President Trump gave one of his frothing cryptofascist speeches at a Shell Oil plant in Pennslyvania today and it turned out exactly as bonkers as we have come to expect from this unhinged ignoramus. CNN’s Daniel Dale tweeted out a running report on the president’s comments and some of them are truly bizarre, even by Trumpian standards.
True to mendacious form, the president started off by inflating his electoral victory in 2016 by claiming that he beat Hillary Clinton by 28 points in the county where the Shell plant in question is located. Dale provided an immediate fact-check: Trump actually won the county by 18 points.
It was all downhill from there.
Trump won the Pennsylvania county where he's speaking now by 18 points. He tells the crowd that he thinks it was "28 points."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 13, 2019
Donald Trump is a man known for his incredibly short attention span and he soon moved on to a completely unrelated topic: trucks. Sounding for all the world like a toddler, the president explained how he has “loved trucks” since he was four-years-old and that he still loves them. Why exactly he thinks this little factoid is worth sharing is anyone’s guess, but it’s in close keeping with his increasingly rambling, borderline senile rhetorical style.
Trump says that when he was a little boy, like four years old, he loved trucks, and even though he's now president, he still loves trucks, nothing has changed, he loves trucks.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 13, 2019
The president went on to once again float the idea of his serving an unconstitutional third or fourth term as president, telling those in attendance that it would drive the media “totally crazy” if they could manage to get a third or fourth term suggestion trending with hashtags. While he once again played the idea off as a joke, the fact that he keeps bringing it up is unsettling. In some ways, it feels like a test balloon, like he is slowly acclimating the country to the idea to see if it might be viable in the future.
Trump tells the workers, in this official speech allegedly about energy, that they can drive the media "totally crazy" if they "go to hashtag third term, hashtag fourth term," suggesting he'll stay in office longer than two terms.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 13, 2019
(Trump says that he's joking about all this, that he's just trolling the media.) https://t.co/JtfWRL4AaB
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 13, 2019
One of the stranger bits of Trump’s speech had to do with Japan. He said the U.S. ally only imports wheat from the United States (which is patently false) and he said that they only do it to “make us feel good.” The utterly nonsensical theory probably makes sense in his feverish addled mind, but to those of us still inhabiting planet Earth, it’s beyond reasonable comprehension.
Trump falsely suggests that the US only exports "wheat" to Japan, then says Japan doesn't even want the wheat it buys from the US, "they do it to make us feel good." (???)
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 13, 2019
At one point Trump reportedly said that China doesn’t have “oil and gas,” something which is obviously untrue. Again, it’s unclear what he was trying to get across with such a blatant lie, but it doesn’t sound like the words of a well man.
Trump falsely says of China, "They don't have oil and gas."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 13, 2019
Trump also appeared to have no clue what time it was during his speech.
Trump says, looking back at the media in the room, "That's a lot of people back there for like an 11 o'clock speech." It is 2:40 PM.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 13, 2019
President Trump tried to take credit for one of the Obama administration’s achievements, something which he has done over and over again.
"I got it approved. Veterans Choice," Trump says, for more than the 80th time, of the program signed into law by Obama in 2014.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 13, 2019
The president’s peculiar vendetta against wind power popped up as well as he decided to showcase his staggering ignorance about energy. The man is an absolute laughingstock, and watching these clips is almost painful when one considers how far the presidency has fallen.
Trump, speaking to energy workers in PA, is embarrassingly ignorant about how wind power works.
"Some day the environmentalists are going to tell us what's going on with that. And then all of the sudden it stops — the wind and the televisions go off." pic.twitter.com/u5cojEfnJz
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2019
