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Who in the White House thought it would be a good idea to restart these daily briefings? Was Jared like, "Well, our numbers are in the toilet and a thousand people a day are dying. I know, let's put the old man out there to rant like a lunatic again. It didn't work last time, so obviously we can't lose!"
That boy ain't too bright.
Yesterday's presser was so bonkers that even Fox cut away, sparing its viewers the sight of the Dear Leader threatening to blow up Social Security. Convenient!
Yay, ME!
It started with several minutes of Trump patting himself on the back for the wonderful economic recovery, such as it is.
"No one has ever seen anything like it," he boasted a dozen times, before accusing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of crashing the economy by "holding the American people hostage over money for their radical leftwing agenda that the country doesn't want and won't accept." Because the American economy is simultaneously roaring back to life and also in a pit of despair thanks to Chuck and Nancy.
Oh, so they DO understand how real statistics work!
Before he veered too wildly off script and started chewing the furniture, Trump managed to read a few lines from his prepared remarks, including a reference to excess mortality during the pandemic — i.e. the increase in actual deaths over comparable periods before the virus, which are likely attributable to the virus even in the absence of a diagnosis.
"At the same time, Europe has experienced a 40 percent higher excess mortality than the United States," Trump barbled.
Huh! We were given to understand that the numbers were wildly inflated because "my brother-in-law is a cop in Sandusky, and he says anyone who dies in a car crash is counted as a Covid death if his post-mortem test comes back positive," or some such. And here's the president relying on actual science, albeit just to bash Europe.
Don't worry, though, he was back to his old nonsense later.
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REPORTER: You had graphs about the economics of COVID, but deaths in America are still going up. Whereas in Europe, right now: zero deaths in UK, zero deaths in France.
TRUMP: Yeah. Well, it's going up by cases. If you look at cases. And the cases are going up because we do so much testing and we find it. And I call it "fake-media gold" because we do so much more testing than any other country. And when you do all that testing, you find cases.
If only they wouldn't do so much testing, then 1,486 Americans wouldn't have died yesterday. (Trump called them "fatilities.") That is just science! Why is Donald Trump murdering us with tests?
All Mail In Ballots Are Fraudulent, Except In Florida
Yeah, he was playing the hits. But he changed the lyrics up. Hello, New York!
For example, they've asked for a ridiculous $3.5 billion — that's billion — $3.5 billion for universal mail-in voting, a system riddled by fraud and corruption. You just look at what happened with the Carolyn Maloney race. They should do that race over, by the way. I think her opponent is right when he is having fits about that race.
Which he is, but not because of fraud.
I am angry — that the President politicizes the post office, undermines vote by mail, and baselessly conflates the… https: //t.co/GWB65BkGDe
— Suraj Patel #CountEveryVote (@Suraj Patel #CountEveryVote) 1597100427.0
The dispute in NY-12's very close primary was over the postmark date, not the validity, of ballots. But that didn't stop the Liar-in-Chief from casting it as proof that mail-in balloting is rife with fraud and Democrats just want to bail out the post office so they can steal the election.
But now the Democrats — they want $3.5 billion, think of it. But now that they're unwilling to approve a bill that gives all of that money — of course, we would never approve an amount like that. And they also want $25 billion additional for the Post Office, Steve. Twenty-five billion for the Post Office, so the Post Office can handle this vast amount of ballots that are being sent, at random, all over the place. They have no idea where they're going.
Later in the press conference, when Trump had completely lost the thread, he said ... the exact opposite.
Yeah. I say the Democrats are sabotaging the Post Office because they're not approving $25 billion that was requested. So they're sabotaging the Post Office, and they're not allowing the Post Office to function properly, and they're certainly not allowing universal mail-in votes if — when they do that.
But equally importantly, they're not allowing $3.5 billion in funds to do voting that they'd like to do. Therefore all of this — and all of the tremendous mistakes that were made with regard to mail-in voting — all of these tremendous mistakes, you can't even — you can't even do it.
Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.
How Is Social Security Funded Again?
After falsely taking credit for ending evictions via executive order — "They are not going to be evicted. And those letters have already been sent out, Steve, so you'll make sure of that." — Trump doubled down on his promise to tank Social Security and Medicare by doing away with the payroll tax altogether.
And the payroll tax — we'll be terminating the payroll tax after I, hopefully, get elected. We'll be terminating the payroll tax, so that will mean anywhere from $5,000 to even more per family, and also great for businesses and great for jobs. A lot of people will be very happy to hear that. A lot of the great — certainly, conservative economists will be great to have — they think that's the greatest thing we can do. That's better than the payments; that's better than anything else.
Unlike Joe Biden, who will destroy Social Security "because we will have a stock market crash the likes of which you've never seen." Everyone thinks Social Security is funded by a 6.2 percent tax on the first $137,700 of earnings. But President Bigly Brain knows it comes from STOCK MARKET.
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REPORTER: If you permanently rescind the payroll tax, how do you pay for Social Security?
TRUMP: We're taking it out of the General Fund. And what we'll do —
REPORTER: But that would incur huge deficits.
TRUMP: Yeah, what we'll be doing is, if we do that, we'll get it approved, in that case, by Congress. And we'll take the money from other places, other than — we will not take it from Social Security in any way shape or form.
REPORTER: How do you fund it from the General Fund, when the General Fund just incurred a debt of $2.8 trillion?
TRUMP: You're right, but we're going to have tremendous growth. We have tremendous growth. You take a look at what's happening here.
And if that argument sounds familiar, it's the same one they used to justify their stupid tax cut. Handing billions of dollars over to the country's richest people was going to pay for itself by spurring amazing growth. Except in reality it just blew a trillion dollar hole in the deficit. But this time let's bet the social safety net on it!
A New Character
Hooray! Donald Trump has finally found a medical professional to tell him what he wants to hear. Sure, he's not an epidemiologist. Or an infectious disease specialist. Or even a primary care doctor. He's actually a radiologist. But he's willing to go on Fox and say children "have no risk for serious illness" and "they're not significant spreaders," so that's good enough.
Trump is done with Fauci and Birx and their annoying evidence-based warnings. Meet Dr. Scott Atlas, "A man who has the respect of everybody — he's highly respected by me and anybody on this subject. He's just the expert."
He's literally a guy who reads slides for a living, but okay.
"Dr. Scott Atlas is here from Stanford, and he's been working with us for a period of time. And I thought it would be great — he was saying things to me the other day. I said it would be great if you could tell that to the media."
Hi, Scott!
Donald Trump Is Giving You Money!
Hey, remember that useless order he signed trying to coerce the states into ponying up cash so he could hand out checks for five weeks or something?
And this is every week. Every week, you get a check — or a month, or bi-weekly. This is a major amount of money that you're getting directly. So it's really — you know, it's a very big number. It's very substantial number. And this is — don't forget, this is in addition to the — to the $400. And this is a big number.
Sun's over the yard arm somewhere. Probably at the White House.
Come On Chanel, Bring the Crazy!
This literally happened, courtesy of Trump's favorite batshit One America News "reporter" Chanel Rion:
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OAN REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to highlight a kind of odd situation. In the last hour or so, if you Googled "Antifa.com," it would take you straight to Joe Biden's website, his official campaign website. Odd situation. We don't know who's behind that. But it raises an interesting leadership question: Should Joe Biden, the Democrat Party, Kamala Harris — should they publicly denounce the Antifa as a — as a domestic terrorist organization?
TRUMP: They should. I think they're afraid to. It's — in my book, it's a virtually apart of their campaign: Antifa. The Democrats act like, "Gee, I don't know exactly what that is." Take a look at Portland. Take a look at any place you want to take a look at, and they're all over the place. They were here. We put on a 10-year prison sentence if you knocked down any statues, two months ago. And since then, we haven't seen much of them.
Time For Some Racism!
That's a joke, it's always time for racism in the Trump White House. Here's a question about that insane tweet threatening that Cory Booker will bring an "invasion" of low income housing to the suburbs if Biden wins in November.
Q: What do you mean by invasion into suburbs if Joe Biden is elected? Trump: "They're going to be opening up are… https://t.co/vCdsWNK6Ok
— Pod Save America (@Pod Save America) 1597274898.0
REPORTER: What exactly do you mean by "invasion"?
TRUMP: What I mean is people are going to be come — they are going to be opening up areas of your neighborhood — which they're doing, and now they're going to do — they wanted to expand it. And they will expand it. If, for any reason — they're going to, in my opinion, destroy suburbia.
And just so you understand, 30 percent-plus of the people living in suburbia are minorities. African American, Asian American, Hispanic American — they're minorities. Thirty percent. The number is even higher, it's — they say 35, but I like to cut it a little bit lower. You know why? That way I can never get myself in too much trouble with the fake news. But 30 percent-plus are minorities living in suburbia.
And when they go in and they want to change zoning so that you have lots of problems, where they want to build low-income housing — you want something where people can aspire to be there, not something where it gets hurt badly. And that's what happens.
So, with suburban women, suburban men, I think they feel very strongly about what I'm doing. It's a very — I mean, it's a very fair question. It's a very important question. But they fought all their lives to be there, and then all of a sudden, they have — something happened that changes their life and changes what they fought for, for so many years.
Keep out, ya dirty poors!
Anyway, Don't Vote for Kamala Because She's a Liar
Oh, yes he did!
I think that's probably one of the reasons she was a terrible candidate and was forced to leave the race — because she got her facts wrong. You know she's very bad on facts. She is very weak on facts.
Twice.
And she — I read today that she's very short on facts. She — I think she's going to be a big failure. And I think — I look forward to the debate between her and Mike Pence, because I think he'll do even better against her than he did about — against Senator Kaine, which was a total wipeout. So we'll see how it all works out.
Cool, cool.
Good press conference, Grandpa MouthWords! We bet you're winning in the polls now!
[ Transcript ]
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President Bigly Brain's Batsh*t Presser Went Lil' Bit Off The Rails Yesterday
Trip hazzard?
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