If he had (1) just accepted the election results, and (2) not stuffed a bunch of classified documents in the bathroom so he could show them to people, he'd be in such a good place right now.

Every GOP presidential hopeful would have spent 4 years coming kiss his ring to get his endorsement. He'd get to call into Fox and Friends whenever he wants. By not committing federal crimes, he'd have avoided federal prosecution.

My father is/was a trump supporter. He was shot down, also a POW. I pointed this out and asked him how he could support someone who just tossed vets/pows under the bus, like this, and his response was 'well he's not talking about ME", but don't ask him about Hanoi Jane. She's basically Satan himself.

And I do think that's what trump supporters do. They look beyond the obvious things that would impact them, or be about them, make rationalizations as to why it is, and then look under every rock misstep by the 'others' to both make them feel better about their rationalizations and to reinforce their beliefs.

I told him I couldn't respect him after that. To which he replied 'I'm your father, you have to' and I simply told him, "No".

From what it looks like, they had an idea they may be deployed soon, but no actual confirmation. Waltz was planning on running for congress, and if they did deploy he wouldn't be able to do it. He went to his CO and talked it over, and his CO encouraged him to go ahead and retire. One of the guys that wrote the complaint letter was the guy that took over as CSM and he had made it pretty clear he personality didn't like Waltz, saying he "talked too much." So a guy with a personal axe to grind and a Republican supporter.

It reminds me of the Trump deportations that his supporters were cheering. Then some small, very red town had the guy that owned the Mexican restaurant deported and they were upset because "he was one of the good ones".

The love Trump until his policies directly impact them. They want other people punished.

It's the "Shirley Principle"

They need to deport all the bad illegals. Shirley they won't deport Jose. He's one of the good ones.

They need to stop all the government handouts. Shirley they won't take away my unemployment insurance if I lose my job. I need that to get back on my feet.

They need to get the bad books out of the library. Shirley they won't ban actual literature. Just the bad books.

They need to stop all those bad women from getting abortions. Shirley they won't ban an abortion if a child is raped.

Shirley you can't be serious.

The backlash is beginning.

And it is subtle.

Wa Post headline: "Walz’s Army record faces scrutiny as GOP critics, fellow veterans question claims about his service"

Note no actual investigation into what is and is not true. Just basically taking the GOP line of attack and making it a headline.

Did he embellish his military record? Sure would be cool if the Wa. Post could hire some people (I think that they are called journalists. I've also heard them called reporters.) to investigate the claims and make the story about whether they are true or not.

But that would require work.

Very true. And nearly everyone was OK with it because you respected the guy that did his 20+. The very few that had problems with it were assholes that no one liked because they were the type that found a problem with everything.

I think I have told this story before, but my last job had several guys that I worked with that was here under questionable means. They had paperwork, but the owners pretty much knew that it was fake. The owners were big Trump supporters, and "rah, rah"-ed the build the wall crap. When I asked what would happen if one of their guys got deported. They told me directly "oh that won't happen. They are the good ones. But if it did, I would drive to Mexico and sneak them back in myself."

My wife's stepfather does home renovations and this is almost exactly him. He's helped several migrants get on their feet, given them jobs, and considers them friends. He's also the guy on Facebook pushing for the wall, deportations, and posting stories to every crime committed by a migrant.

I'm not watching it because I'm on a conference call, but if center-right Twitter is to be believed, Trump isn't doing himself any favors with this presser.

He just had to get in front of a camera.

But he really does seem to lack the juice he used to have.

Makes sense. He's older now.

dola: not watching it either. Just going off of reactions

Yeah this is bad. Talking about crowd sizes, gas going up to $7-$9 a barrel (yes he said barrel), rebuilding every bridge in America because of electric trucks, something about soldiers with no arms no legs no faces.

He's lost it. This is a nervous breakdown in real time.

If he is breaking down, that's a problem for the GOP, because there's no one to take the keys away from Grandpa.

The Dems were not a cult of Biden. So when he started slipping, powerful Dems were not afraid to speak frankly to him (though I still think that the decision to stop contending for the nomination was his).

But who's gonna speak frankly to Trump? Everyone who has his ear is either a relative or making money grifting off his campaign.

Like, I'm sure Mike Johnson understands that a true Trump implosion would hurt the GOP down ballot (and, thus, his Speakership). But what can he do to prevent that?

I've been an undecided voter but now I'm full MAGA. I learned today that Kim Jong Un likes Trump a lot but he doesn't like this group at all and that was the convincing argument I was looking for.

Semi-related but Nancy Pelosi has started to give herself those flowers over the past couple of days, which doesn't seem very productive.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...tion-campaign/

That's fair. Can't fault you for that.

Apparently there's also a country which he won't name because he does not want to get it in trouble where they encouraged people to get guns and crime is down 29%. So that's another reason to vote for him.

I’ve listened to 4 minutes of this and he has told at least 10 lies.

Stephanie Grisham said this is what Trump does when he's lost faith in the people around him. When he feels people are failing him he takes control.

This presser is really just an off the rails campaign speech. And a bad one at that. He's covering 3-4.topics in a single sentence and it's impossible to make any sense of what he's saying or trying to accomplish.

He sounds like someone trying kill the last hour of a filibuster.

He sounds like a sad desperate weird man.

I was spot on. It is not only a disaster but beyond low energy.

Nothing. It's literally the last stages of Frankensteins monster and I have zero shred of sympathy. They had multiple chances to rid themselves of him but were too spineless to do it. Had they this election would be in the bag for them.

Ivanka?

When Biden stopped contending for the nomination, my first thought that one of the kids (my guess was Ashley) told him enough. I feel like Ivanka is the only person who could tell Donald that he is done.

he also couldn't remember Tim Walz's name. He froze at the beginning, then just said "man", later called him "Kamala's new friend" and "the Minnesota gentleman"

There is zero chance Trump has ever heard of Tim Walz prior to two days ago.

Putin is the only one who'll tell Don he's done.

The biggest difference between Biden and Trump is that Trump needs to run to stay out of prison or worse. Even if he loses this election, he'll simply refile for the following one. He won't go away until he dies.

Trump is def rooting for Serbia right now.

I kind of am also.

Biden was so terrified as coming across as partisan that he went the opposite direction. I’m not so sure Harris is the same and I suspect it was one of the issues on the White House people talk about. The gop has already dove headfirst into the “weaponization of doj” claim that I think Harris may just be like, fuck it if they are gonna accuse us anyway let’s do it. Either way I think this is the GOP and maga last stand. Dems have a deep bench and people are so sick of maga. So many of the rising gop stars have the trunk stain and would have to cater to maga just to win the primary. The party is truly fucked if they lose.

Ehhhhh, it's not as deep as Trump but there were quite a bit of ride or die Biden folks. His cognitive decline has been known even before he was elected in 2020. You had people vehemently defending Trump's immigration policy because Biden proposed it. You had people defending a fucking genocide for christ sake.

And Dems absolutely were afraid to speak up. The party targeted anyone who did for awhile. They closed the primary. It only became safe to speak up when he bombed the debate in front of 50 million people and it became clear that he was going to get trounced in the election. Dems were utter cowards who ignored reality and will be responsible for Trump returning to power if he wins in November.

I agree with a lot of what you said except the last part. It was late but plenty of time before the election. If Trump wins it is the fault of the people for not getting out and voting Kamala.

It's interesting that all the far-right/fascist leaders seem to end up in this position. Bolsonaro needed to win to stay out of prison. Netanyahu needs to keep a war going to stay out of prison. Same with Orban.

They didn't hold a real primary where voters could have decided the nominee. Kamala might be fine, but she is unlikely to be the strongest candidate the Democrats could have put out had they held a primary.

I'm not knocking them for going with Kamala since they didn't have many options, but that's still the fault of the party and the diehards who refused to acknowledge reality and let it get that far.

This guy. He is indignant he's being left out of the 'weird' conversation.

Maybe he's trying to up the weird to tamp down it's effectiveness.

Yeah, they did box themselves in letting things draq when it should have been clear that Biden should have not run for re-election period. Still, a Kamala / Walz ticket would have me pull my vote back from Chase Oliver if have even a semi-competent campaign.

If the presser was awful you wouldn't know it from the network nightly coverage. Just that it happened, he said Harris was bad and he lied a bit.

They have completely normalized his lunacy.

It would have ended the campaign of any candidate pre-Trump.

It's crazy we went from the Dean scream to where we're at.

Trump's gotta be pissed that Joe Rogan endorsed RFK Jr.

Ahhh the Dean scream. Did you know it has its own Wiki page? What to know how we got here?

I've never understood how it was different from any other campaign speech, even compared to those times.

Dukakis looked like a dork when he rode a tank, he's out.

The next big UFC event in the US is going to be awkward

It seems some republican surrogates are moving on to the "Wizard of Oz" strategy.

"Pay little to no attention to trump, whether you like him or hate him, our policies are what you support, and we're better for it"

Almost as if the man behind the curtain is irrelevant now focus on us and what WE do. It's the first messaging I've seen that doesn't strictly revolve around trump for trump reasons.

That won’t continue. Trump will never allow it to be about anything other than himself.

It's smart, though. Most of the people I know who are Republicans and say they're still voting for him, that's the reason. The either competely discount the authoritarian stuff or flat-out don't care, as long as they get their tax breaks, or 2nd Amendment protections, or abortion restrictions, or whatever matters most to them.

I really don't know many people (outside of my parents and some of my wife's relatives) who are all-in on Trump the personality as the driving reason for their votes. A lot of those people obviously exist, but I don't really have any personal association with any of them.