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‘Incomprehensible’: Trump Decimated for ‘Word Salad on Crucially Important Policy Question’

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The Biden campaign blasted Donald Trump on Monday after a short clip of the ex-president’s remarks calling for cutting Social Security and Medicare received hundreds of thousands of views, but the full text of his remarks, which include at best inaccurate or misleading claims about inflation and the stock market are raising red flags. Some political and policy experts are saying Trump “has no idea what he’s talking about,” while others are calling them “basically incomprehensible,” a “word salad,” and “gibberish.”

This is the first part of the quote from Donald Trump, posted by NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard, that is getting social media responses like the ones above, but it’s not even half of the “unofficial” CNBC transcript of Trump’s response to the question, “Have you changed your, your outlook on how to handle entitlements Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President?”

TRUMP: “So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement. I know that they’re going to end up weakening social security because the country is weak. And let’s take a look at outside of the stock market, are, we’re going through hell. People are going through hell. If they have and I believe the number is 50%. They say 32 and 33%. I believe we have a cumulative inflation of over 50%, that means people are, you know, they have to make more than 50% more over a fairly short period of time to stay up. They’ve gotten routed. The middle class in our country has been routed and the middle class largely built our country and they have been treated very, very badly with policy.”

“Lots of gibberish,” is how Jim Manley, the leadership aide and communications director to then Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, characterized the above quote.

READ MORE: Trump Praised Hitler While He Was in the White House: Ex-Official

“Trump spent 4 years in office and he still has no idea what he’s talking about, and he still can’t hold a single thought for more than 10 seconds,” observed The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, the international affairs expert and retired U.S. Naval War College professor.

MSNBC political analyst and Bloomberg Opinion Senior Executive Editor Tim O’Brien pointed to Trump’s claim we have “cumulative inflation of over 50%,” and wrote: “No, we don’t.”

University College London Associate Professor in Global Politics Brian Klass said: “This answer doesn’t make any sense. Word salad on a crucially important policy question. And yet this won’t get a big NYT headline or profile on how Trump is confused about how the government works and can’t string a coherent sentence together when asked about what he will do.”

Semafor Washington Bureau Chief Benjy Sarlin: “This is basically incomprehensible but that first line about cutting is going to end up in tons of ads if it’s at all coherent enough to clip.”

Award-winning journalist David S. Bernstein noted, “I cannot fathom a candidate for major federal office, at this stage of the campaign, not having a stock answer—even a transparently stupid one!—on Social Security and Medicare.”

Elizabeth Pancotti, Director, Special Initiatives at the Roosevelt Institute remarked, “we, uh, do not have a cumulative inflation of over 50%.”

Conservative U.S. economic policy analyst James Pethokoukis asked: “Does Trump have even a *very* rough idea of what how big, basic government programs work? How does he think Social Security is ‘managed?'”

READ MORE: Sex Trafficking Survivor Debunks Katie Britt’s Claims in CNN Interview

“The worms are eating his brain,” said political columnist Dick Polman. “Trump on CNBC today, verbatim, discussing the inflation rate: ‘I believe that number is 50 percent. They say 32 and 33 percent. I believe we have cumulative inflation of over 50 percent.’ It’s 3.2 percent.”

Here is rest of Trump’s answer to that one question, unedited, via the CNBC transcript, which is part of the remarks above but was not posted to social media. It includes Trump’s claims about COVID, the economy, America’s energy independence, and more. Many of the remarks are disputable if not false. Nor do they include that Trump shut down the very agency that was designed to offer early warnings on pandemics months before COVID.

TRUMP: “When I was president, I was doing a job, we’re going to start to pay off debt. We were drill baby drill. We were producing oil but we were going at a much higher level oil and gas. We were doing, you know, we were third when I started and when they ended we were one by a longshot and we were very close, we’re energy independence, we’re very close to becoming energy dominant Joe, we’re gonna be dominant so dominant, like double what Saudi Arabia and Russia were doing. And we were on that path. We were gonna be paying down debt. We were doing, we were doing a lot of things and then we got hit with Covid. We did a fantastic job with Covid. But nobody, nobody wins with Covid. I guess China found that out because they also really got hit very hard also, but nobody wins with Covid. And so we had to get to we had to do other things. We had to help. You know, if I didn’t do the expenditures that we didn’t do the kinds of things we did for the economy, we would add in 1929 type depression. And I had to say out in front of it, and we did we did a great job on that and we did with all of the things we’re coming up with Regeneron doing so much else, getting all because you know we had empty when I came in, we had empty, I call them empty cupboards. We had empty shelves, we didn’t have equipment, we didn’t have the gowns, we didn’t have the ventilators. We didn’t have anything. This country wasn’t prepared for a thing like that. And I’m not even blaming anybody in that. Because, you know, when when it came, nobody thought the pandemic would ever happen again. It sounds like an ancient’s problem, not a problem that you’d have you know at that time, you know, in modern, very modern age. It was like an ancient thing. We you know, who, who would ever show I’m not blaming anybody, but we had empty cupboards, and I got them stocked and I got them stocked fast. And we did a great job with it. Never got credit. I got credit for the greatest economy. I got credit for foreign policy. I got credit for knocking out ISIS and not going into wars. But we beat ISIS, but I never got the credit for having done a great job with that.”

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‘Ghoulish and Repugnant’: Congressman Slammed for ‘Joke’ About JFK Assassination and RFK Jr.

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17 hours ago

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May 8, 2024

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Less than one week after being pummeled for praising college students mocking a Black woman by making monkey sounds, a sitting U.S. Congressman is once again being criticized, this time for “joking” about the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, amid news about presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, Republican of Georgia, last week posted a video on the social media site X, which appeared to show college students at the University of Mississippi, “Old Miss,” taunting a Black woman protestor by making money sounds, a longtime racist trope. They also called her “Lizzo,” and chanted, “lock her up.”

Congressman Collins commented on the video, writing: “Ole Miss taking care of business.”

Outrage was strong, coming from social media users and even the White House. The NAACP called for Collins to be investigated by the House Ethics Committee.

“Which part is your favorite, Mike?” asked Fred Wellman, the former executive director of The Lincoln Project. “Is it the white kid acting like a monkey at the black woman or the white security guy acting like she’s a threat? I’m trying to figure out which flavor of racism has you all excited the most?”

READ MORE: Johnson Goes After Nearly Non-Existent Non-Citizen Voting

Collins finally issued a statement on his remarks, but neither apologized nor removed his post, as Popular Information reported.

On Wednesday, the Georgia GOP lawmaker, responded to news that RFK Jr., as The Washington Post reported, had “contracted a parasitic worm that got into his brain years ago and ate a portion of it before dying.”

“You either die a Kennedy with a hole in the brain or live long enough to become a Kennedy with a hole in the brain,” Collins posted to his official government account on X.

Former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), now running for the U.S. Senate, scolded Collins: “TIL [Today I Learned] this is an actual congressman, not a parody account. I’d seen some of the posts and honestly thought it was trying to portray an exaggerated version of an awful congressman.”

READ MORE: ‘Scratch Off the Georgia Trial’: Second Trump Case Likely Delayed Past Election Experts Say

David Simon, the well-known author, journalist, screenwriter, and producer, observed, “There is a vast universe in which we can joke robustly about RFK Jr. asserting a brainworm problem without ever going anywhere near the sick, soulless void where this gutter trash wants to enjoy a laugh.”

Retired Naval Intelligence Officer Travis Akers said, “This is the most disgraceful post I have ever seen from a sitting member of Congress. Absolutely ghoulish and repugnant.”`

Author and well-known political commentator Charlie Sykes wrote simply, “You, sir, are really a sick fuq.”

Journalist Ron Fournier wrote: “Cruelty is the brand.”

Political strategist and mass shooting survivor Parker Krex responded, “Gun violence is never, and should never, be a punchline. Embarrassing.”

READ MORE: ‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley
 

 

 

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Johnson Goes After Nearly Non-Existent Non-Citizen Voting

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20 hours ago

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May 8, 2024

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is promoting new legislation to make it illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections, despite an existing law that does just that.

After his joint press conference last month with ex-president Donald Trump on “election integrity,” the embattled Speaker is teaming up with former top Trump official Stephen Miller, the architect of the previous administration’s family separation policy that led to thousands of immigrant children being ripped apart from their parents and siblings. Other Trump orbit guests present included Cleta Mitchell, Ken Cuccinelli, and Hogan Gidley (full video below).

Johnson, now fending off a small but loud faction of his conference threatening to oust him, on Wednesday held a press event on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to promote his Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.

READ MORE: ‘Scratch Off the Georgia Trial’: Second Trump Case Likely Delayed Past Election Experts Say

“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that’s easily provable. We don’t have that number,” Johnson falsely told reporters.

Commenting on Johnson’s remarks that  “intuitively” we know that “a lot of illegals are voting,” Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, wrote: “It’s already very, very illegal. Many systems in place. Punishment including jail or deportation. That Cleta Mitchell, a conspirator (on ‘find 11,000 votes’ call) & Stephen Miller stood there says it all. It’s the Big Lie in legislative form.”

The Associated Press last month also reported on non-citizen voting.

“There isn’t any indication that noncitizens vote in significant numbers in federal elections or that they will in the future. It’s already a crime for them to do so. And we know it’s not a danger because various states have examined their rolls and found very few noncitizen voters.”

Calling “cases of noncitizens casting ballots…extremely rare,” the AP added: “Those who have looked into these cases say they often involve legal immigrants who mistakenly believe they have the right to vote.”

READ MORE: ‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley

Johnson, standing in front of a “small handful of Republicans,” said his legislation “will prevent” undocumented immigrants from voting, “and if someone tries to do it, it will now be unlawful,” he added, despite a decades-old law that already makes it illegal.

“If a nefarious actor wants to intervene in our elections all they have to do is check a box on a form and sign their name, that’s it, that’s all that’s required,” Johnson continued, while not disclosing known facts.

“It’s a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections,” the Brennan Center for Justice reported last month. “It’s also a crime under every state’s laws. In fact, under federal law, you could face up to five years in prison simply for registering to vote. It’s also a deportable offense for noncitizens to register or vote. And sure, people make bad decisions and commit crimes all the time. But this one is different: by committing the crime, you create a government record of your having committed it. In fact, it’s the creation of the government record — the registration form or the ballot cast — that is the crime. So, you’ve not only exposed yourself to prison time and deportation, you’ve put yourself on the government’s radar, and you’ve handed the government the evidence it needs to put you in prison or deport you. All so you could cast one vote. Who would do such a thing?”

Johnson went on to falsely claim that “Joe Biden has welcomed millions and millions of illegal aliens – we think the number, I believe the number is probably close to at this point 16 million illegals who have come into this country since Joe Biden walked into the Oval Office.”

Claiming there are “sophisticated criminal syndicates and agents of adversarial governments, here, in our borders, and even on humanitarian parole,” Johnson said: “And that means the millions that have been paroled can simply go to their local welfare office or the DMV, and register to vote here.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy director for the American Immigration Council, noted, “multiple state governments have engaged in large-scale efforts in recent years to find evidence of noncitizen voting, and in every single case haven’t been able to find more than a tiny handful of cases, usually a few dozen or less, spread out over years.”

Watch the full video of Speaker Johnson’s event below and clips above, or all at this link.

READ MORE: ‘This Isn’t Justice’: Legal Experts Blast Cannon for Postponing Trump Case Indefinitely

 

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‘Scratch Off the Georgia Trial’: Second Trump Case Likely Delayed Past Election Experts Say

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22 hours ago

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May 8, 2024

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The Georgia Court of Appeals has agreed to take up Donald Trump’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the case in her RICO prosecution of the ex-president for election interference.

Legal experts were quick to declare this will delay the trial so far that it’s likely it will not take place before the November election. The news comes less than one day after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, announced she was postponing the Espionage Act/classified documents trial indefinitely.

Professor of law, MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst Joyce Vance posted the Georgia court’s order and her initial response.

“You can scratch off the Georgia trial too now. That’s not happening before the election either,” declared national security attorney Brad Moss.

READ MORE: ‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley

“It is entirely possible that the Manhattan case is the only one that makes it to verdict before the election,” Moss added, pointing to the current falsification of business records, hush money, and election interference case prosecuted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

“Georgia and the MAL docs cases are almost certainly delayed at this point,” he continued, referring to the Mar-a-Lago Espionage Act/classified documents case. “The DC election fraud case hinges on how and when SCOTUS rules. It is possible but by no means certain that the Fall campaign could see that trial take place. Or it could remain bogged down in legal fights too.”

Georgia State University College of Law constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis put it bluntly: “There will be no Georgia trial before 2025. Period. Full stop.”

But he also offered more insight.

“It’ll be a summer of Willis and Wade,” wrote Kreis, referring to Willis’ special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who had a romantic relationship with Willis and resigned after a judge ruled Willis could remain on the case if she corrected certain issues. “Whether the appeals court is more interested in the relationship and the underlying conflict claim or the issue of forensic misconduct over the church speech Willis made in response to the disqualification motion— or both— remains to be seen.”

READ MORE: Trump Threatens to Violate Gag Order and Go to Jail: ‘I’ll Do That Sacrifice Any Day’

But Kreis also attempted to tamp down negative reaction to the Georgia Appeals Court’s decision.

“For everyone complaining about the Fulton County case appeal, let me just say that our Georgia Court of Appeals has incredibly smart, hard-working, and serious judges. They are good and decent folks by and large. So cool it on your hot takes and conspiracy theories there.”

Meanwhile, former federal prosecutor of 30 years, Glenn Kirschner offers some small hope to those wanting to see the trial move forward.

“Judge McAfee said the case will keep moving forward EVEN IF the appeals court grants review,” Kirschner wrote.

Judge McAfee vowed to “continue addressing the many other unrelated pending pretrial motions, regardless of whether the petition is granted within 45 days of filing, and even if any subsequent appeal is expedited by the appellate court.”

READ MORE: ‘This Isn’t Justice’: Legal Experts Blast Cannon for Postponing Trump Case Indefinitely

 

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