Elon Musk provides a starting point today, though perhaps not the one he intended. Ben Jennings had accurately predicted the fawning tongue-bath his online “interview” with Donald Trump would be.
Judd Legum, on the Popular Information substack, put details behind that, headlining his prediction “The most expensive political ad of all time” and placing it in perspective within Musk’s money-burning takeover of the platform, though the Trump-2024 infomercial was not Musk’s only goal.
It strikes me, BTW, that these two tyros could have had an interesting conversation about how to lose money with social media, perhaps during that long gap between the announced starting time and the time when they actually got the thing running.
Musk attributed the technical glitch to a denial-of-service attack, which must have been well-targeted, since it didn’t appear to effect the rest of Xitter. Other observers suggested it was a screw-up in setting up the session, despite Musk having boasted earlier of his efforts to make sure everything worked.
David Rowe, tuning in from Australia, had this analysis, including both a pulled plug and a crashing SpaceX rocket as well as several additions to Trump’s tattooed belly.
Other reviews of the podcast varied significantly. Raw Story focused on viewer reactions to Trump’s apparent speech problems, comparing him to Sylvester the Cat or someone with loose dentures, while CNN focused more on what was said than how it was enunciated, but suggested a lack of focus that ought to concern Republicans specifically and voters in general.
The Hill was complimentary without gushing, but Reuters reported with a neutrality that didn’t mock the event but certainly raised serious questions about both parties to the conversation.
Taken all in all, it appears that Musk didn’t end up doing his pal any favors, nor did Trump help himself, the latter being a pattern lately.
It seems harsh of Ed Wexler to declare the campaign to be in free fall, but there is more than a whiff of desperation in things, with Harris and Walz barnstorming the country while Trump largely sticks to Mar A Lago and leaves most of the campaigning to Vance.
However last night’s session went, Trump is still catching grief over his press conference: NPR fact checkers have had a chance to go through the transcript and, in Trump’s 64-minute exchange with reporters, “found at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies.”
Kevin Necessary accuses the press of failure to address Trump’s misstatements, but perhaps he drew this cartoon immediately following the press conference. NPR’s exhaustive list is only one of many articles critical of Trump’s honesty and presence of mind at the gathering.
Meanwhile, though Vance has been actively campaigning, he seems to spend more time explaining his past misstatements than advancing a positive outlook for a Trump/Vance administration.
Moreover, not only did Vance write a foreward praising a book by Project 2025 developer Kevin Roberts, but it has also developed that he contributed a blurb to promote a book by white nationalist firebrand Jack Posobeic.
If not in free fall, the campaign is certainly back on its heels, like a boxer covering up and hoping for the bell to let him recover and regroup for the next round.
Wexler and Necessary noted that Trump has returned to the famous first lie of his administration, exaggerating the size of his crowds, but Bill Bramhall picks up on the outrageous and ridiculous version in which he boasts to have drawn bigger crowds than MLK.
As Newsweek reports
The crowds controversy is now heightened by absurd, readily disproven claims that Harris’s campaign is generating AI images of large gatherings at empty airports, advanced perhaps by Trump loyalists who forgot that not only was the press present but that many of those thousand mythical people had cameras themselves. The theory was not just disproven but laughed out of the room by fact checkers.
Mike Luckovich, then, combines that farcical claim with other, more well-grounded concerns about Trump, whose absence from the campaign trail may be an attempt to keep him out of the public eye because of cognitive decline.
If that is the case, it should be obvious when he meets Kamala Harris in that September 10 debate. And while Trump’s well-known bravado has caused him to demand more debates, Vance offered to debate Harris on a date — today — proposed for vice-presidential candidates back when she was one.
His theory was that the Democrats might swap out their candidates yet again so that he and Harris would both be running for the VP slot.
As is so often the case these days, it’s not so much that “you can’t make this up” as it is that you don’t have to.
The combination of rising poll numbers for the Harris/Walz ticket with the weak response by Trump/Vance has left conservative cartoonists with little ammunition.
Thus Rick McKee (Counterpoint) levels a “far left” accusation, echoing GOP charges of communism and socialism that are never well-defined, but don’t really need to be, since they are offered as generic code words and not as substantive criticism.
We’re back to the days of Joe McCarthy, with the difference being that, at long last, nobody today has a sense of decency and it’s unlikely there will be any such sudden deflation of empty, undocumented, meaningless slanders.
The critical question at this point, raised by Tim Campbell (Counterpoint) is how much truth, facts and rational debate matter anymore.
In other words, could Trump, as he boasted, shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose a single vote?
Campbell references a completely bogus story Trump told about being in a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, which had to make a frightening emergency landing. According to Trump, Brown — who dated Harris briefly three decades ago — told him a number of negative things about her.
Except that Brown denies having been in a helicopter with Trump or ever bad-mouthing Harris. Turns out Trump flew with Nate Holden, a different Black politician, on a chopper that had to put down because of a hydraulic leak.
“I guess we all look alike,” Holden said.
It’s likely hardcore MAGAts will believe anything Trump tells them. But can he win with just their votes?
And, if he does, will JD help with his press conferences?
Just because the media were there to document Harris’s crowd … hey, who ya gonna believe, me or your lugenpresse?
PS: something’s wrong with the tinyurl this morning
So now polls report that young voters are favoring Harris at a higher level. That’s nice, but not the important thing. Harris was always going to get a higher percentage of that sector. The main problem for Republicans across the board is that the Harris campaign has energized a significantly higher number of young voters to get involved and actually go vote…increasing the Harris/Walz advantage significantly.
Wonder if Trump was as PO’d about Musk’s Twitter interview starting late as he was about the technical delays at his NABJ appearance?
No? Hmmmmm…
I assume you’re joking. Reports are that the NABJ delays were because he wanted to be sure they wouldn’t fact-check him. No such issue with the muskrat.
But he (Trump) blamed it on technical delays rather than admitting that he wanted to lie to them freely and frequently.
Nope. To paraphrase, ‘Not an Onion headline.’ The reports you’re citing came out days later — but during the interview, he repeatedly griped about the ‘technical difficulties.’
[Trump complaining that Harris wasn’t also there as well]: “You invited me under false pretense…. and then you were half an hour late. Just so we understand, I have too much respect for you to be late. They couldn’t get their equipment working or something.”
[a minute later]
“And for you to start off a question and answer period, especially when you’re 35 minutes late because you couldn’t get your equipment to work, in such a hostile manner, I think it’s a disgrace. I really do think it’s a disgrace.”
[a few minutes after that]
“So first of all, it’s very hard to hear you for whatever reason because of the fact that they have bad equipment ’cause I guess this woman was unable to get the right equipment. But it’s very hard for me to hear you, but I can hear every other word. It’s very difficult, actually. But so I don’t know if they can fix it or do something with it, but I’ll do the best I can with it.”
But sure, keep saying hackers ate Elon’s homework
Whoops, missed one, about 20 minutes in when one of the interviewers noted the limited time remaining — and Trump replied: “You’re the one that held me up for 35 minutes, just so you understand.”
So, while he might be losing in the polls, the King of Projection still reigns…