Convicted Felon Donald Trump is insane. The mind is gone. Kevin Scott (KNEWZ) notes:
Former President Donald Trump recently claimed that the debate audience at his showdown with Vice President Kamala Harris "went crazy" for him, per fact-check by Knewz.com.
Critics have been quick to note, however, that there was in fact no audience present for the debate. This was part of the agreed upon rules from both campaigns prior to the debate.
Harris emerged from the debate against Trump with a favorable reception and perceived as the winner by many Americans. Despite her strong performance, polls indicate that her lead over Trump remains slim and largely unchanged following the debate.
"Trump talking about 'the audience' at the debate (where there famously was no audience) is more delusional and unsettling than any moment of Joe Biden misspeaking all year and it’s not close," MSNBC's Chris Hayes wrote online.
And Ewan Palmer (NEWSWEEK) reports:
Donald Trump has lost a "great deal mentally" and can no longer inspire enthusiasm, according to the co-author of the former president's book The Art of The Deal.
Tony Schwartz, a former journalist who is now a vocal critic of Trump, made the claims while speaking to MSNBC's Ari Melber on Thursday.
Schwartz said that Trump is now a "very different man" to the one he knew in the late 1980s when he ghostwrote the bestselling The Art of The Deal. Schwartz added that Trump is also lacking the same cognitive abilities he saw when he "somewhat interacted" with him during the 2016 and 2020 election cycles.
"This is a man who's lost a great deal mentally," Schwartz said. "This notion he is still capable of exciting a crowd, I'm just not sure that I believe, beyond that 20 or 25 percent that are absolutely the core, is true anymore."
He is losing his mind and he is losing his crowds. Eric Garcia (INDEPENDENT) reports:
Two years ago, I paid a visit to Wilmington, North Carolina, a few weeks ahead of the midterm elections, ostensibly to cover the state’s Senate race, but also hear from Donald Trump.
A lot has changed since then.
Then, Trump had endorsed Ted Budd, a backbencher Congressman with no name, to replace Richard Burr, one of the senators who voted to convict Trump for his actions on January 6.
Of course, the rally at the Wilmington Aero Center barely focused on Budd, or any other Republicans for that matter. Instead, he made a dramatic scene after landing before taking the stage and meandering for the better part of an hour and a half.
This came shortly after the FBI had executed a search warrant on his Florida home in Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the classified documents and he faced a new lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James, whom at the rally he dubbed “Peekaboo James,” a non-sensical and likely racist nickname.
Nonetheless, Trump had the crowd in Wilmington enthralled in 2022. Toward the end, he played ominous music as he spoke in an almost sort of prayer that had the crowd completely compelled.
Two years almost to the day, Trump returned to the Aero Center, this time as a candidate. However, Trump seemed much more diminished as he seeks to return to the White House.
To boot, Trump’s overtures seem much more desperate and are a sign that as he struggles to beat Kamala Harris, he does not stand on the same footing he once did.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
A discussion of reproductive rights included Hadley Duvall, an abortion rights advocate who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather when she was 12 – as well as members of the family of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia mother who ProPublica reported died in 2022 from a treatable infection due to delays to her medical care stemming from the state’s restrictive abortion law.
Shanette, Thurman’s mother, spoke publicly about the case for the first time during Thursday’s livestream, saying, “Initially, I did not want the public to know my pain.”
“I wanted to go through in silence, but I realized that it was selfish. I want you to know, Amber was not a statistic, she was loved by a family, a strong family,” she added.
Harris, who is set to travel to Georgia on Friday to deliver remarks on women’s reproductive rights, apologized to Thurman’s family.
“I’m just so sorry,” the vice president said. “And the courage that you all have shown is extraordinary, because also you just learned about how it is that she died. … And Amber’s mom shared with me that the word over and over again in her mind, is preventable. Preventable. That word keeps coming to her.”
Abené Clayton and Lois Beckett (GUARDIAN) also note that section of the conversation:
Also in attendance were the mother and sisters of Amber Nicole Thurman, a woman who died after failing to receive prompt medical care in 2022 when she experienced complications from taking abortion pills, just weeks after Georgia’s abortion ban went into effect. A recent report deemed her the first “preventable” death to be confirmed as a result of Georgia’s ban.
Her family blamed Donald Trump and his supreme court picks for her death. “They just let her die because of some stupid abortion ban. They treated her like she was just another number,” Thurman’s older sister said of the medical professionals she had turned to for help.
“You’re looking at a mother who is broken,” Thurman’s mother said, through tears. “It’s the worst pain that a parent could ever feel. I want you all to know that Amber was not a statistic. She was loved by a strong family and we would have done whatever to get our baby the help that she needed. Women around the world need to know that this was preventable.”
Another powerful moment took place when the issue of school shootings took place. Kamala spoke about how she'd been addressing college students and tech school students this year and would ask, at the start, for a show of hands to determine how many had participated in an active shooting drill? She noted that this wasn't normal and shouldn't be treated as though it was. She spoke of growing up with fire drills and, because she grew up in California, earthquake drills. But shooting drills?
Ebony Davis and Fredreka Schouten (CNN) report:
Harris and the livestream audience also heard from 15-year-old Natalie Griffith, a student from Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, who was shot twice during a campus attack earlier this month.
Natalie, who had a cast on her left arm, was joined by her parents, Marilda and Doug, who demanded more action. “We have a job, that job is to protect our children,” an impassioned Marilda Griffith said. “We have to stop it.”
Harris, who discussed owning a gun during her recent debate with Trump, reiterated Thursday that she believes it is a “false choice” to suggest someone is either in favor of the Second Amendment or wants to take everyone’s guns away.
The parents of Natalie Griffith, a 15-year-old injured in the deadly Apalachee High School shooting earlier this month in Winder, Georgia, spoke. Griffith's mother, Marilda, made an emotional plea for a "change to be made" to address gun violence. Her father, Doug — who noted that he was not a registered Democrat — called for metal detectors to be placed inside schools.
Harris did not explicitly say if she agreed with the call for metal detectors, but said "we just need to apply common sense." She repeated her calls for an assault weapons ban and universal background checks. When Winfrey made note of Harris being a gun owner, as she revealed in prior campaigns and repeated in her debate with Trump, Harris said that "if somebody breaks into my house, they're getting shot."
Doug? Doug's response -- messed up by Aaron Navarro -- was that this was a common sense issue. Kamala, when she spoke of that, noted her agreement with Doug that this was basic and common sense. I don't know whether she thinks metal detectors are part of that approach or not but it does Doug a disservice for CBS to report it that way. And Doug's argument there was that metal detectors weren't always in courthouses but we have them there now, they weren't always in airports but we have them now.
Marilda Griffith spoke about getting a call at work asking if she'd heard about the shooting at her daughter's school. She hadn't. She spoke of how her heart dropped, how she had to rush out of work, how she was praying the whole time and then she can't get near the school and has to walk a few miles to get there because it's blocked off. And the whole time she's living in fear that her daughter's dead.
Natalie, still wearing bandages, was accompanied on either side by her parents, Doug and Marilda. She was visibly fighting back emotions as she described being injured in the school shooting.
"Oprah, before that thing, that video, I was very happy, I still am very happy to be here and to tell my story to tell what happened because it was a terrible thing," she said. "And it should have not... um..." The teen trailed off in emotion and reflection.
Natalie was in an algebra class when the shooting started. She was shot twice.
She pointed to the spots on her arm and wrist where she was shot. She was also grazed across the chest.
"I've had intruder drills and fire drills and stuff," the teen said, but added that they had not yet had one at Apalachee that year. She said she wasn't even sure where to go when it happened.
Marilda noted that her daughter was wounded but she was alive; however, some students and teachers were killed in the shooting. In terms of national outlets, Erica L. Green (NEW YORK TIMES) does a strong job covering this exchange:
Also in the crowd at the forum, held outside Detroit, was Natalie Griffith, a 15-year-old student who was shot twice in algebra class by a classmate during a campus attack on Sept. 4 at Apalachee High School, also in Georgia. Her mother, Marilda Griffith, sobbed telling the story of how that day unfolded.
“The whole world needs to hear that we women, that have our children — we have a job,” Ms. Griffith said. “That job is to protect our children. That job is to protect our nation.”
Ms. Harris agreed, citing the “bone-chilling” sight of a sea of students raising their hands when, on tours across the country, she asks if they have participated in active-shooter drills.
There were many other strong moments. Stream it if you haven't already. This morning, WIRED has posted a Kamala video.
Let's move across the aisle now to find out what's going on in the world of MAGA. Here's Ronny Chieng on THE DAILY SHOW last night.
Yes, Moms for Bigotry and Donald Trump suffered a big loss yesterday when their dream boat Mark Robinson got exposed for the liar he is. Alex Bollinger (LGBTQ NATION) explained yesterday:
Robinson's past antisemitic comments have drawn scrutiny and condemnation.[16][47] Prior to running for lieutenant governor, he frequently made Facebook posts that invoked antisemitic stereotypes and downplayed the harms of Nazism.[48][49] He claimed that the Marvel movie Black Panther was "created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists" that was "only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets" (using a Yiddish word for "black people").[14][13] Robinson also appeared at an interview with fringe pastor Sean Moon, who claimed that he planned to become "king of the United States"; in the interview, Moon claimed that the Rothschild family was one of the "four horsemen of the apocalypse" and promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory of a cabal of Jewish "international bankers" that rule every country's central bank. Robinson endorsed Moon's claim as "exactly right".[47] Robinson's statements, as well as his refusal to apologize for or retract them, drew much concern from the leaders of North Carolina's Jewish community,[16] as well as criticism from the Jewish Democratic Council of America and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).[48] Robinson declined to publicly apologize for any of his remarks, although he said he privately apologized to local Jewish leaders in a meeting in 2021.[48] In 2022, Robinson said that his Facebook post about Black Panther was "the only time I've ever apologized for anything I put on Facebook" and said "I knew the truth of what I was trying to say, but I should have chosen different words."[35]
In October 2023, after Hamas attacked Israel, Robinson said he supported Israel and, when asked about his past antisemitic comments, said "I've never been antisemitic...There have been some Facebook posts that were poorly worded on my part, did not convey my real sentiments, and I have addressed those issues and moved on from those issues."[50] When asked if he apologized, Robinson said, "I apologize for the word — not necessarily for the content, but we apologize for the wording."[50] Robinson's opponents in the gubernatorial election questioned the sincerity of the apology and called his prior statements hate speech and antisemitism.[8][50]
In September 2024, CNN reported that Robinson had allegedly used antisemitic slurs on various porn forums from 2008-2012.[17]
Holocaust denial
In March 2023, more of Robinson's past social-media statements emerged, including Facebook posts appearing to call the figure of 6 million Jews perishing in the Holocaust into question;[49] for example, Robinson wrote: "this foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash,"[7] and "There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the '6 million Jews' they murdered."[49] Both Democrats and Republicans criticized Robinson's statements.[48][7]
Less than 24 hours after CNN published a bombshell report on comments that it said Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, made on a pornographic website, the Democratic National Committee unveiled new advertisements linking him to former President Donald Trump.
The DNC plans to launch a new digital advertisement and nearly a dozen billboards highlighting how Trump has praised Robinson, who is North Carolina's lieutenant governor, according to a source familiar with the matter and a news release by DNC regional press secretary Kenny Palmer. NBC News was the first to report the new ad push.
By linking Trump to Robinson, Democrats hope to cut into Trump's support in the state, which a Democratic presidential candidate has not won since 2008.
I don't think anyone considers Marjorie Taylor Greene a good judge of anything. However, let me note this video. The man involved is, according to MTG, "a man of high character."
Here's MEDIA MATTERS on Mark Robinson:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is reportedly facing calls to drop out of his race due to an impending bombshell story that could torpedo his candidacy. Some of Robinson's biggest supporters have been prominent right-wing media figures, including people Donald Trump Jr., Dan Bongingo, and Charlie Kirk.
Robinson is a right-wing commentator who became lieutenant governor of North Carolina in January 2021. He has a history of toxic remarks, including about women and LGBTQ people.
Media Matters previously uncovered that Robinson claimed in 2018 that Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby were victims of a left-wing “plot” to destroy them for their “so-called sexual crimes.” Robinson also called on his followers to “stand up against” the supposed “plot to build up a climate of fear, to shut people's mouths.” Media Matters also reported that he said mass shootings are “karma” for allowing abortion.
Despite his well-known history of extremist remarks, Robinson has gotten support from numerous Republicans. That list includes former President Donald Trump, who endorsed him by claiming he’s “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
Since Robinson began running for governor last year, numerous right-wing media figures have endorsed him with strong praise. Here is a look at those remarks prior to today's reporting about Republicans urging him to leave the race.
Donald Trump Jr. said “we need more” people like Robinson who are “not afraid to say” what they’re thinking. During his Rumble show, Trump Jr. said that he likes Robinson and he’s a “good guy, funny guy, not afraid to say what he is thinking, which I think we need more of.”
Eric Trump: “Amazing, amazing, amazing guy. Amazing guy. … Mark is a wonderful person, a wonderful guy. A person I’ve gotten to know very, very well. And I think not only are we going to win the state, I think he’s going to win the state.”
MAGA is shorthand for? Liar.
The star political reporter at the center of the love triangle involving one-time presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and his Curb Your Enthusiasm star wife Cheryl Hines copped to an inappropriate relationship — but has insisted it was all an online fling.
In declaring the relationship was never physical, New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi, 31, admitted that "the nature of some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal" in a statement issued late Thursday night.
Nuzzi said in a statement to The New York Times on Thursday, without elaborating on the exact nature of their relationship, that "some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal" earlier this year.
She said that despite having covered the subject previously she did not report on him directly during this time.
"The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York," she said.
NBC News reached out to Nuzzi overnight for comment.
While neither Nuzzi or New York Magazine named the reporting subject, both CNN and the New York Times have reported that it was Kennedy.
A mutual friend of Junior's had told us earlier in the week about the call that was put in. Was he making a mistake if he endorsed Donald Trump? Yes, the friend told him.
"It was so different from the call a decade ago," he explained. "That time it was him asking if he should marry Cheryl [Hines] and my yes answer got a lot more push back."
Indeed.
Junior raised the issue of Cheryl's name value (not as high as he wanted) and her "horse face" and the dangling boob that was smaller than the other and -- Well, let's leave it there. We don't want to be unnecessarily cruel. Besides we had to jog his memory on the fourth complaint Junior had about Cheryl, he'd forgotten.
We hadn't because Junior
made four calls that time, to four trusted friends, who'd repeated the
story over the years. Three of them didn't think the marriage would
last five years and that Junior would leave her. Fortunately for
Cheryl, with her, he just cheats and, but "she gives him time, [he]
makes it back home." That was from another man he called about whether
or not he should marry Cheryl. When we found out he'd called at least
one about both (whether to marry Cheryl, whether to endorse Donald), we
decided to check and see if he'd called all four.
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Daniel, Me Estás Matando: Tiny Desk Concert4 hours ago
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Mark Robinson gets exposed13 hours ago
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