Weird, Weirder, Weirdest; Trump Competes For Title With Himself
This is weird. Trump holds what he calls a “news conference” at his garish, Mar-a-Lago castle and proceeds to complain that his rival, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t spoken with the press.
In the same breath, trump bellows out a series of his pathetic, old, boring lies, not least of which were his claim that he peacefully turned over the reins of leadership after he lost the 2020 election. He also boasted that the crowd to hear him on Jan. 6, 2021, just before trump supporters attacked the Capitol, was larger than the number of people who came to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak at the 1963 March on Washington.
The truth is that King’s “I Have A Dream” speech drew an estimated 250,000 people to Washington, D.C. About 53,000 people showed up for trump’s “Stop the Steal” speech.
Fortunately, Harris has never held anything like trump’s so-called “news conference.”
In the same “news conference,” trump claimed that if he is not elected, the U.S. will face the worst depression in history along with the onset of World War III. That night, trump concocted a weird tale that Harris and President Barack Obama conspired in a “COUP” to steal the presidency from Biden. Keeping with his schoolyard level of maturity, trump called Harris “Kamabla,” misspelled Barack as “Barrack,” included Obama’s middle name in caps, “HUSSEIN” and borrowed from an anti-Semitic trope to call Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., as “Shifty Adam Schiff,” play on the anti-Semitic trope about the “Shifty Jew.”
Trump posted, “What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE. He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!
And if more weirdness is needed, trump’s son, Donald Jr., has been busy posting the strange, unhinged story of Walz drinking horse semen.
Trump the younger started it by posting a spoof of the “Got Milk” ads with a photo of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz with a milk mustache with a horse in the background. The story has been making the rounds of the Qanon crowd, spread by the likes of trump’s lickspittle, bottom-feeders Laura Loomer and Joey Mannarino, both who have found favor with trump.
Loomer, who was once considered for a post on trump’s 2024 campaign, posted on Reddit, “ Did Tim Walz have to get his stomach pumped from, swallowing horse semen?” Loomer was the Republican nominee to represent Florida’s 21st congressional district in the 2020 House of Representatives elections. Fortunately, Loomer lost to Democrat Lois Frankel.
Mannarino, a trump supporter and MAGA influencer with more than 488,000 followers, posted on his X account, “Donald Trump took a bullet for America. Tim Walz took a gallon of horsecum for America. Pick you fighter.”
Really.
Speaking of weird, you have to feel sorry in a weird way after the GOP spent so much time and money lying and trying to tie President Biden to the unfortunate exploits of his son, Hunter, and then Biden drops from the race and his son’s background is no longer an issue. Poor Republicans.
And even more on weird, in an apparent effort at showing his macho-ness, trump told the story at his “news conference” of his “near death” experience when he and then-San Franciso Mayor Willie Brown “went down” in a helicopter “emergency landing.”
“I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago. “This was not a pleasant landing, and Willie was, he was a little concerned. So I know him, I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years.”
When contacted, Brown said trump made up the whole the story.
“I’ve never been in a helicopter with him in my life,” Brown said.
Brown is African American while trump has hectored Harris for not being African American but rather a South Asian-American. Her father is a Black man from Jamaica and her mother is from India.
“He is trying his best to get some way to degrade Kamala,” Brown said.
Trump’s attack dog and campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, had a two-word response to Brown’s denouncement of trump’s helicopter fantasy.
Cheung called Brown, “Slick Willie!”
Keeping with his bizarre actions of late, trump also came down on Walz for having supported a Minnesota law that permitted convicted felons, like trump, to vote. The statement is odd given that under the current circvumstances, most states do not allow convicted felons, like trump, to vote.
And more on the topic of weird, is anyone with the chutzpah to criticize the Harris-Walz team from selling copies of the camouflage hat with orange embroidery spelling out “Harris/Walz” that Walz wore after he accepted the Democratic nomination. A total of 3,000 hates were sold out in 30 minutes, raising $1 million for the Democrats.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) quickly that “a camo hat can’t camouflage the fact that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are gun-grabbing radicals who support confiscating firearms from law-abiding hunters and gun owners.”
Walz is a hunter and 2nd Amendment supporter who has long advocated for stricter gun laws. As governor, Wals signed a bill that featured universal background checks and a red-flag law. Harris has also been a longtime advocate for stronger gun control and last year, called for “passing reasonable gun safety laws.”
The NRA’s gratuitous criticism would be like berating trump for selling “God Bless the U.S.A. Bibles,” while he stands convicted of fraud, sexual improprieties, philandering and more. No such criticisms were leveled by the GOP or trump-supporting groups like the NRA.
All this is a digression from trump’s gross claims that Walz lied about his 21 years with the Minnesota National Guard.
Trump fell flat on his face when he tried to recycle a version of the “birther theory” to smear his Democratic presidential opponent, Vice President Kamala. The birther theory refers to the totally discredited claim that President Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen and could not be president. Trump repeated the claim in the lead-up to his 2016 presidential run.
Now, the trump camp is reaching into the wayback machine of dirty tricks to try another tried and true angle to slime Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz. Trump is disgorging a version of the 2004 Swift Boat conspiracy that successfully discredited Democratic Presidential candidate, John Kerry, to the benefit of George W. Bush.
Chris LaCivita, a veteran political smear master and chief spokesman for trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, was the architect of the Swift Boat campaign and is again leading the way to falsely disgrace Walz.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was a GOP political organization formed in 2004 to smear Kerry with lies about his military service record. The 2024 version impugns Walz for allegedly exaggerating and lying about his military background.
Though the slander about Kerry was found to have no basis in truth, some of the mud stuck. Kerry said in 2018 that his campaign answered the false allegations about his valor and his medals “as forcefully as we could.” But the response was not forceful enough — as evidenced by the fact that “swiftboating” is now a widely used term for the kind of attack Republicans have launched at Walz.
Trump did not waste any time in commenting on @realDonaldTrump that “WALZ IS A DISGRACE TO OUR COUNTRY, BUT KAMALA IS FAR WORSE!”
The right wing, led by trump and JD Vance, is claiming that Walz left the Army National Guard after 24 years to avoid a deployment to Iraq in 2005 and to run for Congress.
Walz, 60, went on to win a House seat the following year, a victory that eventually led to his election as governor of Minnesota in 2018 and now Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate in the race for the White House.
The claims about Walz’s miliary career were cited unsuccessfully by Republicans in Walz’s two winning campaigns for governor.
Vance has claimed that Walz resigned from the guard after it was announced that his unit would be deployed to Iraq. Contrary to Vance’s claims, a National Guard article reported that Walz’s unit received an official alert order to report to Iraq two months after Walz had retired.
At a campaign stop in Michigan on Wednesday, Vance accused Walz of abandoning his unit to avoid deployment to Iraq in 2006.
“When the United State Marine Corps, when the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do, and I did it honorably and I’m very proud of that service. When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him,” Vance said.
Vance also has accused Walz of lying about serving in combat and for exaggerating his rank when he left the guard.
Walz, a native of West Point, Neb., enlisted in the Nebraska Army National Guard at age 17. Walz shifted to the Minnesota Army National Guard in 1996 after relocating with his wife, Gwen. He was activated for a variety of missions, including responses to forest fires, tornadoes and flooding.
Walz was deployed in Italy, Turkey, Belgium and Britain in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the military name for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
On Wednesday, Vance hammered Walz for having said during a 2018 gubernatorial campaign event that “we can make sure those weapons of war that I carried in war” are not on America’s streets. Walz did not serve in combat.
“He said we shouldn’t allow weapons that I used in war to be on America’s streets,” said Vance. “Well, I wonder. Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?”
Vance, a Marine Corps veteran, served as a military journalist in a non-combat role in Iraq for six months beginning in fall 2005. Trump was able to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War years because of supposed bone spurs.
The Harris campaign said in its statement that Walz carried, fired and trained others how to use “weapons of war innumerable times.”
Walz also has been criticized for having inaccurately described himself as a retired command sergeant major. A command sergeant major is the most senior enlisted noncommissioned officer in a battalion. The Guard reported that Walz did reach the rank of command master sergeant, but he officially retired one rank below, as a master sergeant, because “he did not complete additional coursework at the US Army Sergeants Major Academy.”
The non-profit, political action committee, “VoteVets,” came to Walz’s defense in posting on X that it was fiction that “Walz retired because he knew he was going to deploy to Iraq.”
The facts, according to VoteVets are that Walz “submitted his retirement request to the U.S. Army National Guard months prior to notification of his unit’s deployment. His unit was fully sourced (staffed_ and his request was approved. He retired in May 2005.”
VoteVets also debunked claims by Vance and other that Walz had used “a rank he didn’t attain and that’s Stolen Valor.” The Stolen Valor Act of 2005 made it a federal misdemeanor to falsely represent oneself as having received any U.S. military decoration or medal.
“It is entirely accurate to describe Tim as having been a Command Sergeant Major- the rank under which he served — and the Minnesota National Guard emphasized in public statements that can be referred to as such,” VoteVets noted.
VoteVets.org was co-founded in 2006 and was initially composed of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. According to the group’s website, in 2020, the group was backed by more than 700,000 supporters, including veterans, military families and civilians. VoteVets.org describes itself as a progressive organization, and endorses Democrats for elected office.
The Swift Boat character attacks falsely disparaged Kerry’s record as a junior naval officer in Vietnam. While the attacks were widely refuted, they were enough to place a cloud over Kerry’s record including three Purple Hears he was awarded while commanding Swift Boats in the Mekong Delta.
A wave of political ads by Swift Boat veterans argued that Kerry embellished his record and that his medals had been awarded erroneously. A fellow veteran, the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, said that some of the Swift Boat veterans making claims against Kerry had not served aboard his boat.
LaCivita worked as the chief strategist for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a veteran’s group that worked to wreck the 2004 Kerry campaign. In a recent interview, LaCivita drew parallels between Walz and Kerry.
“Birds of a feather,” he said of Walz and Kerry, “will be tarred together.”
Right wing media have quickly pounced on the allegations against Walz’s military service.
Radio host Erick Erickson wrote “Looks like it is time to bring back Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” The New York Post rant an article headlined, “Tim Walz a ‘coward’ and ‘traitor’ for retiring from military before Iraq, says Guardsman who replaced VP pick.”
Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the Daily Wire, quoted the Post interview to claim Walz “dropped out specifically to avoid going to Iraq” and that “Walz ‘Embellished And Selectively Omitted Facts’ About His Military Career.”
Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk suggested “Walz lied about his military record.” There were similar reports by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton and far-right social media troll Jack Posobiec.