It was just supposed to be a bill signing, but Trump brought a bunch of people into the Oval Office, so he had to give a speech. He was signing a bill that prevented California from imposing higher standards on vehicles than the rest of the United States, and stopping the sales of gas vehicles in 2035. California and 10 other states had pledged to file a suit as soon as Trump signed it.
Trump: This is a big one. Under the previous administration --- the previous administration, I could go point after point everything they did, open borders, men playing in women's sports. Transgender for everybody. [laughter] Everybody, let's go transgender. What a group of people you had over there. They must have hated our country.
Transgender for everybody. He's been using this phrase for over a month. Nobody has ever asked him what the hell he means. And everybody who defends trans rights must hate the country. It's Trump who hates the country with what he's doing to it.
Trump: Under the previous administration, the federal government gave left-wing radicals in California, dictatorial powers to control the future of the entire car industry all over country, all over the world actually, because they have to build a different car. They can't build 19 different cars called the same thing.
No, Donald. The car companies follow California's emission standards and then they can sell the cars not only in the United States, but around the world, because they've also found air pollution detrimental. They make one car.
Trump: And really it was all over the world what was happening. They approved Governor Gavin Newscum's ridiculous plan to impose a 100% ban on all gas powered cars within a very short period of time.
10 years isn't enough time? Then, Trump goes on about how in order to support electric vehicles nationwide, they'd have to build 4 trillion dollars worth of power plants. He mistakenly calls them charging and firing plants.
Trump: It's like a pump. It's just like a pump, but instead of gas, electricity comes out.
I'm so glad we got that expert description of car charging stations. We would never have known.
Trump: They approved Gavin's ridiculous --- so ridiculous --- by the way, if I didn't bring the military in, Los Angeles would be burning down right now.
There's a coherent transition for you.
Trump: We had to send in the military to free up the water and we did that right after the fires.
If it was after the fires, why did they need the water?
Trump: The trucking industry saw me. They said, sir, it doesn't work...They said I go out of business immediately. I'm not going to playing games.
Incoherent. Then he goes into explaining how electric trucks would be so much heavier that they would have to replace bridges. Trillions of dollars again. He talks about it for a good long time and then he talks about the luxury apartments they have in the truck cabs. Then it's how trucking companies would go out of business if Trump hadn't won.
Trump: It's the craziest thing I've ever heard. They're making you buy stuff that doesn't work. It's no good, it doesn't work. And I'm all for electric. If you want to buy electric, you can buy electric cars are great. If you buy the right one your cars are great. And you should be given the option, buy the electric car, buy the gasoline powered car, buy a hybrid, probably not hydrogen because hydrogen has a tendency that when it blows up, you're gone, it's over. They find you 75 yards down the road, you know, where is he?
Trump's knowledge about hydrogen is probably limited to the Hindenburg Zeppelin. Nobody has told him that you fill up a hydrogen car's tank with water and that gets converted to hydrogen and oxygen, and the hydrogen is used to burn and create propulsion and the exhaust is water. So much for Donald Trump being Mr. Wizard.
Trump: It'll make your accident look like peanuts compared. You wouldn't be around and I'll tell you because it's pretty bad, but some people like it. I don't know. Let's see what happens.
Some people like to be blown up in hydrogen cars? This is how things get lost in translation with Donald Trump. When you read the words, they make no sense. When you hear the words, you just nod off.
Trump: In fact, I'd say General Motors announced yesterday, they're going to spend about 6 billion dollars because of my tariffs and maybe because of my election on November 5th, but because of the tariffs, I think more than anything.
General Motors is doing a share buyback of 6 billion dollars. It had absolutely nothing to do with building new plants in the United States. Trump tries to interpret news and fails completely.
Trump: We look like stupid people. We were laughed at all over the world. No, we're not laughed at anymore, I can tell you that. But they wanted to shatter our domestic supply chains and literally grind civilization to a halt.
Donald appears to have this persecution complex. Maybe they don't laugh at us anymore because they think we are idiots. They certainly don't think of us as being reliable. Trump is the one destroying the supply chains with his tariffs. People can't make things the way they used to anymore. His professed desire for manufacturing here has been destroyed by his policies.
Trump: We would have gone so far back. It's hard to believe, actually, hard to believe when you don't have enough electricity to give a person a little air conditioning in the summer and now they want you to take electricity and fire up all these cars, but we're not going to let that happen.
Okay. What are you going to do now? Cut off electricity to charging stations? And he keeps talking about electric cars like they were combustible engines being fired up. Electric cars don't get fired up.
Trump: But in a few moments, I'll sign three pieces of legislation that will kill, totally kill. You can't do anything about it. They can't take us to court. They can't do any of the things they can do with executive orders. I'll sign three pieces of legislation that will kill the California mandates forever.
Maybe Trump is taking some of Musk's drugs. Of course you can contest laws. That's what we have courts for. But it's going to kill, totally kill. The case is already in court, idiot.
Then he goes into saying that the control of car engines when you come to a stop and the engine turns off to save gas don't work and cost thousands of dollars. So, take that out and your car will cost that much less.
Trump: And Susie Wiles is here today. Stand up, Susie. The most powerful woman in the world, they say. She's the most powerful. She was rated the most powerful in the world. Susie Wiles, one phone call and a nation is destroyed. She destroys --- [laughter] She could destroy five nations with five phone calls [laughter] and she's doing a great job.
That's pretty scary if it was true. The fact that Trump jokes about it, makes it not a joke. This is the second time he has said this in the last couple of days. Susie Wiles the Destroyer.
Trump: It's the craziest thing. We're --- we're in a whole different sphere right now. We're in a whole different planet right now.
Ain't that the truth?
Trump: I assume boats are being covered by this. And boats, they want you to go all electric. And the batteries are so heavy, the damn boat practically doesn't float. I used to have a lot of fun talking about that one.
Yeah, we remember. Electric boats and sharks, and you wanted to die by the shark. And then he actually does recount the shark and boat story.
Trump: But in my first day in office, I ended the Green New Scam and abolished the EV mandate at the federal level. We abolished it. Which is basically that everyone will be driving an electric car within a very short period of time. Now I know why Elon doesn't like me so much.
There never was an EV mandate. He's such an idiot. There were only tax subsidies. And then he goes on for a minute talking about how Elon and he had a back and forth about electric vehicles.
Trump: The windmills are killing our country, by the way. The fields are littered with them, junk. They're littered with them. And they get older, and they get rusty and they get bad and they get --- this is other countries also, it's the greatest scam in history. It's the most expensive energy you can buy. They're ugly.
Windmills are killing the country, right, Donald Quixote? And then he goes on talking about them a lot.
Trump: I don't know why, but they say you can't bury --- it's a certain type of fiber and if it goes in the ground, we're all going to die. What bullshit is this?
I am flabbergasted. We're all going to die from burying windmill blades in the ground. Chinese already found a way to turn them into roads. He talked at length as to how they were ruining the landscape, and how they rust and turn into junk, and that they never take them down when they don't work anymore. He has no idea how the industry works. He still thinks they kill whales and birds.
Then he talks about tariffs and Chinese cars and the effect that as a result everything's going to be built in America now. Then he follows with the tariffs on steel and how that's going to help us.
Next was a couple of business owners that fawned over Trump profusely.
Then still another repeat of how we were a laughing stock and now we're the hottest country in the world.
Trump: I like Gavin, I've liked him always. He said I never called him. You know, they asked him a question on Fox, I guess. I never spoke to him, he doesn't remember the call, he doesn't remember.
This is what I keep talking about. Cognitive decline. If you never spoke to him how could there have been a call?
Then, without any transition, he starts talking about Minnesota and Tim Walz, without ever mentioning him by name.
Trump: Do you remember the CNN anchor? He was saying, yes this is a peaceful rally and behind him the entire city was on fire. It looked like World War II and, uh, I appreciate the question.
Nobody had asked about it.
Then he talked about negotiating with Iran. This was before the Israeli attack that evening. But it only took him 10 seconds to start talking about having destroyed ISIS.
Trump: I rebuilt the military as you remember for 4 years, I rebuilt the military and then we gave a chunk of it away, but it was still peanuts, it was a lot, but it was peanuts compared to what we rebuilt, gave it to Afghanistan.
Peanuts. He really does hate Jimmy Carter. He will never forgive Jimmy for the half staff flags. Then, Suddenly It's about the protests in LA. Pam Bondi going after the paid insurrectionists.
Trump: You have bricks because you throw bricks, they're very potent. If they hit you, they kill and they took them away....But they're ingenious. They also brought hammers along, very heavy hammers and I saw them pounding the curb and pounding the sidewalk and it was like a military operation. This guy is pounding, boom, big shots and it was breaking up granite, the granite curbs, and the granite was breaking up and the concrete was breaking up and there were lines of people standing there and they're handing them.
Okay, he's been talking about granite for at least 5 days. The hammers. But it's gone now from professional to military in quality. This standing in the line to pick up broken pieces,Trump has completely made up. Well, actually everything. And then he talks about the vandals who were dropping off pieces of the concrete and rocks at people going under a highway overpass, but now you've got people who have died he says. Nobody died.
Then he covers the farmers and hotels and leisure industries that are crippled because no one wants to go to work and get grabbed by ICE. Same answer as always about criminals, murderers and rapists.
After being asked about the military parade on Saturday he careened off onto Russia, and how they lost so many people in World War II.
Trump: But Putin is a little confused by that. You know, he said we lost 51 million people, and we were your ally. And now everybody hates Russia, and they love Germany and Japan. I said, let's explain that sometime, okay? But it's a --- it's a --- it's a strange world.
Yes, and Donald Trump made it one. Made it a Dante's Inferno for the world.
Reporter: There are several No Kings protests planned across the country on Saturday as well. What are you thoughts on those?
Trump: What do they call it, No Kings? I don't feel like a king. I have to go through hell to get stuff approved. A king would say I'm not going to get this. I --- a king would never even have had the California mandate to even be talking to him... No, no, we're not a king. We're not a king at all.
He just said clear as day that he was a king. "I, a king." And using the royal "we" with "we're not a king."
Then Trump gets asked about the Congressional picnic and whether he expects Rand Paul to be there. After covering that, he gets into a long discussion of the Big Ugly Bill.
Trump: Because for 4 years, I never hurt Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. I've already been there. But they're going to destroy Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security they're going to wipe them out in my opinion, because their policies are so bad, the country will have no money to pay for them. We're going to make them stronger than ever before. Thank you very much, everybody.
Not once does he ever explain who "they" is. We are left to assume he's talking about the Democrats. Considering that the Democrats are the ones fighting for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as well as SNAP benefits, Trump is living in a dream world. He has no idea what is actually inside the bill. He's never read it. Somebody has probably told him in a couple of sentences that it's the greatest thing in the world, and so now that's exactly what he thinks, and will continue thinking, and nothing will change his mind.
I'm not sure which is worse. Trump giving a speech extemporaneously, or one that he's reading off the teleprompters and just adlibbing constantly.
This one was far less vitriolic than the one at Fort Bragg, which was off a teleprompter. But speaking off the cuff, the lies and mistakes per minute go up. If Joe Biden had ever talked this incoherent, he would have been fried alive. Trump gets a pass way too easily by mainstream media. We've been talking about it a lot. Same with Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC.
In the past, respect for the President was expected. Until after Trump's first term creating the false narrative of "fake news." Then there was little respect for Joe Biden because Trump said he was incompetent and corrupt from the beginning. People felt empowered to feel that way and the least little thing Joe did was under a microscope. It was a crime when Joe gave his "Soul of the Nation" speech in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. No one reported on the speech. It was the red background on the left and right that seemed too dark a setting. Nobody talks about the stupid fist dancing Trump does to music. Or the lack of hair. How fat he is. Or when he just tripped going up the stairs to Air Force One. In the news one day and then gone.
If the world was fair, Trump wouldn't be president. It doesn't mean we have to be fair to him.
