of in recent polling, and insisted three times that Americans want to “move forward” or “chart a new way forward.” Trump likewise expounded at every opportunity on immigration, a weak issue for Harris. But plenty of the former president's repetitions seemed compulsive, not strategic. After praising the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, Trump spoke unprompted, at length, and without clarity about gas pipelines in the United States and Europe, an issue unlikely to connect with many voters. A few minutes later, he brought up the pipelines again. The moderators cut him off for a commercial break. Even in cases where Trump could have reasonably defended himself, he was unable to articulate basic exculpatory evidence. When Harris raised his infamous “very fine people on both sides” remark regarding the 2017 white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump could have pointed out that even at the time, he had specified, “I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists'because they should be condemned totally.” But he did not.

In psychiatry, the tendency to conspicuously and rigidly repeat a thought beyond the point of relevance, called “perseveration,” is known to be correlated with a variety of clinical disorders, including those involving a loss of cognitive reserve. People tend to stick to familiar topics over and over when they experience an impairment in cognitive functioning'for instance, in short-term memory. Short-term memory is essentially your mental sketch pad: how many different thoughts you can juggle in your mind, keep track of, and use at the same time. Given the complexity of being president, short-term memory is a vital skill.

If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness. A condition such as vascular dementia or Alzheimer's disease would not be out of the ordinary for a 78-year-old. Only careful medical examination can establish whether someone indeed has a diagnosable illness'simply observing Trump, or anyone else, from afar is not enough. For those who do have such diseases or conditions, several treatments and services exist to help them and their loved ones cope with their decline. But that does not mean any of them would be qualified to serve as commander in chief.

It can be helpful to see a trained psychiatrist break down how that man is profoundly mentally ill. This explanation doesn't dig deeply into his psychosis, but it does explain his obvious rapid state of cognitive decline which falls more under the rubric of mental acuity.

However you slice it, as a sociopathic malignant narcissist only capable of feeling genuine emotion from adulation Trump is both mentally ill and in rapid decline as well

The problem is that while Kamala got us back in the game - and in a position to win it - the race is still very tight and Republicans have an electoral advantage.

[Clyde_Style]

Trump’s Repetitive Speech Is a Bad Sign
If the debate was a cognitive test, the former president failed.
By Richard A. Friedman
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/09/trump-harris-debate-cognitive-decline/679803/

Spoiler:

Tuesday's presidential debate was, among other things, an excellent real-world test of the candidates' cognitive fitness'and any fair-minded mental-health expert would be very worried about Donald Trump's performance.

The former president has repeatedly bragged over the past several years that he has passed various mental-status exams with flying colors. Most of these tests are designed to detect fairly serious cognitive dysfunction, and as such, they are quite easy to pass: They ask simple questions such as “What is the date?” and challenge participants to spell world backwards or write any complete sentence. By contrast, a 90-minute debate that involves unknown questions and unanticipated rebuttals requires candidates to think on their feet. It is a much more demanding and representative test of cognitive health than a simple mental-status exam you take in a doctor's office. Specifically, the debate serves as an evaluation of the candidates' mental flexibility under pressure'their capacity to deal with uncertainty and the unforeseen.

Just to be clear: Although I am a psychiatrist, I am not offering any specific medical diagnoses for any public figure. I have never met or examined either candidate. But I watched the debate with particular attention to the candidates' vocabulary, verbal and logical coherence, and ability to adapt to new topics'all signs of a healthy brain. Although Kamala Harris certainly exhibited some rigidity and repetition, her speech remained within the normal realm for politicians, who have a reputation for harping on their favorite talking points. By contrast, Donald Trump's expressions of those tendencies were alarming. He displayed some striking, if familiar, patterns that are commonly seen among people in cognitive decline.

Much of the time, following Trump's train of thought was difficult, if not impossible. In response to a question from the moderator David Muir about whether he regretted anything he'd done during the January 6 insurrection, Trump said:

I have said “blood bash'bath.” It was a different term, and it was a term that related to energy, because they have destroyed our energy business. That was where bloodbath was. Also, on Charlottesville, that story has been, as you would say, debunked. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Jesse'all of these people, they covered it. If they go an extra sentence, they will see it was perfect. It was debunked in almost every newspaper. But they still bring it up, just like they bring 2025 up. They bring all of this stuff up. I ask you this: You talk about the Capitol. Why are we allowing these millions of people to come through on the southern border? How come she's not doing anything'and I'll tell you what I would do. And I would be very proud to do it.

Evading the question is an age-old debate-winning tactic. But Trump's response seems to go beyond evasion. It is both tangential, in that it is completely irrelevant to the question, and circumstantial, in that it is rambling and never gets to a point. Circumstantial and tangential speech can indicate a fundamental problem with an underlying cognitive process, such as logical and goal-oriented thinking. Did Trump realize that his answer was neither germane to the question nor logical?

Eleven days before the debate, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Trump responded to criticism of his rambling speech by claiming that it is part of a deliberate strategy to frustrate his opponents. “I do the weave,” he told the audience. “You know what the weave is? I'll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it's like'and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say: 'It's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.'” Viewers can judge for themselves whether the disjointed statements they heard during the debate cohered brilliantly in the end.

The speech Trump excuses as the “weave” is one of many tics that are starting to look less strategic and more uncontrollable. Last week, David A. Graham wrote in The Atlantic that the former president has a penchant for describing objects and events as being “like nobody has ever seen before.” At the debate, true to form, Trump repeatedly fell back on the superlative. Of the economy under his presidency: “Nobody's ever seen anything like it.” Of inflation under the Biden administration: “I've never seen a worse period of time.” Of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan: “That was one of the most incompetently handled situations anybody has ever seen.” Harris, for her part, also showed some verbal tics and leaned on tired formulations. For instance, she invited viewers more than 15 times to “understand” things. But Trump's turns of phrase are so disjointed, so unusual, and so frequently uttered that they're difficult to pass off as normal speech.

Trump's speech during the debate was repetitive not only in form but also in content. Politicians regularly return during debates to their strongest topics'that's just good strategy. Harris twice mentioned Project 2025, which voters widely disapproved of in recent polling, and insisted three times that Americans want to “move forward” or “chart a new way forward.” Trump likewise expounded at every opportunity on immigration, a weak issue for Harris. But plenty of the former president's repetitions seemed compulsive, not strategic. After praising the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, Trump spoke unprompted, at length, and without clarity about gas pipelines in the United States and Europe, an issue unlikely to connect with many voters. A few minutes later, he brought up the pipelines again. The moderators cut him off for a commercial break. Even in cases where Trump could have reasonably defended himself, he was unable to articulate basic exculpatory evidence. When Harris raised his infamous “very fine people on both sides” remark regarding the 2017 white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump could have pointed out that even at the time, he had specified, “I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists'because they should be condemned totally.” But he did not.

In psychiatry, the tendency to conspicuously and rigidly repeat a thought beyond the point of relevance, called “perseveration,” is known to be correlated with a variety of clinical disorders, including those involving a loss of cognitive reserve. People tend to stick to familiar topics over and over when they experience an impairment in cognitive functioning'for instance, in short-term memory. Short-term memory is essentially your mental sketch pad: how many different thoughts you can juggle in your mind, keep track of, and use at the same time. Given the complexity of being president, short-term memory is a vital skill.

If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness. A condition such as vascular dementia or Alzheimer's disease would not be out of the ordinary for a 78-year-old. Only careful medical examination can establish whether someone indeed has a diagnosable illness'simply observing Trump, or anyone else, from afar is not enough. For those who do have such diseases or conditions, several treatments and services exist to help them and their loved ones cope with their decline. But that does not mean any of them would be qualified to serve as commander in chief.

It can be helpful to see a trained psychiatrist break down how that man is profoundly mentally ill. This explanation doesn't dig deeply into his psychosis, but it does explain his obvious rapid state of cognitive decline which falls more under the rubric of mental acuity.

However you slice it, as a sociopathic malignant narcissist only capable of feeling genuine emotion from adulation Trump is both mentally ill and in rapid decline as well

The problem is that while Kamala got us back in the game - and in a position to win it - the race is still very tight and Republicans have an electoral advantage.

She continues to erode any leads he had in every swing state. He is only losing ground now. Her favorability rating has gone way up. The debate fall-out continues to convert voters to the Blue side.

The amount of ground she picked up in states like PA, AZ, NC has been huge.

Trump once had a double digit lead among latino voters. It's gone. She has the lead there now.

She's also picking over 50 White Males recently and gained there too.

There once was a 14% black vote for Trump, now polling down to 6%.

It is not just that she's overcome the Biden deficit, she's actually picking up voters from every single demographic week by week. Even TX and FL are sending up alert signals among pollsters that there is a major shift underway even if they don't go blue.

Even Alaska has seen a major drop in GOP support recently.

All signs are this will be a solid win electorally. I'm hoping for a blue wave more for the congressional seats than I am for Harris whom I'm confident will be POTUS.

[Hatrick Ewing]

Also, IB4TL

Lol why would this be locked and what use is this comment ever

[Jalen Bluntson]

Here's a perfect example of the man's inability to answer anything as he goes off on tangents. He has never answered anything anyway, but the incoherent rambling is worsening.

This is his response to a question at the Long Island rally.

BARBARA: Good evening. Good evening. President Trump. Thank you for taking our question. My name is Barbara. I’m a mom of three, a grandmother of seven, and three great grands. A registered nurse. Retired, retired nurse. So I know of course what goes into raising children and running a household. People just can’t survive now. How are you going to bring down the cost of food and groceries?

DONALD TRUMP: Good. Very good. Thank you. So we have to start always with energy. Always. I don’t want to be boring about it, but there’s no bigger subject. It covers everything. If you make donuts, if you make cars, whatever you make, energy is a big deal, and we’re going to get that. It’s my ambition to get your energy bill within 12 months, down 50%. If I can do that. I’ve done a hell of a job. 5-0, not 15, fifty.

Interest rates are going to follow and actually they’re going to follow for another reason. The economy is now not good. And interest rates, you’ll see they’ll do the rate cut and all the political stuff tomorrow, I think. And, you know, will he do a half a point? Will he do a quarter of a point?

But the reason is because the economy is not good, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to do it. But we’re going to get interest rates down and we got to work with our farmers.

Our farmers are being decimated right now. They’re being absolutely, absolutely decimated. And, you know, one of the reasons is we allow a lot of farm product into our country.

And we’re going to have to be a little bit like other countries. We’re not going to allow so much to come in. We’re going to let our farmers go to work.

And I don’t know if you remember, I love the farmers because, you know, I had many meetings as president. I had this gorgeous room with this beautiful table that seats about 35 people.

And I was with the farmers, I usually — everybody wants something. They all want subsidy. But I was with the farmers and I think you might have been there, actually, Sarah, I said, look, fellas, we’re going to get you such a beautiful subsidy, meaning I’m going to do things.

And one of the people raises and “Sir, honestly. We don’t want a subsidy.”

This is the first time this ever happened to me. Everyone wants — they want money. Why did they want to build windmills? We want money with these windmills. Ay-yi-yi.

Anyway, but you know what was amazing? He said, almost tears in his eyes. “We don’t” — they were getting decimated. “We don’t want a subsidy. We just want a, you know, a fair level playing field.”

And I said I said, nobody’s ever said that. And I have many industries and many groups of people from different things. You know, they do all different things. It’s probably the most dramatic I’ve ever seen. He didn’t want anything. All he wanted was to be able to compete fairly.

And the reason the problem we have is other countries. They treat us very badly in that way also. They really are. And, you know, sometimes the worst countries are our so-called allies.

I say so-called, because in many ways they’re not allies at all. They take advantage of us. They really take advantage.

But we’re going to do with the farmers. We’re going to do what we have to do with the farmers. We’re going to put our farmers —

And you remember the expression when I was negotiating with China, China said, well, we’re not going to deal with this because they never had anybody negotiate. They did whatever they want. They just took us like, you know, for a bunch of suckers.

But I told the farmers, it’s going to be they’re very good negotiators. You’re going to suffer for six months and then they’re going to fold. And that’s exactly what happened.

They folded and they agreed to buy $50 billion. You know, you might have heard the story. I said how much, I went to the secretary of agriculture. How much did they buy? He said 15. I thought he said 50. So when they’re ready to make a deal at 15 billion, I said, no, I want 50. That’s what they’ve been buying.

They said, No, it’s 15. I said, You said 50? And he said, No, we said 15. I said, that’s okay, ask for 50 anyway, and we got it. We got it. And they buy a lot of our products.

So we’re going to — just a great — interest rates, energy and common sense. A lot of it’s common sense, everything.

You know, I like to say we’re the party of common sense. We want to have a strong border. How about that? We want to you know, all of a sudden they’ve changed. They didn’t want any border. They said walls don’t work.

Two things work. What are the two things? Wheels and walls. You know, if I do, there’s a gorgeous computer down here. In about two weeks, it’s going to be obsolete. A friend of mine is in that business. He hates it.

He said we come up with a new model and it’s that greatest. About three and a half weeks later, the damn thing is totally obsolete. The only thing that never gets obsolete is a wall and a wheel.

And the wall is what we’re talking about now. And, you know, we built hundreds of miles of wall. We then added more than I ever said I was going to do. And then we had that bad election result, that disgusting result. And they never put it up.

You know what they did with it? They sold it for $0.05 and it was expensive wall it was exactly what the Border Patrol wanted with the antique plane plate on top, which I always hated because I didn’t like the look of it.

But, you know, they demonstrated that we had mountain climbers and a couple of drug climbers. These guys are amazing. They can they put 100 pounds of drugs on the back and they go up the wall like it’s nothing.

But they couldn’t get over the plate. So all of a sudden they said, okay, I’ll put the plate on. I didn’t like it. I liked it better without the plate, but it didn’t work quite as well.

So this is what we did. We had it. We had the best. We had a thing called Remain in Mexico. You don’t have to be a genius to know Remain in Mexico is a very good thing. And you think that was easy to get?

I think Tijuana, Mexico was probably the fastest growing city in the history of the world. Okay? They had hundreds of thousands. They couldn’t come in when they got in. They let everybody pour into our country, the border, just to finish with the border.

When I talk about energy, to me it’s exciting. But to a lot of people it’s not. But it gets exciting because we’ll bring down your costs, all that. But what people want to hear and I believe when I got elected, I believe it was the border that was the biggest thing. And I fixed it and I did a great job.

And I wanted to mention it in 2020. And my people would say, Sir, nobody cares about the border. They don’t care because I had it fixed. Now I got to fix it again. I believe the border is of the greatest interest when you look at when you look at.

When you look at what’s happening in Aurora. Okay, Take a look at Aurora. When you look at what’s happening in Ohio, the great state of Ohio, I love it. I’m way the hell up. I wish I was up 18 points in your state. But we are up. We are up. I think when people hear what I have to say, I don’t know how you can possibly lose that.

You. I’ll tell you this and I’ll say this for Michigan. If I don’t win, you will have no auto industry. Within 2 to 3 years, it’ll all be gone. And I know you got a little bit of an increase. It doesn’t mean that’s the small stuff because it’s just a temporary thing because you will not have any manufacturing plants.

China is going to take over all of your business because of the electric car and because they have the material. We don’t.

What we have is a thing called the gasoline. We have gasoline. We have so much gasoline, we don’t know what to do. They don’t have gasoline. So why are we making a product that they dominate? They’re going to dominate.

You will not have a car industry left, not even a little bit of a car industry. So and you’re going to have electric cars, but you’re going to have 7%. You’re going to have 9%, whatever it may be. And maybe someday the technology becomes so good that you can do more. I mean, you know, it’s fine.

But right now, the battery technology isn’t there for long term. I always say I love the electric car, but they don’t go far enough and they don’t do well. You know, in Iowa, it was 20 degrees below zero. When we had our great success in Iowa, we had a great and there were cars all over the place. I said, what’s wrong with those cars? They don’t work well in cold and they don’t work very well in heat.

But Elon’s going to figure it out because he’s great. He gave me the greatest endorsement. He figures everything and. And right now he’s got he’s got other things. I think he’s got to get a rocket up to get those two people out of there.

I said, Elon, let’s get going. No, they’re relying on Elon to get the two people — who would like to be up there right now saying “we’re coming back home maybe in February?”

So that was not so good. But Elon will solve the problem. He’s great, great guy. And he loves this state and he loves your whole everything you’re doing here. And he’s done a fantastic job. He really has. And if he didn’t endorse me, I would not be saying that. Okay, I have a problem. I wouldn’t be saying.

I'm sure Barbara feels better now about Trump's economic policies

How is this not the biggest discussion in the cycle right now? WTF? I have to borrow this and post on the CA board. WTF is he even talking about at any point in this rant? Unbelievable.

[MrDollarBills]

The council representing 35,000 Teamsters across Western Pennsylvania endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday, breaking with the decision by its parent union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to not endorse a candidate in the race for president.

https://triblive.com/news/politics-election/western-pa-teamsters-endorse-kamala-harris-breaking-with-national-union/


At least the Teamsters in PA aren't morons. Meanwhile:

A federal judge in Texas just handed a court victory to an employer who’s arguing that a key labor rights agency is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman of the Northern District of Texas granted a temporary injunction Monday preventing the agency, the National Labor Relations Board, from moving forward with union-busting charges against the employer, Texas-based Findhelp.

Pittman, who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump, wrote in his order that Findhelp is likely to prevail in its argument that the NLRB’s structure violates the constitution.

“The Court [is] unpersuaded by the NLRB’s arguments,” Pittman wrote.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-judge-nlrb-constitutionality_n_66e9a2e4e4b0beccbbaed4cf

^^I don't think folks who support Trump truly understand the consequences of their actions.

I dunno about you, but trading your rights as a worker so that Evangelicals can get their rocks off by tormenting gay lesbian and trans people is the dumbest sh*t I've ever seen.

Even with a Harris landslide we will need both a Dem House and Senate to pass actual laws on the books to kneecap these insane Trump/Federalist Society judges and the SCOTUS.

I'm gonna need Harris one day 1 to call for expansion of the SCOTUS to 13 seats and term limits for all federally appointed judges.

If you support Trump, understand what you are voting for. Meanwhile the rest of us, liberals, progressives, moderates, Never Trump conservatives, etc will be voting to protect you from these goons who do not care one iota about you or your families.

[DOT]

^^I don't think folks who support Trump truly understand the consequences of their actions.

I dunno about you, but trading your rights as a worker so that Evangelicals can get their rocks off by tormenting gay lesbian and trans people is the dumbest sh*t I've ever seen.

Because it's incredibly easy to blame a group of people with very limited actual power for everything wrong in your life

Something similar happened nearly 100 years ago in Germany. They also started by going after gay and trans people first.

[MrDollarBills]

^^I don't think folks who support Trump truly understand the consequences of their actions.

I dunno about you, but trading your rights as a worker so that Evangelicals can get their rocks off by tormenting gay lesbian and trans people is the dumbest sh*t I've ever seen.

Because it's incredibly easy to blame a group of people with very limited actual power for everything wrong in your life

Something similar happened nearly 100 years ago in Germany. They also started by going after gay and trans people first.

I concur fellow comic book guy, the lessons from Weimar have clearly gone by the wayside.

The sad part is, eventually the target of movements such as this continually change until eventually, the "in group" will turn their knives on you for being poor and undesirable.

[Pointgod]

Guys brain is pudding

Read on Twitter

[Pointgod]

Here's a perfect example of the man's inability to answer anything as he goes off on tangents. He has never answered anything anyway, but the incoherent rambling is worsening.

This is his response to a question at the Long Island rally.

BARBARA: Good evening. Good evening. President Trump. Thank you for taking our question. My name is Barbara. I’m a mom of three, a grandmother of seven, and three great grands. A registered nurse. Retired, retired nurse. So I know of course what goes into raising children and running a household. People just can’t survive now. How are you going to bring down the cost of food and groceries?

DONALD TRUMP: Good. Very good. Thank you. So we have to start always with energy. Always. I don’t want to be boring about it, but there’s no bigger subject. It covers everything. If you make donuts, if you make cars, whatever you make, energy is a big deal, and we’re going to get that. It’s my ambition to get your energy bill within 12 months, down 50%. If I can do that. I’ve done a hell of a job. 5-0, not 15, fifty.

Interest rates are going to follow and actually they’re going to follow for another reason. The economy is now not good. And interest rates, you’ll see they’ll do the rate cut and all the political stuff tomorrow, I think. And, you know, will he do a half a point? Will he do a quarter of a point?

But the reason is because the economy is not good, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to do it. But we’re going to get interest rates down and we got to work with our farmers.

Our farmers are being decimated right now. They’re being absolutely, absolutely decimated. And, you know, one of the reasons is we allow a lot of farm product into our country.

And we’re going to have to be a little bit like other countries. We’re not going to allow so much to come in. We’re going to let our farmers go to work.

And I don’t know if you remember, I love the farmers because, you know, I had many meetings as president. I had this gorgeous room with this beautiful table that seats about 35 people.

And I was with the farmers, I usually — everybody wants something. They all want subsidy. But I was with the farmers and I think you might have been there, actually, Sarah, I said, look, fellas, we’re going to get you such a beautiful subsidy, meaning I’m going to do things.

And one of the people raises and “Sir, honestly. We don’t want a subsidy.”

This is the first time this ever happened to me. Everyone wants — they want money. Why did they want to build windmills? We want money with these windmills. Ay-yi-yi.

Anyway, but you know what was amazing? He said, almost tears in his eyes. “We don’t” — they were getting decimated. “We don’t want a subsidy. We just want a, you know, a fair level playing field.”

And I said I said, nobody’s ever said that. And I have many industries and many groups of people from different things. You know, they do all different things. It’s probably the most dramatic I’ve ever seen. He didn’t want anything. All he wanted was to be able to compete fairly.

And the reason the problem we have is other countries. They treat us very badly in that way also. They really are. And, you know, sometimes the worst countries are our so-called allies.

I say so-called, because in many ways they’re not allies at all. They take advantage of us. They really take advantage.

But we’re going to do with the farmers. We’re going to do what we have to do with the farmers. We’re going to put our farmers —

And you remember the expression when I was negotiating with China, China said, well, we’re not going to deal with this because they never had anybody negotiate. They did whatever they want. They just took us like, you know, for a bunch of suckers.

But I told the farmers, it’s going to be they’re very good negotiators. You’re going to suffer for six months and then they’re going to fold. And that’s exactly what happened.

They folded and they agreed to buy $50 billion. You know, you might have heard the story. I said how much, I went to the secretary of agriculture. How much did they buy? He said 15. I thought he said 50. So when they’re ready to make a deal at 15 billion, I said, no, I want 50. That’s what they’ve been buying.

They said, No, it’s 15. I said, You said 50? And he said, No, we said 15. I said, that’s okay, ask for 50 anyway, and we got it. We got it. And they buy a lot of our products.

So we’re going to — just a great — interest rates, energy and common sense. A lot of it’s common sense, everything.

You know, I like to say we’re the party of common sense. We want to have a strong border. How about that? We want to you know, all of a sudden they’ve changed. They didn’t want any border. They said walls don’t work.

Two things work. What are the two things? Wheels and walls. You know, if I do, there’s a gorgeous computer down here. In about two weeks, it’s going to be obsolete. A friend of mine is in that business. He hates it.

He said we come up with a new model and it’s that greatest. About three and a half weeks later, the damn thing is totally obsolete. The only thing that never gets obsolete is a wall and a wheel.

And the wall is what we’re talking about now. And, you know, we built hundreds of miles of wall. We then added more than I ever said I was going to do. And then we had that bad election result, that disgusting result. And they never put it up.

You know what they did with it? They sold it for $0.05 and it was expensive wall it was exactly what the Border Patrol wanted with the antique plane plate on top, which I always hated because I didn’t like the look of it.

But, you know, they demonstrated that we had mountain climbers and a couple of drug climbers. These guys are amazing. They can they put 100 pounds of drugs on the back and they go up the wall like it’s nothing.

But they couldn’t get over the plate. So all of a sudden they said, okay, I’ll put the plate on. I didn’t like it. I liked it better without the plate, but it didn’t work quite as well.

So this is what we did. We had it. We had the best. We had a thing called Remain in Mexico. You don’t have to be a genius to know Remain in Mexico is a very good thing. And you think that was easy to get?

I think Tijuana, Mexico was probably the fastest growing city in the history of the world. Okay? They had hundreds of thousands. They couldn’t come in when they got in. They let everybody pour into our country, the border, just to finish with the border.

When I talk about energy, to me it’s exciting. But to a lot of people it’s not. But it gets exciting because we’ll bring down your costs, all that. But what people want to hear and I believe when I got elected, I believe it was the border that was the biggest thing. And I fixed it and I did a great job.

And I wanted to mention it in 2020. And my people would say, Sir, nobody cares about the border. They don’t care because I had it fixed. Now I got to fix it again. I believe the border is of the greatest interest when you look at when you look at.

When you look at what’s happening in Aurora. Okay, Take a look at Aurora. When you look at what’s happening in Ohio, the great state of Ohio, I love it. I’m way the hell up. I wish I was up 18 points in your state. But we are up. We are up. I think when people hear what I have to say, I don’t know how you can possibly lose that.

You. I’ll tell you this and I’ll say this for Michigan. If I don’t win, you will have no auto industry. Within 2 to 3 years, it’ll all be gone. And I know you got a little bit of an increase. It doesn’t mean that’s the small stuff because it’s just a temporary thing because you will not have any manufacturing plants.

China is going to take over all of your business because of the electric car and because they have the material. We don’t.

What we have is a thing called the gasoline. We have gasoline. We have so much gasoline, we don’t know what to do. They don’t have gasoline. So why are we making a product that they dominate? They’re going to dominate.

You will not have a car industry left, not even a little bit of a car industry. So and you’re going to have electric cars, but you’re going to have 7%. You’re going to have 9%, whatever it may be. And maybe someday the technology becomes so good that you can do more. I mean, you know, it’s fine.

But right now, the battery technology isn’t there for long term. I always say I love the electric car, but they don’t go far enough and they don’t do well. You know, in Iowa, it was 20 degrees below zero. When we had our great success in Iowa, we had a great and there were cars all over the place. I said, what’s wrong with those cars? They don’t work well in cold and they don’t work very well in heat.

But Elon’s going to figure it out because he’s great. He gave me the greatest endorsement. He figures everything and. And right now he’s got he’s got other things. I think he’s got to get a rocket up to get those two people out of there.

I said, Elon, let’s get going. No, they’re relying on Elon to get the two people — who would like to be up there right now saying “we’re coming back home maybe in February?”

So that was not so good. But Elon will solve the problem. He’s great, great guy. And he loves this state and he loves your whole everything you’re doing here. And he’s done a fantastic job. He really has. And if he didn’t endorse me, I would not be saying that. Okay, I have a problem. I wouldn’t be saying.

I'm sure Barbara feels better now about Trump's economic policies

How is this not the biggest discussion in the cycle right now? WTF? I have to borrow this and post on the CA board. WTF is he even talking about at any point in this rant? Unbelievable.

Trump is graded on a massive curve by the media. Not even George W Bush or Sarah Palin received this low of expectations. Remember all of those “Biden needs to step down” op-eds and calls when he stumbled his words but immediately corrected himself? It would have been 25th amendment time if he have this kind of response.

[MrDollarBills]

^^I don't think folks who support Trump truly understand the consequences of their actions.

I dunno about you, but trading your rights as a worker so that Evangelicals can get their rocks off by tormenting gay lesbian and trans people is the dumbest sh*t I've ever seen.

Because it's incredibly easy to blame a group of people with very limited actual power for everything wrong in your life

Something similar happened nearly 100 years ago in Germany. They also started by going after gay and trans people first.

Sorry to double quote, but this reminds me of the story of Ernest Rohm.

Rohm was one of Hitler's right hand men. Went along with everything that the Nazis were doing.

Then, in 1934, the Night of the Long Knives happened. Rohm, who was a homosexual, was shot to death by his own fellow nazis, his execution ordered by Hitler himself.

People need to realize when you support movements that focus on consolidation of total power while demonizing minorities to gain support from people who subscribe to hateful beliefs, one way or another, they will turn their guns towards you when they start running out of "enemies" to project their followers malice towards.

[MrDollarBills]

Here's a perfect example of the man's inability to answer anything as he goes off on tangents. He has never answered anything anyway, but the incoherent rambling is worsening.

This is his response to a question at the Long Island rally.



I'm sure Barbara feels better now about Trump's economic policies

How is this not the biggest discussion in the cycle right now? WTF? I have to borrow this and post on the CA board. WTF is he even talking about at any point in this rant? Unbelievable.

Trump is graded on a massive curve by the media. Not even George W Bush or Sarah Palin received this low of expectations. Remember all of those “Biden needs to step down” op-eds and calls when he stumbled his words but immediately corrected himself? It would have been 25th amendment time if he have this kind of response.

The media, owned by the conservative billionaire class, isn't grading Trump on a curve, they are actively propping him up.

Biden dropped out and suddenly to the media, the age and mental fitness of presidential candidates no longer was an issue. That was deliberate.

[8516knicks]

^^I don't think folks who support Trump truly understand the consequences of their actions.

I dunno about you, but trading your rights as a worker so that Evangelicals can get their rocks off by tormenting gay lesbian and trans people is the dumbest sh*t I've ever seen.

Because it's incredibly easy to blame a group of people with very limited actual power for everything wrong in your life

Something similar happened nearly 100 years ago in Germany. They also started by going after gay and trans people first.

Sorry to double quote, but this reminds me of the story of Ernest Rohm.

Rohm was one of Hitler's right hand men. Went along with everything that the Nazis were doing.

Then, in 1934, the Night of the Long Knives happened. Rohm, who was a homosexual, was shot to death by his own fellow nazis, his execution ordered by Hitler himself.

People need to realize when you support movements that focus on consolidation of total power while demonizing minorities to gain support from people who subscribe to hateful beliefs, one way or another, they will turn their guns towards you when they start running out of "enemies" to project their followers malice towards.

Is this a thinly veiled allusion about Laura Loomer recently outing (again x infinity) Lindsay Graham?

[DOT]

Because it's incredibly easy to blame a group of people with very limited actual power for everything wrong in your life

Something similar happened nearly 100 years ago in Germany. They also started by going after gay and trans people first.

Sorry to double quote, but this reminds me of the story of Ernest Rohm.

Rohm was one of Hitler's right hand men. Went along with everything that the Nazis were doing.

Then, in 1934, the Night of the Long Knives happened. Rohm, who was a homosexual, was shot to death by his own fellow nazis, his execution ordered by Hitler himself.

People need to realize when you support movements that focus on consolidation of total power while demonizing minorities to gain support from people who subscribe to hateful beliefs, one way or another, they will turn their guns towards you when they start running out of "enemies" to project their followers malice towards.

Is this a thinly veiled allusion about Laura Loomer recently outing (again x infinity) Lindsay Graham?

It's more about them just like, straight up making stuff up to target vulnerable communities

It's been obvious for a while, the post-birth "abortions" stuff, the claiming kids are being forcefully transitioned during schools, hell I'm sure a lot of the "reasonable" Republicans on here still believe in the kitty litter stuff

All of that stuff was clearly lies, but they at least pretended like they believed it to keep their cover

But with Vance admitting they made up the stories about Haitians eating pets, it should call into question everything they say about "this is what's actually happening"

It won't, especially amongst the "reasonable" Republicans, but it should. We just live in bizarro world where you can just make up stories about minorities and LGBTQ people, and 40% of the country will just believe it even after it's been proven false.

[Pointgod]

How is this not the biggest discussion in the cycle right now? WTF? I have to borrow this and post on the CA board. WTF is he even talking about at any point in this rant? Unbelievable.

Trump is graded on a massive curve by the media. Not even George W Bush or Sarah Palin received this low of expectations. Remember all of those “Biden needs to step down” op-eds and calls when he stumbled his words but immediately corrected himself? It would have been 25th amendment time if he have this kind of response.

The media, owned by the conservative billionaire class, isn't grading Trump on a curve, they are actively propping him up.

Biden dropped out and suddenly to the media, the age and mental fitness of presidential candidates no longer was an issue. That was deliberate.

It was definitely a feeding frenzy but it wasn’t just the Conservatives or billionaires. Far left independent media was in on the pile on. Even people who had supported Biden in the past that are Democrats were in on it.

It was a real time hit job but ultimately Biden stepping down and endorsing Harris in the way that he did minimized the chaos from it.

This is why it’s bull anytime right wingers complain the media is unfair to Trump. Republicans have zero standards in the eyes of the media and they don’t get held to the same expectations as Democrats. The history books will look back at this time and the failure of the media will be a whole freaking chapter.

[Jalen Bluntson]

Trump is graded on a massive curve by the media. Not even George W Bush or Sarah Palin received this low of expectations. Remember all of those “Biden needs to step down” op-eds and calls when he stumbled his words but immediately corrected himself? It would have been 25th amendment time if he have this kind of response.

The media, owned by the conservative billionaire class, isn't grading Trump on a curve, they are actively propping him up.

Biden dropped out and suddenly to the media, the age and mental fitness of presidential candidates no longer was an issue. That was deliberate.

It was definitely a feeding frenzy but it wasn’t just the Conservatives or billionaires. Far left independent media was in on the pile on. Even people who had supported Biden in the past that are Democrats were in on it.

It was a real time hit job but ultimately Biden stepping down and endorsing Harris in the way that he did minimized the chaos from it.

This is why it’s bull anytime right wingers complain the media is unfair to Trump. Republicans have zero standards in the eyes of the media and they don’t get held to the same expectations as Democrats. The history books will look back at this time and the failure of the media will be a whole freaking chapter.

I just triggered the cult on FB with that Trump rant. One of friends posted a video of Kamala doing a little politi-speak dance answering a question. Which she did. So I posted that response and the KNIVES CAME OUT!! I sound uneducated. Ummm....did you just read what he said? I am a commie. I love socialism. Etc etc. THEY'RE EATING THE DOGS AND THE CATS!

[Pointgod]

Waiting for the 200 articles from the Times calling for Trump to step down

Read on Twitter

[MrDollarBills]

Trump is graded on a massive curve by the media. Not even George W Bush or Sarah Palin received this low of expectations. Remember all of those “Biden needs to step down” op-eds and calls when he stumbled his words but immediately corrected himself? It would have been 25th amendment time if he have this kind of response.

The media, owned by the conservative billionaire class, isn't grading Trump on a curve, they are actively propping him up.

Biden dropped out and suddenly to the media, the age and mental fitness of presidential candidates no longer was an issue. That was deliberate.

It was definitely a feeding frenzy but it wasn’t just the Conservatives or billionaires. Far left independent media was in on the pile on. Even people who had supported Biden in the past that are Democrats were in on it.

It was a real time hit job but ultimately Biden stepping down and endorsing Harris in the way that he did minimized the chaos from it.

This is why it’s bull anytime right wingers complain the media is unfair to Trump. Republicans have zero standards in the eyes of the media and they don’t get held to the same expectations as Democrats. The history books will look back at this time and the failure of the media will be a whole freaking chapter.

The far left media never liked Biden to begin with, despite him being further to the left of any President of the past 45 years. At some point I gave up on that side because while I feel their heart is in the right place on several issues, they tend to throw pragmatism out the window and they do not understand that to accomplish anything politically you need to coalition build with people you may not agree with on everything.

But, it looks like so far things have worked well. Harris and Walz have energized voters and are actually gasp building a coalition with the goal in mind of protecting this country.

I tip my hat off to Old Man Joe. He did right by stepping aside.