Donald Trump traveled to Michigan and Wisconsin on his day off from court Wednesday to rally his supporters and complain about his legal problems. His incoherent speech, as well as his inflammatory claims about abortion and the pro-Palestinian student protest, attracted attention.
Trump slurred his words at a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin. referred to Biden’s “fake infrastrucker, ershure para”, before settling on “a set of infrastructures”. Minutes later, the 77-year-old launched into a rant about Master Lock, slipping further into incoherence.
The speech was right another example of his public statements, which have led to speculation about his mental health. Tuesday evening it seemed scramble your words to an indecipherable point while speaking to Fox News about pro-Palestinian campus protests.
In a moment of cognitive function, Trump managed to spew self-aggrandizing historical inaccuracies about the state of the nation when he left office.
“When I left, (the mortgage rate) was 2.7%. We have not had inflation. Everything was so good,” Trump told a crowd in Freeland, Michigan.
Mortgage rates and inflation were at lower levels, but likely due to historic job losses and lack of consumer confidence. In January 2021, when, according to Trump, “everything was going so well,” unemployment was double its current figure and 95,000 Americans lost their lives to COVID-19.
Trump then peddled false election conspiracies, including claiming that he had won the election, after dodge questions in an interview with Time earlier this week about whether he would resort to political violence if he lost.
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“They said if I got the 63 million that I got the first time, that we won, I couldn’t lose. I got millions and millions more votes than that, and they suffocated us”, Trump said. “We don’t allow this bullshit to happen again.”
The former president, who named three Supreme Court justices responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade, addressed this deeply unpopular decision.
“Democrats, Republicans, everyone wanted abortion out of the federal government. Everyone wanted it,” he said before thank conservative judges “for the wisdom and courage” to destroy abortion protections.
Trump, who said “people are absolutely thrilled” that abortion rights are being left to the states, falsely accused Democrats of allowing late-term abortions at eight and nine months and “post-birth executions.”
In front of crowds in Wisconsin, Trump applauded the New York Police Department’s crackdown on protests at Columbia University and the City College of New York on Tuesday night, calling the raids “a beautiful thing to watch.”
“New York was under siege last night,” he said of the student protesters. “To every university president, I say remove the encampments immediately. Defeat the radicals and take back our campuses for all normal students.”
The defendant in a secret New York criminal trial took to the soapbox to blast the proceedings of his criminal trial, as well as previous rulings in a defamation case won by E. Jean Carroll.
“Every one of these false cases is bullshit, every single one of them,” Trump told the crowd, who would have been silent as he ranted about his legal troubles. According to Trump, “leading legal experts,” including Sean Hannity and Mark Lenin, believed there was no case.
“I have a crooked judge, he’s a totally conflicted judge. And (the jury) is in an area that’s about 95 percent Democratic. Trump said of Judge Merchantaking care not to mention any witnesses in the case.
He then criticized the $91 million judgment against him for repeated defamation of Carroll.
“They said I defamed her. Because I said her story was not true, I defamed her,” he said. “I hope the appeal process works, because if it doesn’t, you just don’t have a country.”
Trump is due back in court Thursday morning for a hearing on further violations of his silence order, after Merchan warned he may face prison time.