Trump’s Surreal Musical Town Hall Detour Has Everyone Confused

Donald Trump ended his town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, early Monday night and bizarrely made everyone watch him listen to music for nearly 40 minutes onstage.

Trump concluded the event after a few questions and a couple of medical emergencies in the crowd, despite telling his supporters that he would take more questions. Operatic music then started playing as Trump stood onstage, swaying and occasionally pretending to conduct the music.

The event bizarrely went on with Trump standing awkwardly onstage as “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” played. The crowd seemed to be either sitting and waiting for something else, or they began to sway like they were at a concert. Trump then said he wanted to take more questions but changed his mind and asked for “YMCA” to be played, “nice and loud,” to wrap up the event.

But strangely, the event didn’t end there. Trump continued to stay onstage as what seemed to be his campaign playlist kept playing, running through songs like “Hallelujah,” “Nothing Compares 2 U,” “Rich Men North of Richmond,” and “November Rain.” Then finally, he gave South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem a kiss and stepped offstage.

It’s the latest, and strangest, example of Trump showing clear signs of mental decline, even as he insists otherwise. Just over a week ago at a rally, he struggled to pronounce words like “Midwestern” and “evangelicals,” and compared himself to a fly. His speech patterns and alertness seem to have gotten worse, with cognitive experts seeing compelling evidence that he is much less alert now.

While the media is finally starting to give the issue attention, it remains to be seen if Monday’s bizarre rally will be framed correctly. The Republican presidential nominee is not well, but so far, news coverage seems to ignore all of the clear warning signs.

In the swing state of Georgia, a judge has ruled that election officials cannot refuse to certify election results.

In the groundbreaking ruling on Monday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney stated that “certifying election results … is mandatory.”

“No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.”

Obviously, the judge noted, county election officials have the duty to “investigate concerns about miscounts.”  But otherwise, election officials have a duty to certify the results no later than 5 p.m. on the Monday following the election.

The ruling aims to put a stop to any unnecessary delay or holdup thanks to election deniers. Fulton County was the epicenter of Donald Trump’s 2020 scheme to overturn the election. 

McBurney’s ruling came after Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, challenged her duty to certify election results. Legal challenges like this one have played an important role in the GOP’s “election integrity” efforts going into November, as election deniers are filing lawsuits across the country to change election procedures.

“If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so—because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud—refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” wrote the judge.

Earlier this year, Fulton County was given an independent election monitor in response to the issues that arose during the 2020 presidential election. At least 19 county election officials, most Republican, have voted not to certify election results since then, according to an investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Trump has actively cheered on these officials.

This ruling has thrown a wrench in efforts to suppress election results in the state in November. Another similar ruling is still pending in a separate case filed by state and national Democrats.

Donald Trump can’t seem to handle sharing the limelight with his Democratic opponent.

The Republican presidential nominee is still obsessing about Vice President Kamala Harris’s media appearances more than a week after she lured millions of Americans to CBS with her traditional preelection 60 Minutes interview—something that Trump practically chickened out of over the network’s intent to fact-check.

“I’ve done 60 Minutes many times, even back in the good ol’ days when Journalism was respected and legit, but I have never seen a very poor answer being REPLACED by another, totally unrelated answer, in order to save the person great personal and professional embarrassment,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday morning, referring to an instance in which the legacy show appeared to edit one of her answers on Israel.

“What 60 Minutes did in doing this was Election Interference and Fraud. It is the worst and most blatant scandal in Broadcast History, and will not be soon forgotten. Just watch!”

A few hours before, very late Monday night, Trump attempted to rewrite recent history in another portion of his digital tirade. He claimed that Harris had rejected a potential second presidential debate when, in truth, Trump aggressively backed out of going toe-to-toe with the vice president again after his disastrous performance in the first round—something that alarmed Republican donors.

But Trump’s rant featured some definitively weird turns, as well. In a post made past midnight, Trump claimed that Harris had made “desperate requests” for his medical records, specifically about his cholesterol, which he promised was “flawless.” He then proceeded to argue that he had, in turn, seen Harris’s health report.

“However, I have just seen Kamala’s Report,” he wrote, “and it is not good. According to her Doctor’s Report, she suffers from ‘urticaria,’ defined as ‘a rash of round, red welts on the skin that itch intensely, sometimes with dangerous swelling.’ She also has ‘allergic rhinitis and allergic conjunctivitis,’ a very messy and dangerous situation,” Trump wrote about Harris’s allergies.

But of course, the MAGA politico couldn’t let the mention slip without circling back to the prime-time interview Harris got under her belt that he couldn’t bring himself to do.

“These are deeply serious conditions that clearly impact her functioning,” Trump said. “Maybe that is why she can’t answer even the simplest of questions asked by 60 Minutes, and others. What is this all about? I don’t have these problems.”

JD Vance credited Donald Trump for his family being able to get off of Medicaid and onto private health insurance, at the vice presidential debate earlier this month. But he isn’t telling the whole story: that it was due to Obamacare.

Vance’s mother was able to buy private insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplace, run by Ohio, after overcoming substance abuse, becoming financially stable, and earning too much to stay on Medicaid. At the debate, Vance was also referring to a cousin in Florida who got private insurance through the state marketplace, a campaign spokesperson told The Washington Post.

Vance said that Trump fixed a lot of issues with the ACA after Republicans failed to repeal the bill early in his presidency. But this belies the fact that Vance’s family members reaped the benefits of the ACA despite Trump and the rest of the GOP repeatedly attempting to undermine, and then remove, it.

If Trump had been successful, the ACA and its marketplaces would not exist in their current form, if at all, said Andrew Sprung, an independent health analyst, to The Washington Post.

“If any Vance family members transitioned to the marketplace because they earned out of Medicaid, they should be grateful that Trump and Republicans in Congress failed to repeal and replace the marketplace with an alternative that would have provided far less affordable coverage,” Sprung said.

Vance’s current praise of Trump also goes against what he was saying in 2017, when the then president and Republicans in Congress were trying to repeal and replace the bill. Back then, Vance said that Republicans’ proposals would hurt low-income Americans.

“The ‘full repeal’ bill is nothing of the sort—it preserves the regulatory structure of Obamacare, but withdraws its supports for the poor,” Vance wrote in a column for The New York Times seven years ago.

Vance’s health care proposals, like Trump’s,  essentially bring back health insurance companies’ ability to charge more for preexisting conditions. This would hurt the same low-income Americans Vance was supposedly concerned about in 2017, and stick older Americans with those conditions with a higher bill, and that could include Vance’s family members.

Elon Musk’s super PAC has already hit a major bump in the road in its canvassing operations for Donald Trump.

A glitchy door-knocking app means Musk’s America PAC is paying canvassers, with no way to verify that the volunteers are actually getting the word out about Trump.

America PAC is aiming to turn out at least 800,000 voters in swing states to support Trump this November. But the Campaign Sidekick app used by Trump and Musk’s canvassers is plagued by design problems and glitches.

As The Guardian reported, the app requires enough internet to be able to stream 4K video. As door knockers often do their routes in isolated rural locations, that internet speed is not available. The PAC is then forced to rely on “offline walkbooks” to make sure the volunteers are completing their routes. The only problem? Those walkbooks have no geolocation and don’t always upload properly, making it impossible to track the canvassing efforts.

“Maybe Elon Musk can give his canvassers a Starlink,” one America PAC political operative joked to The Guardian.

Uniquely in this campaign, canvassers are paid by the door. This gives people a way to hack the system. With no geolocator, canvassers can operate with little supervision, “speed-running” through their list or just playing hooky. Republicans have struggled with this in the past, with instances of volunteers falsifying data and just hanging out in a casino.

As opposed to Musk’s other functionality failures—like X’s buggy issues and Teslas bursting into flame—this particular Elon fail may actually give Democrats something to smile about. And though it may seem like a niche issue, Musk’s America PAC has essentially hijacked Trump’s door-knocking outreach operations, meaning that issues with the canvassing operation could have real implications on Trump’s outreach in swing states and on Musk’s chances to prove himself worthy to Trump.

Trump’s co-campaign chief Chris LaCivita, of course, denied there was any issue. “Our canvassing apps work fine, and we’ve invested in new technology this cycle that is unmatched in politics to supplement our efforts. This is a clear hit job from a failed vendor who we’ll be sure to name and shame as soon as we finish winning this campaign.”

MAGA Republicans have begun touting the arrest of an armed man outside Donald Trump’s rally Saturday as a “thwarted” third assassination attempt, but federal investigators said that there was no indication that the man was there to hurt the Republican presidential nominee. In fact, the man said he was a Trump fan. 

Vem Miller, a 49-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada, resident, was arrested outside Trump’s disastrous rally in Coachella, California, after he was found to be carrying two unregistered firearms, ammunition, and several fake passports, according to the Associated Press. He was also driving an unregistered black SUV with a fake license plate, and carried fake press credentials. 

CBS’s Scott McFarlane reported Monday that authorities don’t believe Trump was in any danger from Miller. “A federal law enforcement source tells CBS News there is no indication that this was an assassination attempt,” McFarlane said. 

“In a statement to CBS News, Miller calls the allegations ‘a bunch of lies’ and said police made a mistake,” McFarlane said. “In a video he posted overnight, Miller says he’s a staunch support of the former president, has been active in helping him get reelected, and was invited to the rally.”

In a 75-minute video statement, Miller said he had received a special invitation from the Republican Party of Nevada to attend the event, and said he had been to “countless” Trump events before that. Miller claimed that he’d spoken to Don Jr. and Eric Trump, knew many people within the Trump family, and had even met Trump multiple times, according to Newsweek.  

The validity of Miller’s statements is not yet determined, but his remarks did not seem to betray any intent to harm the Republican presidential nominee. 

It seems that MAGA acolytes are running with their own story. 

“A third would-be assassin was caught yesterday with a fake VIP/press pass and loaded weapons trying to get into President Trump’s Coachella rally,” wrote Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna in a post on X Sunday. “This needs to stop. Please join me in praying for President Trump.”

She added a screenshot of a New York Post headline that described a “Third Trump assassination thwarted.”

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene also got in on the thoughts and prayers. “Yesterday a man in possession of multiple firearms was arrested outside the Coachella rally. Pray for President Trump, his family, and the entire Trump Team. This appears to be a thwarted third assassination attempt,” Greene wrote in a post on X Sunday. 

A Michigan Republican listed the wrong election date in an ad aimed at Black voters, according to a legal complaint filed on Sunday.

Tom Barrett, who is running for Congress in Michigan’s 7th congressional district, placed an ad in the October 2 issue of the Michigan Bulletin, a Black-owned weekly publication based in Lansing. The ad boldly stated: “On November 6 VOTE FOR TOM BARRETT.” The problem is that the election is on November 5.

In response, the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus filed a legal complaint with the state attorney general, accusing Barrett’s campaign of trying to hurt Black voter turnout with the ad. The group says that such efforts are illegal in Michigan, where purposefully spreading misinformation about the election process to stop people from voting is a crime.

“At best, Tom Barrett and his Campaign have committed a shocking oversight which will undoubtedly lead to confusion by Black voters in Lansing,” the legal filing states. “And, at worst, this ad could be part of an intentional strategy to ‘deter’ Black voters by deceiving them into showing up to vote on the day after the 2024 election.”

The caucus’s complaint calls for investigations not only from Michigan’s attorney general but also from a local county prosecutor. In response, Barrett’s campaign claims that the wrong date was just a “proofing error” and didn’t have any negative intent, according to spokesperson Jason Roe. He noted that the campaign sent mailers to Black voters on October 2 and 9 with the correct election date.

“Our campaign has been committed to outreach to the Black community and Black leaders because it is important to Senator Barrett that every community be heard in this election,” Roe told The Washington Post in a statement. “The goal is to earn more support from Black voters.”

But as of Monday, 12 days after the initial error, the campaign had yet to publish a correction. Roe said that the next issue of the Bulletin will contain an ad with November 5 as the date. But the caucus is not convinced.

“It strains credulity that this was a simple mistake,” said the caucus’s legal filing. “Tom Barrett and his Campaign placed two nearly identical ads in two different newspapers within a week of each other. The ad placed in the newspaper read predominantly by Black voters has the wrong election date; while the ad placed in the newspaper not read predominantly by Black voters has the correct election date.”

There’s a long history of Republicans and conservatives promoting misinformation in attempts to depress Black voter turnout. In 2020, several Facebook ads targeted Black and Latino voters with various false claims about President Biden and Black Lives Matter. Robocalls have in years past even told Black voters to stay home, claiming that a Democratic victory was assured.

A report in June from nonprofit Onyx Impact, which fights disinformation among Black Americans, said that 40 million Americans could regularly be targeted and fed disinformation within Black online spaces as the election nears. With November 5 only weeks away, bad actors could be targeting voters everywhere to cause chaos.

Donald Trump’s campaign has begun raising money for hurricane relief—but it’s not exactly clear how that money will be used.

Two weeks ago, the Trump campaign created a GoFundMe “as an official response for MAGA supporters to offer their financial assistance to their fellow Americans impacted by Hurricane Helene,” according to the fundraiser website.

A few days after the page went live, it was updated with a list of the charities that would receive the MAGA funds.

Fitting with Trump’s smears against federal relief efforts, three of the four charities listed—Samaritan’s Purse, Water Mission, and Mtn2Sea Ministries—are Christian or Evangelical NGOs. The fourth charity listed is the “Clinch Foundation,” which is likely the Clinch Memorial Hospital’s Foundation in Valdosta, Georgia.

The page did not, however, say how the campaign planned to disburse funds from the Trump campaign’s pot—more than $7.7 million as of Monday. The fundraiser has received donations of $500,000 each from Republican megadonors Steve and Andrea Wynn and former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler.

While some of these charities have already received initial funds from the Trump campaign, it’s not clear how much has already been or will be disbursed.

Only Mtn2Sea Ministries has reported just how much it received, sharing that it got $25,000 from funds raised by Trump’s GoFundMe, in a Facebook post from the organization last week. “This is the only funds we expect to [receive] from this GoFundMe account and are very grateful for it to help us serve,” the post read.

So, where exactly is the other $7.65 million going? It’s still entirely unclear.

The GoFundMe’s latest update said simply, “We have made an initial disbursement and will continue providing more funds as support continues to come in.”

Late last month, when Samaritan’s Purse delivered supplies to Valdosta, Georgia, Trump promptly took credit for providing the “truckloads” of aid. In a less publicized moment of his speech, Trump revealed that the supplies had been provided by “Franklin’s incredible organization,” referring to Franklin Graham, the president of Samaritan’s Purse.

Samaritan’s Purse spokesperson Gabrielle Bouquet told the Associated Press that the organization was grateful for Trump’s “steadfast support of the work we do in Jesus’ name,” but she declined to say just how much the former president’s campaign fundraiser has contributed. Water Mission also confirmed that it had received funds but did not specify how much, according to the AP.

Trump previously used GoFundMe to raise money following his attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, in June. A spokesperson for GoFundMe told the AP that the majority of those funds had already been disbursed, mostly to the families of those injured and killed at the rally.

While Trump’s use of the crowdfunding site does not violate any campaign finance laws, it is unorthodox. “It’s pretty unusual and actually quite odd,” campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel told the AP.

Trump’s choice of subject is also strange, according to Kappel, who said political candidates often donate campaign funds to IRS-approved nonprofits.

Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said that the Republican presidential nominee wanted to “help find a way for his supporters to give as much direct support as they can.”

Meanwhile, Trump has claimed to have donated $25 million of his own money to hurricane relief, but there is currently no actual evidence he did, according to Snopes.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s editorial board endorsed Hawley’s Democratic challenger, Lucas Kunce, on Sunday, calling Hawley the “worst sitting senator in America right now.” The Missouri newspaper of record said that Hawley “stands apparent for his singular role in spurring the violence” on January 6, 2021, referring to the Capitol insurrection.

The editorial pointed out that Hawley was initially the only senator to challenge the 2020 presidential election results, and raised his fist in solidarity with the mob on January 6—only to run away with his fellow members of Congress when that mob breached the Capitol building.

Hawley’s actions on January 6 alone would “merit his expulsion from the Senate,” the editorial said, if not for his other stances: his attempt to halt aid to Ukraine, his lack of accomplishments in the Senate, and his “unparalleled record of demagoguery on the Senate floor, where he endlessly spews faux-populist sound and fury signifying nothing.”

The editorial went on to praise Kunce, an attorney and Marine veteran from a working-class family in Jefferson City, Missouri, noting his moderate political background and support for red-flag gun laws and universal background checks. Kunce has also worked with the Department of Defense negotiating arms control agreements involving Russia and NATO, in contrast to Hawley, who supports abandoning Ukraine in favor of Israel.

Then, on Monday, Hawley came under fire over a Missouri Independent story detailing his use of a private jet to campaign around Missouri, even though he attacked his 2018 opponent, Democrat Claire McCaskill, for doing the same. According to the report, he spent over $132,000 on chartered flights between mid-December and June.

“Missouri’s flyover country for this guy,” Kunce said on Saturday at a rally in Jefferson City, pointing that he instead was campaigning in a minivan with his wife and 16-month-old son.

A self-described Christian nationalist, Hawley seeks to push religious values as law alongside his wife, a lawyer for the extremist legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. Hawley has also mistaken a white nationalist magazine’s words for a Patrick Henry quote, scuttled bills simply to hurt President Biden, and written a bizarre book titled Manhood extolling the virtues of masculinity.

Does Kunce have a chance to unseat Hawley? Currently, the challenger is polling behind the incumbent senator, but now he has the state’s largest newspaper behind him. Kunce will need more than that if he expects to push out the national conservative firebrand in a few weeks.

Ted Cruz is hanging on by a thread in his Texas Senate race, according to internal polling from a GOP super PAC.

A memo from the Senate Leadership Fund obtained by Politico shows serious trouble for Cruz and several other Republicans in competitive Senate races this November. Indeed, the majority of the candidates listed are losing their races.

In his race against Democratic challenger Colin Allred, Cruz is up by only one point according to the super PAC. The document notes that Allred “has been heavily outspending” on television ads.

The Democratic former professional football player has run a noticeably different campaign from Beto O’Rouke’s in 2018, skipping surrogates and large barnstorms and opting for a more moderate approach. Despite running a more centrist campaign, Allred has been buoyed by Democrats’ exceptional fundraising. In the third quarter, Allred raised $30 million to Cruz’s $21 million across three different fundraising accounts. The Senate Leadership Fund noted that increasing GOP outside spending is perhaps the only way to keep Cruz’s lead for the Senate seat. The numbers are so bad that Cruz is often begging for donations in his media appearances.

The other major “trouble-spot” noted in the memo is Nebraska’s Senate seat, where incumbent Republican Senator Deb Fischer is being challenged by  independent candidate and former union president Dan Osborn. The polls are so inconclusive the super PAC said it needs to “assess whether intervention is necessary to protect the seat.”

The polling also shows Republicans majorly trail in swing states like Michigan and Ohio, as well as Maryland by as much as eight points, but the the super PAC still tried to delusionally spin that the “environment is ripe for a GOP win.”