Trump Appears to Have Lost a Total Grasp on Things

After another rambling speech in Georgia on Tuesday, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to pat himself on the back.

Except, he appeared to forget where he just had been.

“A great day in Louisiana!” Trump posted around midnight, following his rally in Savannah, Georgia.

He then tried to correct his mistake, tweeting about “internal polling in Louisiana” that showed him “winning the state by the largest margin.” (Sure, let’s see those polls!)

Later in the night—or morning—he finally sent out a shoutout to the correct state, Georgia, covering his tracks.

This wasn’t Trump’s only geography blunder in the past 24 hours.

During his speech on Tuesday, Trump’s brain also short-circuited when he tried to talk about the 2017 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“She didn’t say anything except lies, like bloodbath, like Charlottestown,” Trump said, only a minute after trying to conjure a thought about manufacturing in Georgia.

Trump didn’t bother to correct his mistake, and the crowd clapped anyway.

Ohio’s Republican Senate nominee Bernie Moreno thinks it’s “crazy” that female voters only care about abortion.

Moreno was caught speaking candidly about some of his female constituents during a town hall in Warren County Friday, in footage obtained by NBC4 WMCH.

“You know the left has a lot of single-issue voters,” Moreno said. “Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion’s it! If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else!’

“It’s a little crazy, by the way, but, especially for women that are past 50. I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you,’” Moreno continued.

Moreno remarked that this kind of statement might “get him in trouble”—and it has.

Former Republican presidential primary candidate Nikki Haley didn’t mince words about Moreno in a post on X Tuesday morning. “Are you trying to lose the election? Asking for a friend,” she wrote.

Ohio’s current Senator Sherrod Brown also posted about Moreno’s off-color comment. “Bernie Moreno thinks he knows better than the 57% of Ohioans who made themselves clear on this issue,” Brown wrote.

In another post, Brown wrote, “Bernie Moreno thinks it’s ‘crazy’ that women want to make their own healthcare decisions.” Sometimes the campaign ads just write themselves.

A spokesperson for Moreno clarified that the Republican wasn’t making a misogynistic claim but, rather, a misogynistic joke.

“Bernie was clearly making a tongue-in-cheek joke about how Sherrod Brown and members of the left-wing media like to pretend that the only issue that matters to women voters is abortion,” Reagan McCarthy wrote in a statement to WMCH.

“Bernie’s view is that women voters care just as much about the economy, rising prices, crime and our open southern border as male voters do, and it’s disgusting that Democrats and their friends in the left-wing media constantly treat all women as if they’re automatically single issue voters on abortion who don’t have other concerns that they vote on,” McCarthy added.

By his own spokesperson’s definition, Moreno is pretty disgusting.

A former aide in Donald Trump’s presidential administration and a senior adviser to Project 2025 is in trouble for sending creepy internet messages to teenagers.

John McEntee, who also co-founded the conservative dating app The Right Stuff, sent messages to multiple young women offering in some cases to give them free trips to Los Angeles and making sexual advances, Wired reports. The app’s sole investor is right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, and it has been criticized for its mostly male user base.

One of the women, Grace Carter, said McEntee reached out to her through Instagram in October last year when she was an 18-year-old freshman at North Carolina State University. McEntee used the business account of The Right Stuff to message Carter, asking if she wanted free merchandise.

Initially, Carter was interested in a free hoodie but didn’t know much about the app, and didn’t know she was corresponding with McEntee. He introduced himself as John and gave Carter a southern California phone number to message him at, which a Wired reporter recognized as one that McEntee has used in the past. Carter doesn’t know how or why McEntee decided to reach out.

“I actually have no idea how he found me,” Carter told Wired. “Based on the other accounts I follow and things I post, it’s very leftist. So I was surprised when he found me.”

Carter didn’t use McEntee’s number, although she accepted his offer of a free hoodie. Despite the fact that she rarely answered his messages, he offered to fly her and one of her friends to Los Angeles. She responded in a sort of “trolling” way to see if he’d actually follow through on the free trip, but the conversation fizzled out when Carter decided not to visit him.

Later, McEntee’s views on reproductive rights would provoke Carter’s ire. After the September 10 presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris, McEntee posted a video on TikTok asking, “Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned? Don’t hold your breath.”

Carter was incensed, and posted her own video to TikTok sharing her interactions with McEntee. Soon she began receiving messages from other women who said they had similar experiences with the conservative operative.

The publication spoke to one of those women, who asked to remain anonymous. Also aged 18, she said that McEntee reached out to her on The Right Stuff’s app before moving to text messages, using the same southern California phone number he sent to Carter. Over text, he sent her clearly identifiable selfies and began mentioning explicit sexual acts that made her uncomfortable, and encouraged her to come to California.

“It was very sexual from day one,” she said. “He kept making comments about my age and how hot it would be to sleep with someone who was my age.”

McEntee had a reputation while working in the White House for hiring young, attractive women, and could very well have been trying to pursue women through the dating app. He joined the Project 2025 team as a senior adviser in May 2023, raising the question of whether his apparent liberalism on sex coexists with the manifesto’s puritanical recommendations. But conservatives have historically been willing to let that slide.

CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash have both had to answer for spreading misinformation about Representative Rashida Tlaib.

During an interview with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Sunday, Tapper asked if she had any response to Tlaib’s “suggestion” that state Attorney General Dana Nessel was seeking strong charges against pro-Palestinian student protesters “because she’s Jewish.”

The only problem is, Tlaib never said anything of the sort.

Steve Neavling of the Detroit Metro Times, who wrote the article that Tapper was citing, published a fact-check on Monday. “Tlaib never once mentioned Nessel’s religion or Judaism. But Metro Times pointed out in the story that Nessel is Jewish, and that appears to be the spark that led to the false claims,” Neavling wrote.

In an interview with the Detroit Metro Times, Tlaib did not mention or even refer to Nessel’s Jewishness. Instead, she spoke about systemic anti-Palestinian bigotry. Some, like Nessel, have interpreted Tlaib’s words about widespread discrimination against her own community as coded antisemitic language.

Despite Neavling’s clarification, the false claim continued to spread. Jewish Insider picked up the story Sunday and wrote, “Tlaib has also claimed that Nessel is only charging the protesters because she’s Jewish,” without including any actual quote. The language in the article has since been changed from “claimed” to “suggested,” but its divorce from reality remains the same.

CNN’s Bash used footage of Tapper speaking to Whitmer about Tlaib as part of a segment Monday about antisemitism “from both ends of the political spectrum.” Bash claimed that Whitmer had “sidestepped calling it out” because Tlaib was a member of her same party—not because it had never actually happened.

Both Tapper and Bash posted clips of their stories on social media, further boosting the claim. Whitmer did eventually make a statement about the nonincident, without referring to Tlaib specifically, which Tapper also shared, further adding fuel to the fire.

Finally, Tapper spoke with Nessel later Monday and claimed that he simply “misspoke” on Sunday.

“I should note that I misspoke yesterday when asking a follow-up of Governor Whitmer who I asked about this. I was trying to characterize your views of Tlaib’s comments,” Tapper said to Nessel. It appeared, however, that Tapper had plainly presented his own characterization of Tlaib’s statement. Tapper then allowed Nessel to repeat her interpretation of Tlaib’s statement.

“What do you make of those today noting that Congresswoman Tlaib never explicitly said your bias was because of your religion and so it’s unfair for you to make that allegation?” he asked.

Nessel replied saying that Tlaib was “well-known for making inflammatory and incendiary remarks that are antisemitic in nature.”

“I think it’s very clear to everybody exactly what she’s saying,” Nessel said.

Bash also offered “clarification” during her show Tuesday. “Tlaib accused Nessel of ‘biases,’” Bash said, now including Tlaib’s full quote: “But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.

“Now, Tlaib did not reference Nessel’s Jewish identity. Her office has not responded to our request for clarity,” Bash said, attempting to place the onus on Tlaib for the confusion she and her colleague had wrought.

“Her allies insist that’s not what she meant,” Bash said, but offered no further explanation into Tlaib’s comment. “But Nessel still says she believes it’s antisemitic.” Bash then referred to Nessel’s comments on the show the night before.

Judge Tanya Chutkan is blowing past Donald Trump’s efforts to waylay his January 6 trial schedule, deciding on Tuesday that special counsel Jack Smith will be allowed to move forward with a proposal to submit a 180-page brief of evidence related to the case.

Trump’s legal team, which includes Todd Blanche and John Lauro, have continually argued in recent weeks that such a brief would be “incredibly unfair” to Trump so close to the election. But Chutkan’s latest ruling plainly rejects that line of thinking, determining that the matter of the election is irrelevant to the case’s timeline, and that Trump’s legal team had failed to follow the proper procedures in order to legitimately reconsider the schedule.

“For the second time in a week, Defendant urges reconsideration of the current pretrial schedule in a brief intended to respond to a separate issue, and without actually filing a motion to that effect,” Chutkan wrote. “The court has already addressed the scheduling objections Defendant raised when he was given an opportunity to do so.”

According to the judge, Smith’s brief would also resolve issues pertaining to the lingering issues of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling expanding presidential immunity “at the earliest possible stages” of the trial. “That is reason enough to grant the present motion,” Chutkan wrote.

Smith filed a superseding indictment against Trump in August. The pared-down indictment largely focuses on Trump’s private and non-official actions, since the Supreme Court granted the former president broad immunity for official acts, thereby nixing them as evidence.

The case hinges on the allegation that Trump knew he had lost the election but still tried to subvert the results, as proven by conversations he had with then-Vice President Mike Pence and his lawyers. Admissions by Trump from earlier this month—including that he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden “by a whisker”—could further damn his chances at trial.

“Allowing a brief from the Government is not ‘contrary to law procedure, and custom,’ as Defendant claims,” Chutkan continued. “It is simply how litigation works.”

Trump’s attorneys had attempted to preempt the brief by describing it as a “180-page false hit piece” and mocked the idea that the document would be of “great assistance” to the court, reported The Hill.

“The requested 180-page brief would be tantamount to a premature and improper Special Counsel report,” Trump’s legal team said.

After weeks of being demonized by Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and their allies on the right, members of the Haitian community are taking legal action against the former president and his running mate.

The Haitian Bridge Alliance, an immigration-focused nonprofit organization, filed an affidavit Tuesday in Clark County Municipal Court in Ohio asking for charges to be filed against Trump and Vance for spreading “harmful lies” against Haitian immigrants in the state, specifically in Springfield. Ohio law allows for citizens to file affidavits for criminal offenses.

In the affidavit, the group asked a judge to find probable cause to charge Trump and Vance with making false alarms, aggravated menacing, disrupting public services, and telecommunications harassment, alleging that “at every turn,” the pair were told that the racist narrative of Haitians killing and eating pets, ducks, and geese was false. The affidavit cited Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, Springfield’s city manager, local residents, and the press all pointing out the rumor’s falsehood. 

“Trump knew his statements about Springfield’s Haitian community were false and likely to cause a public inconvenience and alarm. He knew because his and Vance’s words were already causing public inconvenience and alarm, as expressed by the mayor and the governor,” the affidavit said.

The former president and Ohio’s junior senator have attempted to use the false rumor for political advantage, with Trump using it to boost his plan for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants despite the fact that Springfield’s Haitians are in the U.S. legally. Vance hasn’t been any better, saying that “if I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

But the lies have consequences, as the Haitian Bridge Alliance’s legal filing points out: Springfield has received violent threats to its schools, hospitals, and government buildings, and the town canceled its annual CultureFest. Unfortunately, recent history shows that actually holding Trump accountable is a near-impossible task. Whatever this legal filing accomplishes, perhaps it will at least discredit Trump and Vance for bringing unwanted attention to a small town that actually asked the immigrants to come and boost its fading economy.

Donald Trump’s speech went completely off the rails during a campaign rally in Savannah, Georgia, Tuesday.

Trump lurched over the podium as he sped through several different topics, dispensing falsehoods at an event that was intended to be about the economy. To be sure, Trump did talk about his tariffs, saying, “The word tariff properly used is a beautiful word. One of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard. It’s music to my ears.”

As Trump continued, he appeared to be out of it, misspeaking several times.

“We did so much! We gave you—before—the greatest, the biggest tax hikes in the history of our country,” Trump boasted. In reality, the former president installed a series of tax cuts that mostly benefited the country’s top one percent of earners.

Later, Trump referred to Charlottesville, Virginia, as “Charlottestown.”

Trump spoke so rapidly that, at one point, the Republican nominee appeared to wipe drool from his lip. He went on to claim that California was plagued by “blackouts and brownouts” and experienced one “every 10 seconds,” which was preventing people from using air conditioning during the summer.

Trump seemed particularly animated as he rattled between different outlandish claims.

“I HAVE A CHART, that’s my all time favorite. I love that. Is it around? Is it a—?” Trump wandered away from the podium. Finding no chart, he pretended one was floating behind him and acted out hugging and kissing it, while the audience applauded. “I LOVE that chart. I sleep with that chart, every night I kiss it. I love it.”

He continued to spread disputed claims that a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment building in Aurora, Colorado. “They’re going to take over a lot more than Aurora, they’re going to go through Colorado, take over the whole damn state, unless … I become president,” Trump said, smiling.

Trump also joked that in Springfield, Ohio, Mayor Rob Rue was “looking for interpreters.” When his line fell flat, he repeated it again: “He’s looking all over the, f—interpreters. Because they can’t understand, the language is totally different. What the hell?”

Trump then repeated his baseless claim that Kamala Harris never actually worked at McDonald’s, again offering to try a shift there.

“She lied about McDonald’s. She said, ‘I was a worker in McDonald’s. And I stood over the french fries—.’ I’m going to a McDonald’s over the next two weeks. And I’M GOING TO STAND OVER THE FRENCH FRIES! Because I want to see what her job really wasn’t like,” Trump ranted.

While speaking about Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine, the former president said he doubted anyone could beat Russia. “That’s what they do is, they fight wars. As somebody told me the other day, they beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do, they fight,” Trump said.

As far as using incendiary rhetoric about his opponent goes, Trump began his speech promising that if elected, Harris would “destroy” the country, and ended it after warning that a Harris victory might mean “this could be your last election.”

Despite spending months trying to distance themselves from Project 2025, the top of the Republican presidential ticket seems committed to bringing the Christian nationalist manifesto closer to the White House.

Republican vice presidential pick J.D. Vance has enlisted key allies, including a Project 2025 contributor, in his debate prep sessions ahead of his first face-off against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on October 1, according to CNN.

Monica Crowley, who served as the United States assistant secretary of the Treasury for public affairs in the Trump administration, will assist Vance as a mock moderator this week, according to two unnamed sources that spoke with CNN. Crowley is listed in the Project 2025 policy book as a contributor. Project 2025 describes contributors as people who “generously volunteered their time and effort to assist the authors in the development and writing of the volume’s 30 chapters.”  

Vance has appeared remarkably open to the 920-page, far-right agenda. The Ohio senator has previously applauded Project 2025’s policy goals, telling Newsmax in July that “there are some good ideas in there,” and has advanced ideas for a second Trump administration that align with the project’s details, including overhauling the federal government with thousands of cherry-picked Trump loyalists.

Crowley is reportedly involved with the debate preparations in order to make the mock sessions feel as “real and professional” as possible.

“One of the benefits of doing hostile media nonstop is you become very well-versed in dealing with attacks on your record,” one source with direct knowledge of the preparation told CNN. “We have a lot of confidence in J.D. speaking about policy. The goal is to focus on Walz and his weaknesses.”

Project 2025 has advanced seemingly outrageous policy positions, including dismantling wholesale staples of the executive branch such as the Department of Education. It also proposes revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, banning pornography nationwide, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

On July 5, Trump claimed that he “knew nothing about Project 2025” and had “no idea who is behind it.”

“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

But just Monday night, he made a campaign promise straight out of the Project 2025 playbook: abolishing the Department of Education.

Senator Joe Manchin is retiring at the end of his term, but that won’t stop him from being a Democratic Party pooper all the way through the November election.

On Tuesday, following Vice President Kamala Harris’s announcement that she would do away with the filibuster in order to pass federal abortion protections, Manchin said this move was a step too far and that he’d rescind his endorsement of Harris for president.

“She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids,” said Manchin, speaking about the 200-year-old Senate rule to CNN. In his rant, Manchin seemed to paint Harris as a threat to democracy, appearing to forget who else is on the ballot.

Manchin said Harris’s plan to end the filibuster in favor of a simple majority vote is enough to make him rescind his support for her as the Democratic candidate. “I’m not endorsing. I think that’s basically something that can destroy our country, and my country is more important to me than any one person or any one person’s ideology.”

He went on to call ending the filibuster “the most horrible thing.” In the real world, perhaps bleeding out in a hospital parking lot is more horrible.

In his time in the Senate, Manchin used his commitment to the filibuster’s 60-vote hurdle to stop critical popular legislation such as voting rights legislation in 2022.

The West Virginia politician who made his millions from fossil fuels and recently registered as an independent also took the chance to get another jab in at the vice president when asked about her past positions on the filibuster. “Well, she said she supported banning fracking too, and she changed that. I was hoping she would change this,” said Manchin.

Kamala Harris has a plan for restoring abortion rights as they existed under Roe v. Wade.

On Tuesday, Vice President Harris said she would support eliminating the Senate filibuster in order to bring back federal abortion protections.

“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio.

Harris made clear that she supports averting the usual 60-vote threshold in the Senate and using 51 votes to put reproductive rights back into law “for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”

This comes after Senator Bernie Sanders, who previously had stood strong in support of the filibuster, said earlier this month that he would make an exception to the rule to pass abortion rights. In August, Senator Chuck Schumer suggested that Democrats would try to use the filibuster carve-out after November.

Back in 2022, Joe Biden indicated his support for a filibuster carve-out specifically to codify Roe but met roadblocks like Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who previously halted filibuster reform.

Reinstating federal abortion rights could prove to be a salient issue for voters in swing states.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump wants women voters to “no longer be thinking about abortion” as he’ll serve as their “protector.”