April 27, 2024

Trump just left an audience of steelworkers in stunned silence with rambling, unhinged speech

This afternoon, President Trump addressed a factory of steelworkers today in Granite City, Illinois, and turned what should have been some simple remarks about American manufacturing into a full-blown, entirely unhinged rant in which he ping-ponged from trade to foreign policy to his feud with the media to a host of other subjects in his usual nonsensical fashion.

The president spent a good deal of time complaining about the “fake news” media and whining that President Obama never had to deal with any negative coverage, which is a ridiculous assertion since conservative press spent all eight of Obama’s years as president concocting increasingly petty and absurd scandals to try to drag him down. Remember Dijongate?

But it wasn’t long before he went right off the rails, complaining about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Germany’s natural gas trade with Russia and throwing out wildly incorrect figures left and right, like the claim that American pays 4.3% of its GDP to defence (the real number is 3.5%, which is still far too high).

Towards the end, the president’s brain stop providing him with the sounds it needs to properly form the words he’s trying to say:

He finished with some of the most shameless pandering you’ll ever see.

Each one of these unhinged and performative rants which sees him freely abuse both our free press and the truth seem to be more deranged and unstable than the last. But it’s equally as terrifying to see how effective his propaganda is at hitting all the right buttons and striking a chord with people, even though it’s all built on a mountain of lies.

It’s very easy to tell people what they want to hear; now it’s up to us to find a way to mix hard truths with a concrete and unassailable reason to vote for Democrats come November.

Thanks to Aaron Rupar on Twitter.