Props to Trump having enough reactionary discipline to keep his trap shut about recent negative events at his ego-fest speeches in red states.
It’s pretty much like his clamming up to press questions in the Oval about John McCain. Odds are he won’t mention McCain tonight, although the Trumpian habits and ad-libbing could include something oblique, even if it’s as usual ham-fisted.
In his WV speech, he didn’t have anything to new to say, even in anger, despite the Manafort verdict, and coal is yet still “indestructible”.
Evansville’s speech tonight should have the same already debunked lies, repeated as schtick to his cult-following. It’s a script he sticks to even with the Stephen Miller racist tweaks, and his wandering off teleprompter.
The bagpipe band would be a better use of time. So much more entertaining than this week’s 67 lies so far.
Note that this Trump speechifying in smaller-populated, modest venues might be a redneck version of a Rose Garden strategy, aside from choosing supportable GOP candidates.
Daniel Dale’s tweet-stream gives the best real-time debunking of Trump lies especially his speeches. It’s a better substitute although the QAnon inferences from attendees could be entertaining.
5:15PM THE PRESIDENT arrives at Evansville Regional Airport *
"Evansville, IN"
*5:25PM THE PRESIDENT departs Evansville Regional Airport en route to Old National Events Plaza *
"Evansville, IN"
*5:35PM THE PRESIDENT arrives at Old National Events Plaza *
*5:40PM THE PRESIDENT hosts a roundtable with supporters *
*6:40PM THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks at a joint fundraising committee reception *
*7:15PM THE PRESIDENT departs Old National Events Plaza en route to the Ford Center *
*7:20PM THE PRESIDENT arrives at the Ford Center *
*7:25PM THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks at the Make America Great Again Rally
*8:30PM THE PRESIDENT departs the Ford Center en route to Evansville Regional Airport *
Friday, Aug 31, 2018 · 2:38:00 AM +00:00 · annieli
- Trump emerges holding his green Make Our Farmers Great Again baseball hats. He then throws them into the crowd.
- Trump: "This is a really incredible time for your country." He says this is the best U.S. economy of all time, claims he's putting Indiana coal miners and steelworkers back to work.
- Trump: "As we speak, Canada - and we love Canada, right - but they have to get rid of those barriers and have to get rid of those big tariffs - Canada showed up at the White House..." A protester interruption happens before he finishes his sentence.
- Trump claims there are thousands of people outside the arena and that he put up big screens out there. Anyone there know for sure?
- After he was distracted by a protester, Trump does not finish his sentence about Canada or continue to talk about NAFTA at all. He is now bragging about his West Virginia rally crowd.
- Freeland pause! Back later
- OK catching up: Trump is complaining at length about Maggie Haberman's report that Trump was unhappy with his crowd in West Virginia rally. "These are just dishonest, terrible people....not all of them...85%," he says. He says Maggie doesn't know what she's talking about (lol).
- Trump repeats his threat to apply tariffs on Canadian cars if Canada doesn't make a deal. He says he loves Canada but Canada has treated the U.S. unfairly.
- Trump lies that pollsters manipulate their numbers to suppress his vote by making his supporters feel he can't win.
- Trump brings back his old lie that he can see TV networks turn off their cameras when he bashes the "fake news." This has never once happened.
- There is a "lock her up" chant as candidate Mike Braun speaks.
- Trump skips his usual attack on McCain's vote against Obamacare repeal, this time criticizing Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly for himself not voting for repeal.
- Trump says the Democratic Party is being held hostage by "left-wing haters, angry mobs, deep state radicals, establishment cronies and their fake news allies."
- On the day charges were announced against a man who allegedly threatened to murder Boston Globe journalists, Trump continues to complain about the media.
- Trump: "Our Justice Department and our FBI have to start doing their job and doing it right and doing it now. Because people are angry."
- Trump says the most remarkable thing about Democrats is "how truly undemocratic they are become."
- This is the part of the rally where I comment on how on-script Trump is so far so that I have something to link to in like 15 minutes when he starts talking about his mom's turkey or whatever.
- SIR ALERT! Trump says there were nine people he talked to backstage, "seriously tough cookies," coal miners, and "of the nine, eight of them were crying...crying out of happiness." He says he asked the ninth why he wasn't crying and the man said, "I don't cry, sir."
- "We've now started the wall in San Diego," Trump lies.
- It is hilarious how many people are "crying" in Trump's tales involving unnamed people or meetings with no witnesses
- Trump lies that he has the highest numbers among Republicans of any president. Bush was better after 9/11. He then says nobody has been able to tell him if they did polling about Lincoln: "I'm assuming they did, so we can say we're beating Honest Abe."
- Polling didn't exist then.
- Trump continues his animal-related language about MS-13, saying ICE breaks up nests of MS-13 members. "They call it a nest," he says.
- He then says he is not allowed to call them "animals" even though they love slicing up 16-year-old girls - "they sliced 'em up."
- Trump again congratulates ICE officers for supposedly grabbing gang members "by the neck."
- Trump is doing the story about how ICE is "liberating" towns like in a war and people are standing by their windows applauding the ICE officers.
- This speech is, so far, almost all anti-media grievance and immigrant-crime talk. "This election is about safety," Trump says.
- "Wages are going up. Nobody thought this was going to happen," Trump says.
- Wages have been rising since 2014. Nominal wage growth is the same now as it was at the end of the Obama era. Real wage growth ranges from near-nonexistent to negative.
- Trump is adding new flourishes to the story of basketball coach Bobby Knight telling him to run for president. He says his secretary told him Bobby Knight was on the phone, and he said "you mean the coach???" and the secretary said, "I think he said he was a coach."
- Yes we have arrived at that point
- The president, August 30, 2018: "Wow, New Hampshire was so great. We won South Carolina, we won North Carolina, we won everything."
- We are still on the Bobby Knight story. We are at the point where Trump discovers Bobby Knight's long-forgotten number in a giant stack of papers and then calls Bobby Knight.
- Bobby Knight. Bobby Knight. Bobby Knight. Trump says he called Bobby Knight again today because he was thinking about Bobby Knight. He concludes: "Bobby Knight, right?"
- Trump: "Tiger, how 'bout Tiger, the comeback...Tiger! The fake news tried to fake out Tiger...Tiger's sharp. We love winners. Our country's becoming a winner, and our country's respected again. And you see that."
- Trump says he's "fighting every day" for African-Americans.
- Trump on the media and also "the elite": "I have a better education than they do from a much better school...I went to better schools, I went to better everything. And by the way, you ready for this: I'm president and they're not."
- Trump is pre-emptively complaining about a hypothetical media story tomorrow saying this crowd's enthusiasm was not very strong.
- The president is talking about a hypothetical Indiana rally that would have been held by "Crooked Hillary" if she'd won the election two years ago. He says this hypothetical rally would have had a small and bad crowd.
- Trump is telling the story about the friend who has hired prisoners. He does not specify this time whether it is three prisoners or ten prisoners.
- Trump falsely claims, for the many-th time, that Asian-American unemployment is at a historic low (it was in May, at least since the govt started releasing this data, but spiked back up) and that women's unemplyment is at the lowest level in 65 years (18 years).
- Trump his administration is working hard on a program to make life easier for former prisoners.
- Trump lies that U.S. Steel is opening "at least seven plants."
- U.. Steel has announced investments in two plants.
- “Steel: we were dead. It was over,” Trump lies.
- My computer battery is dying so I cannot continue this important tweeting live. I will finish later. Thank you from an alley on 17th Street.
- OK finishing up this speech non-live. Trump: "America is winning again, and America is being respected again."
- Trump lies that he has "gotten rid of the estate tax, also known as the death tax."
- He did not repeal it. His tax law merely raised the threshold for having to pay it.
- Trump rants about windmills again.
- "When the wind doesn't blow, what do we do? Uh, we got problems. When there's thousands of birds laying at the base of the windmills, what do we do? Isn't that amazing, the environmentalists...what about the thousands of birds they're killing?"
- The president says it is very bad to live across from a windmill because it can make you lose your mind: "When you hear that noise going round and round and round and you're living with it, and then you go crazy after a couple of years."
- Trump lies again that he came up with idea of vets seeing private doctors if they face long VA waits: "I came up with an idea I thought was brilliant. I said, you know what, we have all these doctors...we're gonna let the vets go..."
- This program was created in 2014 under Obama.
- SIR ALERT! Trump says he took his "so brilliant" Veterans Choice idea to Congress, and they said, "Yes sir, we're been trying to pass this for 45 years."
- The Choice program was passed in 2014 under Obama. Trump's bill was merely a revision to the program.
- Trump says he's standing up for "free speech rights" by taking on social media giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter.
- "We as a country cannot tolerate censorship, blacklisting and rigged search results," he says. This was in his prepared text. No evidence of rigging.
- The crowd says the words "Space Force" with Trump without him even asking for a call-and-response.
- Trump lies that his $700 billion military budget for this year and $716 billion for next year were both records. Not true even if you ignore inflation: Obama signed a $725 billion version in 2011.
- Trump says Iran used to be a "big power" that would definitely have taken over "the whole Middle East," but then he terminated the "stupid" nuclear deal and now everything is totally different.
- Trump lies for the 20th time that Iran was given $150 billion as part of the nuclear deal. Estimates vary, but it was somewhere around $60 billion -- of Iran's own assets that were unfrozen -- and certainly no more than $100 billion.
- Trump has brought back his 2016 speech conclusion about how people are going to win so much because of him that it's going to be too much winning. "We're gonna win so much that you're gonna be begging me: please, pleeeease, Mr. President."
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- OK speech over