October 15, 2024 (Tuesday)
After Trump’s bizarre performance last night in Oaks, Pennsylvania, when he stopped taking questions and just swayed to his self-curated playlist for 39 minutes, his campaign this morning canceled a scheduled interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” according to co-host of the show Joe Kernen. The campaign did not, though, cancel a scheduled live interview today with Bloomberg News and the Economic Club of Chicago. That interview echoed last night’s train wreck.
Trump showed up almost an hour late to the event with moderator John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News. When he arrived, things went downhill fast. Micklethwait asked real questions about Trump’s approach to the economy, but the former president answered with aimless rants and campaign slogans that Micklethwait corrected, repeatedly redirecting Trump back to his actual questions. Trump quickly grew angry and combative.
When Micklethwait corrected Trump’s misunderstanding of the way tariffs work, Trump replied in front of a room full of people who understand the economy: “It must be hard for you to, you know, spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you're totally wrong.” Referring to analysis that his plans would explode the national debt, including analysis by the Wall Street Journal—hardly a left-wing outlet, as Mickelthwait pointed out—Trump replied: “What does the Wall Street Journal know? They’ve been wrong about everything. So have you, by the way….. You’ve been wrong about everything…. You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff.”
The economy is supposed to be Trump’s strong suit.
The former president seemed unable to stay on any topic, jumping from one idea to another randomly, or to answer anything, instead making statements that play well at his rallies—referring to people with insulting names, for example—or by rehashing old grievances and threatening to end traditional U.S. freedoms. He made it clear he intends to "straighten out our press,” for example. “Because,” he said, “we have a corrupt press."
As Micklethwait tried to keep him on task, Trump asserted stories that were more and more outlandish. He claimed that children could do the work of U.S. autoworkers in South Carolina, for example, and that he would be a better chair of the Federal Reserve than Jerome Powell.
Micklethwait did not fight with Trump, but he didn’t indulge him either. When Trump explained that “you don’t put old in” the federal judiciary because “they’re there for two years, or three years,” Micklethwait replied: “You’re a 78-year-old man running for president.”
And therein lies the rub.
Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who watches and clips Trump’s speeches, called the appearance “bonkers.” Journalist David Rothkopf of Deep State Radio wrote: “The past 24 hours seem to have been a dividing line in the Trump campaign...and in Trump. He went from being periodically adrift and sporadically demented to being 24/7 unfit and in need of permanent medical attention. He's one cloudless night away from baying at the moon.”
Likely reflecting this shift, trading in shares of Trump media, the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social social media site, was stopped briefly today as the price plummeted in unusually heavy trading. Trump took to social media to hawk tokens for his new crypto project, although the nature of the project is still unclear and investing simply offers voting rights in the new platform. The website crashed repeatedly during the day.
Trump’s issues make it likely that a second Trump presidency would really mean a J.D. Vance presidency, even if Trump nominally remains in office.
Currently an Ohio senator, J.D. Vance is just 39, and if voters put Trump into the White House, Vance will be one of the most inexperienced vice presidents in our history. He has held an elected office for just 18 months, winning the office thanks to the backing of entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who first employed Vance, then invested in his venture capital firm, and then contributed an unprecedented $15 million to his Senate campaign.
Vance and Thiel make common cause with others who are open about their determination to dismantle the federal government. Although different groups came to that mission from different places, they are sometimes collectively called a “New Right” (although at least one scholar has questioned just how new it really is). Some of the thinkers both Vance and Thiel follow, notably dystopian blogger Curtis Yarvin, argue that America’s democratic institutions have created a society that is, as James Pogue put it in a 2022 Vanity Fair article, “at once tyrannical, chaotic, and devoid of the systems of value and morality that give human life richness and meaning.” Such a system must be pulled to pieces.
Thiel has expressed the belief that the modern government stifles innovation by enforcing social values like equality and anti-monopoly. Those limits have caused society to stagnate, a situation he warns could lead to an apocalypse. “We are in a deadly race between politics and technology,” Thiel wrote in 2009. To move society forward, he calls for freedom for technological leaders to plan a utopian future without government interference.
It is at least partly the promise of dismantling the administrative state and its regulation of technology that has brought other technology elites, most notably Elon Musk, to support the Trump-Vance campaign. These technology entrepreneurs envision themselves, rather than a government, planning and then creating the future. New campaign records filed today show that in just over two months, from July to the beginning of September, Musk invested almost $75 million in his pro-Trump America PAC to get Trump and Vance elected.
Like Thiel, Vance has spoken extensively about the need to destroy the U.S. government, but while Thiel emphasizes the potential of a technological future unencumbered by democratic baggage, Vance emphasizes what he sees as the decadence of today’s America and the need to address that decadence by purging the government of secular leaders. A 2019 convert to right-wing Catholicism, Vance said he was attracted to the religion in part because he wanted to see the Republican Party use the government to work for what he considers the common good by imposing laws that would enforce his version of morality.
Their worldview requires a few strong leaders to impose their will on the majority, and both Thiel and Vance have rejected secular democracy. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Thiel wrote in 2009.
In 2021, Vance called American universities “the enemy” and said on a podcast that people like him needed to “seize the institutions of the left, and turn them against the left.” In a different interview, he clarified: American “conservatives…have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been. We’ve lost big business. We’ve lost finance. We’ve lost the culture. We’ve lost the academy. And if we’re going to actually really effect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class…. I don’t think there’s sort of a compromise that we’re going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.” “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” he said.
Vance told an interviewer he would urge Trump to “[f]ire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” This plan is central to Project 2025, whose main author, Kevin Roberts, has a book covering those ideas coming out soon—it was supposed to come out this month but was postponed when Project 2025 became a lightning rod for the election—for which Vance wrote the foreword. “We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay [sic] ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon,” Vance wrote.
Like Roberts, Vance wants to dismantle the secular state. He wants to replace that state with a Christian nationalism that enforces what he considers traditional values: an end to immigration—hence the lies about the legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio—and an end to LGBTQ+ rights. He supports abortion bans and the establishment of a patriarchy in which women function as wives and mothers even if it means staying in abusive marriages. Vance insists this social structure will be more fulfilling for women than becoming “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.“
That desire to get rid of the current “ruling class” and replace it with people like him has prompted Vance to say that if he had been vice president on January 6, 2021, he would have done what former vice president Mike Pence would not: he would have refused to count the certified electoral ballots for President Joe Biden.
“Let’s be clear,” former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) said. “This is illegal and unconstitutional. The American people had voted. The courts had ruled. The Electoral College had met and voted. The Governor in every state had certified the results and sent a legal slate of electors to the Congress to be counted. The Vice President has no constitutional authority to tell states to submit alternative slates of electors because his candidate lost. That is tyranny.”
Early voting began today in Georgia, where more than 328,000 voters smashed the previous record of 136,000 set in 2020, during the worst of the pandemic. One of those voters was former president Jimmy Carter, who turned 100 on October 1, and said over the summer he was trying to stay alive to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
At a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, tonight, a slurring, low-energy Donald Trump told the audience: “If you don’t win, win, win, we’ve all had a good time, but it’s not gonna matter, right? Sadly. Because what we’ve done is amazing. Three nominations in a row…. If we don’t win it’s like, ah, it was all, it was all for not very much. We can’t, uh, we can’t let that happen.”
Our. Fucking. Guy.
Dude probably has a Lotus Eaters subscription, is a member of Richard Barris's Locals page, and reads Curtis Yarvin
I'll be honest, I am continually genuinely shocked at having a politician that even comes close to actually representing my beliefs and values. And without needing a giant "ignore this massive flaw" caveat that bothers me.
He certainly has flaws, but normally when they hit that close to home its one like "believes the minor can consent" or "is a fucking furry."
Can't compromise on the former, but honestly, I'm prepared to compromise on the latter.
I'll take the based furry if he can actually fight the globalist establishment.
Being a furry is a level of degenerate that goes deeper than a simple kink and is indicative of a specific personality, so its not a compromise you can make and expect results.
Maybe you can compromise on it for some sort of tech autist position, but nothing that involves morality or politics.
Unfortunately I think most of our IT infrastructure is run by furries, so we might already have to make that compromise.
It used to be until about a decade ago. They all trooned out since then.
It helps that he's a younger guy, so he gets the position of conservative/moderate millennials, and even zoomers. Considering how old Trump is even though he's got the right ideas he's pretty out of touch with what caused the left to gain so much power. Vance on the other hand is "closer to ground level" and sees it around him. In our books, in our media, our in games, in our institutions, he probably witnessed it himself happening directly to the peoplpe around him.
You'd have to be blind and frankly retarded as hell not to see that it's a problem.
Even Michael Malice suggested the same about making the left fight themselves. It's really encouraging to have a candidate that picks up on ideas from the right wing dissident-sphere and to realize our thinkers weren't just navel gazing on blogs about pie in the sky philosophy that could never possibly be implemented.
I"ve never heard him say anything more subversive than "white people are ok."
Yeah, Racemixing Inc. is going to save the west and White people.
Race mixing is a phantom problem. Without artificial stimuli like mass immigration and propaganda, most people date within their own race as they simply find each other more attractive.
Hence why Chinatown still exists and the hapa master race does not.
Even if you had some kind of problem with race mixing, like you said, it's a non issue.
Yes, countries can be multi-ethnic and just have no issue so long as assimilation occurs, which it inevitably, slowly, does.
Concerns over German immigration were overblown, same with Japanese migration. No one sane is really worried about Germans or Japanese "EATING DA DAWGS. THEY'RE EATING THE PETZ".
Frankly, even the Post Bellum Jim Crow South didn't really care all that much about race mixing with Japanese or Germans. IIRC there was once a Mississippi state court which declared a Japanese family to be culturally white due to their integration and assimilation into the local community.
Even a segregated society can still function so long as amicability still exists. The Amish are effectively living in fully parallel societies, yet there is no one talking about "the American blood is poisoned by the Amish".
Sit down faggot. We don't need you suicide bombing the right any further.
I read the username “ratatosk” and I definitely don’t think “this guy’s here to stir up shit without providing any substance.” No sir, the thought never even crosses my mind….
in what, overthrowing the left so they can legalize all those immigrants?
Shut up, suicide bomber.
you do have brain damage, don't you?
So was this what your lefty friends said on Tuesday about Trump?
To be honest it's a reach, a HUGE one considering not long after that he was at the charity roast where he did mostly well.
I know why they are doing it, when it was Biden running, the couldn't hit Trump on age, now that Biden is gone, they'll hit the age thing as hard as possible as it's ALL they have left, no one likes the cackling VP.
The left is so desperate to frame Trump as senile at this point because it is all they have when they're dealing with Cackling Kamala that can't answer a question to save her life.
She's so empty headed that this is a valid joke as she just repeats the same 3 lines all the time.
I particularly like the Trump line halfway through, nearly spit my drink hearing that the first time.
Link to joke
The Trump joke did make me laugh.
They are literally copy pasting this and posting it. Some are just posting someone else, and then commenting how Orange Man Bad.
The good news is it's so long, only NPCs who have already mail in balloted will read it.
Everyone else will either not bother or actually get pissed off and be more inclined to Trump if this is spammed at them.
Do lefties have the time to sit down and read that wall of text?
No. they don't read shit.
This is like when you argue with a Marxist, who tells you you're uninformed and that you haven't read enough Marx to understand it. Then you read all of Marx's letters, Das Kapital, and Surplus Value; then you present him with an even more refined argument. As a result, he has no idea what you're talking about because he never read through The Communist Manifesto the whole way through, let alone Das Kapital. He was working off of vibes the whole time, and got you to waste months of your life reading a crazy, unwashed, resentment mongering, jew-hating, deadbeat hobo from the 1860's.
hey, broken clocks, right? besides, being a jew, he would know best.
Okay, Marxist.
do you have brain damage?
Keep reading and find his earlier stuff about the devil
His poetry makes him sound like he was possessed by Satan.
I'll be honest, if there was a knock knock joke in the middle of it, no one would notice.
Added: it's a list of grievances acting like an article, so just read the first sentence of a paragraph and you get the gist.
Does anyone read the whole thing? Probably 90%+ of people these days just read headlines and maybe the first paragraph.
When the first sentence is a flat-out lie, why would anyone who knows the truth continue reading?
For people who like having their delusions confirmed and just like to read, that wall of nonsense text is probably entertaining. So yeah, your estimate of an ~10% ceiling is probably close. I'd guess closer to 3-5% though.
I stopped halfway through because it's obviously the opinion of someone who heavily dislikes Trump.
Just this highlights very well the problem of ''experts'' and Trump derrangement syndrome :
Trump did very well economically while ignoring the ''experts'', including Wall Street, which was mostly against him. And the Wall Street market overall ended-up massively benefited from Trump's economic policies.
judging by their memes, yes
I suspect they read just enough of it to discern whether it's in line with their idea or not, then they just assume it's a quality take by the size of the text block. A daunting, banal, imposing wall of text is an unassailable argument.
Even if he was, these people voted for Biden so it shouldn't matter.
There's absolutely no danger of Trump becoming senile; if he has one Biden-wandering-off-stage moment they'll 25th him or impeach in hours.
Not going to read it all, but what he did is offer a different view of how tariffs work. This isn't a simple math equation like 2+2=4.
But I expect nothing less from an activist hack who leaves out crucial context for why Trump "stood around" at one of his rallies.
When another country is manipulating an industry with subsidies or unfair labor the only market solutions are subsidies and tariffs.
Subsidies send your own government money to everybody else in the world. It's a risky strategy that only works if other countries don't respond to protect their industry.
Tariffs send your own people's money to the government or domestic companies, which is spent in your own country. It's a safe strategy that only fails when it's too high for people to bear or when it's protecting dysfunctional domestic companies (monopoly, overly regulated, strong union, etc).
But his main point was that nobody will be paying the tariffs because they'll move their companies back here.
Right, BYD says we can build a factory in Mexico and build cars to sell in Mexico and Canada, or build a factory in the U.S. and sell in Mexico, Canada, and the U.S.
But that's more Art of the Deal than an economic tax on imports.
BYD will tear Tesla a new asshole. At least they price their glorified golf carts appropriately, and not at ridiculous luxury car prices.
As someone who supports Austrian Economics, I understand the argument that even instituting a counter-tarrif is actually worse for both countries, and both markets.
But there's a huge implication that's left out.
It's worse IF AND ONLY IF you already have a free market. The Austrian School refusal to fire back with a tariff makes sense when your economy is so free that it immediately takes over from the lost business. In the end, the people who applied the tariff on you end up being actually worse off, and damaging their own industries in the long run because they are no longer competitive to the market that you now dominate.
Problem is, we don't fucking have that. Trump would have to completely de-regulate huge swathes of industries and close multiple agencies, just to build the economy strong enough, over years, to make the tariffs a bad idea for our opponents.
If you want to do something quick, yeah, you need a reactionary tariff. Then when you drive them back to the negotiation table, you lift the tariffs once you've got a real trade negotiation worked out.
What you don't do is what we currently do: Let one and only one side have tariffs for infinity years for the exclusive benefit of the other country, while we regulate our own companies severely to keep our productivity down and costs up.
That is exactly the point I checked out as well because they were gibbering on as if that goblin interviewer knew economics better than the president who led the best period in this century so far.
If there isn't a Hell in a Cell Undertake meme at the end I'm going to be mighty pissed at that wall of text.
I made a picture of the undertaker doing that, and then realized I could t share it directly.
I'd settle for dinosaurs honestly...
When Biden does it: It's fine, he actually he had a stutter you insensitive asshole, mkay?
When Trump does it: HE'S SENILE BONKERS MCFUCKING OLD AND DONE FOR.
God I hate that it's so blatant. At least pretend to be impartial like in 2015.
I hope whoever is paying for this is dissatisfied at this level of performative douchebaggery, because this is shit even for modern journalism.
"Shut up, Liberal. Trump is as sharp as a tack! Even Morning Joe thinks so!"
#TrumpIsNotWell had been trending on and off on X for months. Projection as always. The Democrats are petty and childish. They know Trump is fine but can't stand that they supported a demented old creeper for years, and some choose to believe that all the GOP War Room clips of bumbling Biden were edited and taken out of context. They play a game of "REEE You Republicans lie about Biden all the time, so I'm gonna lie about Trump!"
I haven't seen that trending, but I mostly follow videogame and AI stuff.
I purposely set my region to Japan.
I need a second account ...
As wordy as a leftist meme.
Drumpf is finished
TLDR
It's every 'Orange Man Bad' article of the last 8 years, but with 'Old Man Bad' sprinkles on top this time.
Donald Trump is the real Joe Biden!
Leftists cannot create.
They saw the right using "senile" on Biden and when Biden was kicked out to their surprise they thought "Hey, maybe it works on Trump to?". Especially when you consider they don't really care about the meaning of words in their everyday life (woman, ...).
Also no one has time to read that kind of leftist drivel. Proper response is to send them the "long journey reading leftist doge meme".
Classic cargo cult politics.
Call Biden senile, people turned on Biden.
Think "senile" is a magic word.
Try using it on everyone else.
hey, they made it work for racist, sexist, etc... at least for a while...
Who is reading that non edited chatgpt word dump?
I did, but I'm a bit odd.
They've been calling him "old and senile" since 2016. This isn't new.
Yeah leftists are shameless, mentally and emotionally stunted cretins. What else is new?
I ain’t reading all that shit lol.. they got their new barking orders and are all in sync:
-“bizarre”
-“unwell”
-“he has no plan!”
And variations thereof. They are cognizant of the fact that all of these examples they provide of his alleged senility are not in context, like how the other night was because his mic was not working, but they purposely choose to push propaganda pieces onto dumb, low-info people.
I am not sweating it. Just keep on keeping on, go vote, and don’t let up until it’s too big to rig! They have nothing left if this is what they choose to resort to in late October.
Where did the original post come from?
No idea. It's being spread all over, but I don't know the origin.
Ah, so just like the way leftists spread STDs.
Pretty much. If we tell them the truth, it's censorship.
Jesus the level of projection in this wall of text is off the charts. After 4 years of trying to convince us Biden isn’t a drug-addled walking corpse, they’re really going there with “Muh Trump’s mental decline”, “he’s too old” and “he won’t really be running the country, someone else will.”
The media are the single biggest problem we have in our elections. Something needs to be done about them, something consequential. Fuck the optics
If only we let everyone be reporters and ignore these twats.
That’s “dangerous to democracy” though 😕