Mar-A-Lago Security Refused To Let People Leave The Room Until Trump's 2024 Speech (A Monotonous Rehash Of His Never-Changing Rally Rants) Was Over (It Took 64 Interminable Minutes)
They were all just prisoners there of their own device.
“I’m a victim. I will tell you, I’m a victim.”
He’s fired up!!!
Isaac Arnsdorf and Michael Scherer, Washington Post, November 15, 2022:
Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former president who refused to concede defeat and inspired a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election culminating in a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, officially declared on Tuesday night that he is running to retake the White House in 2024.
The announcement at his Florida Mar-a-Lago Club came in a moment of political vulnerability for Trump as voters resoundingly rejected his endorsed candidates in last week’s midterm elections. Since then, elected Republicans have been unusually forthright in blaming Trump for the party’s underperformance and potential rivals are already openly plotting challenging Trump for the nomination. . . .
Trump’s urgency to announce also comes from wanting to get ahead of a potential indictment in any of the several ongoing criminal investigations into his conduct. He and close associates are under multiple criminal investigations: by the Justice Department for the effort to submit phony electors claiming Trump won key states in the 2020 election and for the mishandling of classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago; and by an Atlanta-area prosecutor for pressuring Georgia officials to overturn that state’s election results. His company is also in the middle of a trial for criminal tax fraud and the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit that could freeze the company’s operations, already winning the appointment of an independent monitor.
A defeated former president running for election again while facing potential criminal indictment is unprecedented in U.S. history. Trump becomes the first former president to run again since Theodore Roosevelt, and the first since Grover Cleveland to do so after losing reelection. He is the only president to be impeached twice, and the only one impeached by a bipartisan vote. . . .
Trump has publicly indicated that a second term would double down on his brand of combative, nationalist politics and a drastic policy agenda. In his speech on Tuesday, Trump repeated his call for executing drug dealers, modeled off authoritarian governments like China and Singapore, and suggested he will be more aggressive in deploying federal forces against crime, unrest and protests. . . .
As he continues to insist without evidence that Biden benefited from subterfuge and fraud, Trump renewed his demand for sweeping restrictions on voting, including ending early voting (currently in use in 46 states) and voting by mail (available without an excuse in 35 states). . . .
About 15 minutes into Trump’s speech on Tuesday, he appeared to become frustrated with his prepared remarks and started extended riffs more similar to his usual rally material. . . .
[Trump] has profoundly altered the tenor of American public life — shattering long-held standards of decorum and civility with often shocking attacks on political rivals, judges and reporters. He has frequently made racist and antisemitic remarks, mocked people with disabilities and denigrated developing countries, bragged about sexual assault and paid hush money to a porn star, praised dictators, declined to disavow extremists, inspired his supporters to resort to violence and defended white supremacists and Jan. 6 rioters.
William Saletan, The Bulwark, November 16, 2022:
On Tuesday night, as he announced his candidacy for president in 2024, Donald Trump . . . made it clear that if he returns to power, he will rule as a lethal authoritarian. Here are four of his promises.
1. He will send military force into American cities against their will. . . .
2. He will impose immediate, one-day trials for people charged with selling drugs. . . .
3. He will execute all drug sellers. . . .
4. He will seek to eliminate early voting. . . .
If Trump were to return to the presidency, he would attack civil liberties and our constitutional republic in other ways. He proved as much by attempting a coup last year. But his speech on Tuesday showed that even when he’s on his best behavior, his instincts are barbaric, and his ambitions are authoritarian. He must never be given power again.
Michael C. Bender and Maggie Haberman, New York Times, November 15, 2022:
In his rambling hourlong address, Mr. Trump gave an exaggerated picture of his accomplishments before announcing his candidacy. He quickly fell back into his typical rally fare, full of false statements, inflammatory discussion of immigration and crime, and nods to right-wing culture-war issues. . . .
[H]e repeatedly expressed grievance over the ongoing investigations into him and his family, denouncing the F.B.I. search of his property to retrieve documents, among other inquiries. “I’m a victim,” Mr. Trump told the crowd bluntly. . . .
[Trump’s] dominance of Republican politics has led to three disappointing elections in a row for the party . . .
Conservative news outlets, including Fox News and others belonging to the Murdoch empire, have turned against him. The New York Post mocked him on its cover last week as “Trumpty Dumpty,” a day after lionizing the much younger Mr. DeSantis as “DeFuture.” And a Wall Street Journal editorial on Monday denounced him as “the man most likely to produce a G.O.P. loss and total power for the progressive left.” . . .
Many party leaders believe last week’s failures showed the folly of Mr. Trump’s obsession with his false claims that he won the 2020 presidential contest. . . .
Mr. Trump endorsed five candidates in the nation’s most competitive House races, according to ratings by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. All five lost.
He was also heavily involved in contests determining who would run the election apparatus in critical states before the 2024 presidential election. The result: Every election denier who sought to become the top election official in a battleground state was defeated. . . .
Amanda Carpenter, The Bulwark, November 15, 2022:
Usually when politicians declare their candidacy for office, they seem happy about it. Or they at least try to give the impression of eagerness to take on the challenges ahead. But when Donald Trump announced Tuesday night that he was running for president for the third time in three consecutive election cycles, he seemed positively disgusted.
Trump—who dragged his party to midterm losses in 2018, lost the White House in 2020 to the oldest man ever to have the job, incited an insurrectionist mob into attacking the U.S. Capitol, was impeached twice, and contributed to yet another GOP midterm flop last week—sneered and grimaced through his announcement. He slow-read prepared remarks in a monotone, digressing to riff on whatever non sequitur popped into his mind. . . .
Bored, people tried to leave before Trump was even finished speaking. Others simply turned their back to him and talked through his remarks. Keep in mind, these attendees were ostensibly among his most dedicated and connected aides and supporters.
If Trump were president today and the national media were still trying to suck up to him, they would probably laud him after this speech for adopting a “new tone.” . . .
If Trump understands anything, it’s how to bully the GOP into falling in line behind him. He did it after Charlottesville, Helsinki, Impeachment 1.0, and Impeachment 2.0. He’s been here before; making bold, inadvisable, destabilizing moves amid personal turmoil is part of his standard operating procedure.
Seth Abramson, Proof, November 15, 2022:
Trump is now on the stage at Mar-a-Lago. . . . He is now lying . . . He is boasting . . . Some lies about the economy . . . These are the usual lies . . . Now some lies about his foreign policy . . . Conspiracy theory about Biden . . . Now some lies about crime and immigration . . . Trump is off-script . . . Bizarre claim . . . this is Trump's longtime code for appeasing Putin . . . He is now lying . . . He is now lying . . . he's going more and more off-script as the speech goes on . . . babbling off-script about Biden's lack of focus . . . I cannot underscore how low-energy and sad and telepromptered this speech is. It is truly horrible. . . . CNN has just cut away from the speech. . . . MSNBC has already cut away from the speech. . . . He just said that the Civil War and Reconstruction are the same thing. I believe he just said that "Reconstruction" is what Southerners call the Civil War. . . . Rambling. . . . He is now way off-script, just rambling nonsense words about nothing. . . . His team did no real prep . . . It is incoherent and the crowd is utterly silent and bewildered. . . . He is truly incoherent. There are no applause lines. . . . I have no idea what is going on. . . . He is now babbling about Angela Merkel . . . Dead silent crowd. . . . “Joe Biden has abolished America’s borders.” . . . “We got Mexico to give us, free of charge, 28,000 soldiers.” . . . a wink to QAnon . . . He just told his first “Sir...” . . . “Sir” story #2 has just been dropped. . . . This is an unmitigated disaster. . . . He has now returned to human trafficking . . . Like it is a winning, interesting, inspiring topic. . . . Just told “Sir” story #3. In the midst of it he did a fake Chinese accent . . . totally stale, dead-eyed, and rehashed. . . . He has no idea how insane this is. . . . Trump just asked Eric Trump to stand so he could laud him for all his “subpoenas” . . . He is mixing so many metaphors and cliches right now . . . He has just finished. . . . *No* Trump speech is good. *Ever*. . . . But this—this was *bad*. It was bad even by Trump's historically low standards. It was absolutely, totally, almost unutterably lifeless. . . . This was like the presidential-campaign-announcement version of a “contractual obligation LP.” . . . But having said all this, I need to add something else . . . he was phoning it in because he doesn’t actually believe he can be beaten. . . . he told his usual lies and “Sir” stories in a dead-eyed, toned-down, almost somnambulant way, there was nothing defeatist in his tone. . . . this man believes he’ll be the nominee, and probably is so bored at how easy it’ll be . . . In other words, he phoned it in because he *could*. He already knows he has his captive MAGA cult; he already knows that any GOP elite who opposes him will eventually fall into line; he already knows he needs no ideas or agenda. *Yet* he’s sure he can win. That’s chilling.
Amanda Marcotte, Salon, November 16, 2022:
If one indisputable truth has emerged from the midterm elections, it’s that Donald Trump is the political equivalent of herpes. Sure, the MAGA base loves him, but . . . Everyone else despises Trump, so much so that Republican candidates, by aligning themselves too closely with Trump, surrendered a significant chunk of voters and lost a bunch of otherwise winnable elections.
So for the past week, Republican talking heads have been lining up to declare that it’s finally time to abandon the tiny-fingered parasite who sucks voters out of the R column. . . . The GOP chattering class has turned its lonely eyes to Florida Gov. Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis as the next-level Trump challenger, in the hope that he can be evil enough to satisfy the MAGA base, while tricking normie voters into thinking he’s not quite as bad as the Bad Orange Man. . . .
Trump already had plenty of reasons to run for office, such as his immense ego and the hopes that an official campaign may keep him out of prison. Now he has one more motivation: Reminding other Republicans that he’s the boss and compelling them to line up to lick his boots. Which they, despite an oh-so-exciting week of feigned independence, will be doing in short order.
In his rambling, conspiracy theory-laden speech announcing his presidential run from his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, Trump employed the sleepy but sing-songy tone he uses when he’s trying to appear “serious.” . . . Trump failed to hide the terminal narcissism fueling this run. He griped that the “fake news” was failing to report his supposedly fantastic “endorsement success rate.” . . .
[I]f there is one thing as inevitable as Trump’s Tuesday announcement, it’s that the Republican establishment will come crawling back to him, each supposed leader more eager than the last to prostrate themselves before a man who views them with utter and undisguised contempt. . . .
While Republicans love to play-act as independent-minded, freedom-loving pioneers, they not-so-secretly cannot wait to kneel before the biggest, loudest bully in the room.
Yet they’re also embarrassed about this, which is no doubt why so many of them are making noises about rejecting Trump in favor of DeSantis — despite the fact that the Sunshine State governor exhibits an unhealthy fixation on Dear Orange Leader that led him to change the way he looks, moves and dresses to appear ever more Trumpy, like he’s Jennifer Jason Leigh in “Single White Female.” But authoritarians cannot help but give into their desire to fall in line behind a leader whose main attribute is how thoroughly he demeans them. Trump himself, as much as he likes to act like a strongman, has the same mentality. When he’s around dictators he views as more dominant than himself, like Russian President Vladimir Putin or North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump flops on his back, begging them for tummy rubs and baby talk about what a good and obedient boy he is.
Trump’s clownish conduct only makes total submission to him more humiliating, and therefore more irresistible, to the Republican leadership. . . . [T]his kind of willful subjugation is a 24/7 way of life for conservatives, whose entire worldview is about power and pecking orders. . . . As they have a hundred times before, they’ll fall on their knees, begging for a chance to serve the fake-tanned fraud they've made their master.
“We’re not a cult,” Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said on “Meet the Press” over the weekend. “We’re not like, OK, there's one person who leads our party.”
But of course that’s what everyone in a cult says.
Zachary Petrizzo, The Daily Beast, November 15, 2022:
His speech was full of his usual lies, self-congratulations, and bombast. He falsely alluded to fraud in the 2020 election (“China played a very active role in the 2020 election"), claimed Russia would have never invaded Ukraine if he were president, said “millions and millions” of immigrants were making “an invasion into our country,” touted his record on “the China virus,” and bizarrely claimed that climate change would only increase sea levels by one-eighth of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years.
But despite playing the hits, it was a decidedly low-energy, recycled speech. The announcement was so lacking in news value that Fox News cut away during the speech . . .
Voters preferred Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to Trump as the GOP nominee in a recent YouGov poll conducted last week. GOP pundits have been slamming Trump since last week, after voters widely rejected his brand of politics at the ballot box. . . .
Trump is counting on Republicans coming back to him. . . . [S]ome major MAGA supporters have been showing some reservations lately.
“Yeah, I’m out,” pro-Trump and Dilbert cartoon creator Scott Adams wrote Saturday after Trump additionally attacked Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Likewise, Ann Coulter ripped into Trump recently and told him to “shut the fuck up, forever.”
Philip Elliot, Time, November 16, 2022:
On Tuesday night, the ex-President . . . made official what he’s been teasing for months. The twice-impeached provocateur whose final days in office inspired a mob to besiege the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn his loss in 2020, will try again in 2024. And, judging from his rhetoric and tone, he’s going to run the same campaign as before—the one that rendered him a loser. After all, any change would require an admission that the race he ran in 2020 was a clunker.
Put another way: Trump is the student who demands a chance to retake a test he failed, but has zero plans to do the reading, review the study guides, or even bring a pencil. . . .
A defiant Trump insisted on Wednesday that he had 232 wins and a relatively small 22 losses. Left unsaid? Trump’s hand-picked candidates for gigs like Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Nevada senator; Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin governor; and secretaries of state in Wisconsin and Arizona all lost marquee races. And most of the wins Trump took credit for would have happened without his endorsement. . . .
Republicans suffered losses in 2018, 2020, and now 2022 under Trump’s auspices. . . .
Republicans haven’t seen him learn any new tricks, and heading into 2024, even an early showing to schedule his classes might not be enough if he doesn’t actually do his homework. And, judging from his all-too-familiar throwback monologue, Trump hasn’t spent any time over the last two years thinking of how he might fill in the exam booklet differently this time around.
“It hasn’t been a joy ride for our great first lady . . . I go home and she says, You look angry and upset. I say, just leave me alone.”
The New York Post has been one of the most reliable pro-Trump outlets for years. No longer, apparently. This was the front page of Rupert Murdoch’s rag on Wednesday:
This was their entire coverage of Trump’s annoucement:
Holy shit. That is amazing . . . and hilarious.