Source: Joe Raedle / Getty
Donald Trump’s wandering press event had people on social media picking apart his wildest false claims and noting his erratic behavior again.
On Thursday (August 8), Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump held a press event at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump seemed peeved about Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign for president dominating the airwaves, particularly within the past week as she picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate. “If Kamala has 1,000 people at a Rally, the Press goes “crazy,” and talks about how “big” it was – And she pays for her “Crowd,” Trump falsely stated during the hour-long event. “When I have a Rally, and 100,000 people show up, the Fake News doesn’t talk about it, THEY REFUSE TO MENTION CROWD SIZE. The Fake News is the Enemy of the People!” He even attacked Walz, claiming he was “heavy into the transgender world”.
He didn’t stop there. In response to his false claim that it was a peaceful transfer of power when he left office, he then falsely claimed that he drew bigger crowds than were present at the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. “Nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours … we had more,” Trump said, referring to the crowd that would initiate the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump also falsely claimed that he was in a helicopter crash with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and also attacked Vice President Harris’ racial identity again, saying she was “very disrespectful” to her Indian and Black heritage. The former president also attacked a reporter asking why he hasn’t been campaigning: “What a stupid question. Because I’m leading by a lot and I’m letting their convention go through. I’m campaigning a lot. I’m doing tremendous amounts.”
The Mar-a-Lago press conference was panned by many on social media who saw it as a desperate attempt to regain attention. Others expressed frustration at the press covering the event without criticizing Trump’s behavior, including MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell who blasted the media for letting “the stupidest candidate” slide. “It was 2016 all over again,” he said. “It would be hard to find a sentence in what Donald Trump said today that did not include at least one lie.”
Check out the responses below.