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‘Major Smash’: Trump ‘Whiffs’ When Asked for Specifics on Vow to Bring Down Prices
Donald Trump was asked twice to share specifics on his economic plans, but offered none. Instead, the Republican presidential nominee who recently helped launch his family’s new cryptocurrency venture attacked his Democratic opponent and rambled about the Presidents of Russia and China, while vowing to cut the cost of energy without stating how that would happen.
In an interview that aired Sunday on the Sinclair network, which broadcasts under local affiliates of Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC, “Full Measure” host Sharyl Attkisson asked Trump: “What are the specific mechanics of how prices come down? You know, the steps that would be taken in a second term for you?”
Trump began his response by attacking Vice President Harris, saying, “first of all, she can’t do an interview. She could never do this interview because you ask questions like give me a specific answer. She talks about her lawn when she was growing up.”
He continued his attacks before going after President Joe Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, then moving on to oil and geopolitics.
READ MORE: ‘Impulsive and Ill-Informed’: Trump ‘Unfit’ Warn 741 NatSec Leaders Endorsing Harris
“This woman is not equipped to be president,” Trump claimed of Harris (transcript via Attkisson’s “Full Measure” website.) “She’s not equipped to deal with President Xi, who I was very, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars with him and Putin. We had no war with Putin. Remember, and I’m just gonna go off just for this. With Bush, they took a lot. Russia. With Biden, they’re trying to take everything. With Obama, they took a lot. With Trump, Russia took nothing. Just remember that, you know, it’s a little, a little chart. But what happened? And when you look at what took place was so sad, when they took over, they cut the oil way down and oil started going through the roof. It was gonna go to $10 a gallon. It was gonna go to numbers that nobody’s ever seen. And so they went back to the Trump drilling, they said, ‘let it go back’. That was the only good thing. But they stopped because I would be there, but four years later, I would be triple what the number was. Right now they’re just about even where I was. But they only did that because of the fact that they eventually have an election coming up.”
“And you remember at the beginning what happened. That’s one of the reasons that Putin went in because it went to $100 a barrel instead of $40 a barrel. And he could fight all the wars he wants with those kind of numbers, cause he’s a big seller of oil and gas. So what happens is they went back to what I was doing, just said reopen. Just reopen. It wasn’t hard. It’s so crazy what they wanna do. They’re gonna destroy lives. They’re gonna destroy the, what they have done to this country. And especially in the sense of allowing millions and millions of people come in because that’s something, you know, we can fix the gasoline situation and we can fix the, anything.”
Attkisson then asked Trump: “Do prices come down magically because it’s not them?”
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“They come down with energy and they come down with interest rates. We’re gonna get, as I told you, we’re gonna get energy down by 50% in 12 months,” Trump vowed, offered no specifics on how he would do that. “We’re gonna have it. It’s gonna be a major smash on energy. If you look at the energy for, and I’m not just talking about cars, I’m talking about air conditioning, heating your basic energy, operating a bakery, operating any kind of a business, it’s all having to do with energy. That was where they started wrong. When they cut way back on what I did, and again, just so you understand, they then let it go back to where it was, which was very smart thing. Otherwise you would’ve had, I think you would’ve had a depression if you want to know the truth. But energy was rising at a level that nobody had ever seen. And then they said: ‘Go back, go back’. They were telling people: ‘Go back to your wells, go back to drilling, go back to fracking. Do whatever you have to do.’ But if they win the day after, they’re going all the way. They were only doing that because of an election coming up. They’re going all the way. It’s madness. And what they’ve done to our country is mad.”
The White House responded to an NBC News reporter’s post of Trump’s remarks.
“Asked how he’d lower prices, Trump goes on a worryingly incoherent tear about drilling, showing he’s unaware we’re producing record amounts of oil,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. “Not mentioned? His plan for a $4,000 sales tax increase on the average family that even *Republicans* say will worsen inflation.”
NBC News’ Garrett Haake also responded, writing: “Trump whiffs on giving a specific answer here about lowering prices. He currently leads Harris on dealing with the economy by 9 points, according to our new @NBCNews national poll.”
In July, The Guardian described Sinclair as a “TV giant known for rightwing disinformation,” and wrote: “Media analysts say Sinclair, known for anchors reciting script in lockstep, promotes conservative talking points.” Also citing media analysts, The Guardian said Sinclair uses “trusted local news channels to spread disinformation and manipulated video of Joe Biden.”
Last week at a town hall, Trump was asked how he would bring down the cost of food.
He made similar remarks, vowing to cut the price of energy by 50 percent, without explaining how he would do that.
Presidents don’t set the price of gas.
Watch Trump’s town hall remarks below or at this link.
Trump is asked how he’ll bring grocery prices down. He winds up ranting about windmills. pic.twitter.com/knf97EyjJb
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 17, 2024
READ MORE: ‘Where You Been?’: Harris Rips GOP ‘Hypocrites’ Over Abortion in Fiery Speech
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
