Pence boasts, as Trump has, "apprehensions on our southern border are down by 70%." They are only down that much from *the Trump-era peak in May*. They've been higher under Trump than they were in the late Obama era.Of course, the amusing thing is that at times, they bragged that apprehensions were up, so you would know they were hard at work.
Pence calls the USMCA the "largest trade deal in American history." That's not even close to true. Aside from the fact that there was already an agreement with Mexico in Canada, those three countries *and nine others* were in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Pence regularly just starts saying false claims Trump has made up. Trump himself hasn't even used this one in a while
Pence says Trump wanted to wait to see the "strong, unified Republican vote" in the House before coming out to speak at the rally.
Pence has almost as much reason to fear the Ukraine investigations as Trump, because he's involved.
Trump begins by touting the greatness of both America and his 2016 election night. Returning to his usual December nonsense, he asks everyone if they've noticed that everyone is saying Merry Christmas "again."
Trump: "By the way, it doesn't really feel like we're being impeached."
"We" aren't. YOU are.
On the Impeachment podcast yesterday, Brian Lehrer commented about that statement, saying it's evidence of his guilt on the Zelensky call. Trump defenders are saying on that call, Trump uses the term "us" (in "do us a favor") meaning it wasn't a favor for him personally. Lehrer says his use of the royal "we" talking about impeachment means he was using the royal "us" in the call to Zelensky. When I first heard this quote about "we're being impeached," my thought was that he doesn't want to own that it's him personally who's worthy of impeachment. When he takes credit for something groups of people are doing, he uses "I" and "me". But he doesn't want to take the credit for being impeachable. He wants to share that distinction. I don't know. Lehrer could be right.
To my point:
Trump says Michigan is having its best year of all time, but because of him, not because of "local" government, like the state's Democratic governor, who is doing a bad job.
Trump's team tried this two-step with Louisiana also, claiming that the state was having unprecedented economic success because of Trump but also that its economy was performing terribly because of the Democratic governor.
Trump repeats maybe my favorite of all of his lies, claiming he was once named "Man of the Year" in Michigan. He adds, "By, I think -- somebody, whoever. I was the Man of the Year in Michigan."
There is a protester. Trump tells the crowd that "you're about to hear the greatest speech you've ever heard," but the "fake news" will lead with the "massive riots." He then calls the protester "a slob...a real slob."
Trump is criticizing "the security company" and/or police for politely accosting anti-Trump protesters. "You've gotta get a little bit stronger than that, folks," he says. The president is continuing to rant about the handling of this one protester. He says she could only have made her "horrible gesture" because "the security man let her have so much time."
Trump says presidents, prime ministers and some dictators say "sir, we'd like to buy a nuclear submarine," but he says no, he turns them down.
Trump says F-35 pilots are better-looking than Tom Cruise, who is a good guy, with "equal" faces but better bodies.
He's constantly commenting on men's beauty. Don't tell me he isn't really gay. Which would be no problem, except he's a nasty, woman-hating gay.
Trump tells his multi-sir story about the guy whose wife thought he was a "loser" but now that his 401(k) is up 72% she calls him "darling" and is in love with him. He does not identify the man as an NYPD cop, as he usually does.
Trump says the economy would've crashed under Hillary Clinton. He then scoffs at people who say Obama deserves credit for this economy, arguing that "you were dying."
Trump claims that "20,000 people" had to leave the rally because they couldn't get in and it's too cold to watch on a screen. If anyone is out there reporting, please feel free to let me know if this is true.
"I don't think we've ever had an empty seat," Trump says, though he has had empty seats at multiple rallies, such as October in Minneapolis, July in Greenville, October 2018 in Houston.
Trump says "nobody ever leaves our speeches," they only get up to go to the bathroom. Even die-hard supporters regularly stream out of his speeches when they go late and long.
"Choice. You finally got Choice. They've been trying to get it for almost 50 years," Trump says of the Veterans Choice program Obama signed into law in 2014.
Trump invokes his son, saying that Elizabeth Warren had a big crowd in New York but Barron Trump could go into Central Park and get the same or "a bigger crowd" though he's 13.
I think that's the first time he's ever mentioned Barron.
Trump says that when he sees any vacated seat, he wants it to be filled immediately because he doesn't want the media to misreport what is happening. He then starts talking about impeachment, then starts talking about 2016 election night again.
Trump makes his usual claim that Clinton had a mere 500 people at her last rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she had 4,200 people.
Trump claims newspaper polls are even faker than the actual fake news in the newspapers, baselessly calling them "suppression polls."
The Trump team said Trump would begin with a Christmas greeting and then talk about impeachment for 30 minutes. Trump has barely spoken of impeachment -- every time he's approached it, he has started rambling about something else.
"Their debates are dying. Who wants to watch Boot Edge Edge. Boot Edge Edge. Boot Edge Edge...it's an unpronounceable name. That's why they call him Mayor Pete. Mayor Pete. Mayor Pete." Trump mocks Buttigieg's height after mocking his name, holding his hand up to his chest and saying, "I've had you up to here, Mayor Pete."
Trump talks at length about Buttigieg's name, then moves on to Mexico's share of the auto industry, then goes back to impeachment.
"I announced three months ago that I'm running. Right," says Trump, who officially launched his campaign six months ago and who registered to run immediately after his inauguration nearly three years ago.
Trump says people think it was 17 Republican candidates in 2016 but it was really 18, people forget. It was 17 including Jim Gilmore, who he has previously identified as the 18th people forget about.
It's like impeachment is an electrified fence for Trump tonight. He keeps touching it with like one scripted line, then retreating to something more comfortable. He's now on how successful he was with The Apprentice.
Trump calls Comcast "Commiecast."
Trump says he never sees a lobby because the Secret Service takes him on private routes, through basements and up and down various flights of stairs and such. He says Hillary Clinton would not be able to do these walks, she would be too sleepy. A "lock her up" chant.
Trump on James Comey: "Did I do a great job when I fired his ass?"
"Rush Limbaugh said it. Sean Hannity said it. Laura Ingraham said it. TUCKER said it. Ainsley said it. But a lot of people have said it: there's nobody in the world that could've handled that stuff that happened (with the Russia investigation)..."
Trump tells his usual timeline-inverting tale about how Schiff tricked people with a phony account of the Ukraine call, but then Trump released the transcript and people felt better. Trump released the call document before Schiff spoke, not after.
"THEY'RE the ones that should be impeached. Every one of them."
Trump begins to mock Schiff's looks, then says patently falsely, "with Me Too, I never even think about looks anymore, OK? I don't talk about looks of a male or female," then says he'll say, just one last time, that Schiff is "not exactly the best looking guy."
Ahem...Tom Cruise? F-E5 pilots? How long ago did he comment about their looks? Also, this remark about Schiff is how he talks about women, only not in as nasty terms.
"He's a pathological liar," Trump says of Schiff.
"I'm the first person to ever get impeached and there's no crime. Like, I feel guilty."
He should feel guilty. There's lots of crime.
Trump says this doesn't feel like a dark impeachment era: "With Richard Nixon, I just see it as a very dark era, very dark...I don't know about you, but I'm having a good time. It's crazy."
LOL. He's absolutely freaking out. On Twitter, on TV, and now at a rally.
Trump demands that Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who supported impeachment, return his old campaign donations: "Give me back the damn money."
Did he say why he donated to her in the first place?
Appearing to surprise some of the crowd, Trump says that the late Democratic congressman John Dingell might be "looking up," like from hell, rather than "looking down" from heaven. He adds, "Maybe." Trump said this while bashing Dingell's wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell. He bitterly complains that he gave the late John Dingell "the A+," 10 out of 10, post-death treatment, but now Debbie Dingell is supporting his impeachment.
Nasty asshole.
This is an unusually bitter speech even for a Trump rally speech.
Trump falsely claims Obama left him "142" judicial vacancies (it was 104, because of McConnell's open and successful obstruction strategy).
After this speech-long barrage of lies and inaccuracies, Trump says he is very careful to be correct with his claims because "the stupid Washington Post" will give him a Pinocchio if he is a little bit off.
Trump says for the second time tonight that he told Melania "you're so lucky I took you on this journey."
Hahaha. I bet that's just what she thinks.
Trump makes an aggrieved face while doing his usual complaint about how he is more elite than the elite: "Oh really? I went to better schools. We won't talk about homes, even though your homes are nicer."
Trump boasts about low African-American unemployment, then spots an African-American in the crowd, then asks the man if Trump pays him. He explains, "I have a group of African-American guys, and gals by the way, that follow me around, and they think I pay them, and I don't."
Trump claims that the Ukrainian prosecutor Biden pushed to get ousted was "looking at your son and your son's company." Hunter Biden was not under investigation, and the investigation into the company where Hunter sat on the board was dormant.
Trump says he wants, "in many ways," Biden to win the nomination. He then says he has the largest crowds in history. He says he is surprised that this venue is so small, but Battle Creek doesn't have many big venues, but he still wanted to be here.
Trump used to excitedly tout a finding from research firm Sentier that income gains during his tenure have totaled $5,000 per household. He then decided that it was actually $10,000. He just said it is "more than $10,000."
Trump says that no great salesman boasts that he is a great salesman. It's the quiet types that are actually good, he says.
Now that's truly bizarre.
Trump is attacking Beto O'Rourke.
Does he think O'Rourke is still in the running?
Trump on his effort to rescind energy efficiency regulations for light bulbs: "Why do I always look so orange? You know why? Because of the new light. They're terrible."
Trump says that you used to press a dishwasher once and it was an "explosion" and five minutes later steam would come out. "Now you press it 12 times. Women tell me."
So far this month, the president has claimed that modern efficient toilets require people to flush 10 or 15 times and modern efficient dishwashers require people to press buttons 12 times.
Sinks. Showers. And what goes with a sink and a shower?" Crowd: "TOILETS!" The president: "Ten times. Right? Ten times." He adds, "Not me, of course, not me. But you."
I'm dying here. After he first said that about toilets, there was a wave of jokes about him plugging up toilets because of his diet. But, why doesn't he have to flush 10 times when everybody else does if the problem is the toilets?
Trump is now complaining of media coverage of his previous comments about people flushing toilets 15 times. This is the weirdest Trump rally in a long, long time.
And that is saying multitudes.
Trump tells his inaccurate story about Hillary Clinton supposedly saying the KORUS trade deal with South Korea would produce 250,000 new jobs. She didn't. Obama said generally increasing the US share of trade with Asia could mean 250,000 jobs. It wasn't about the Korea deal. Trump wrongly describes Obama's "magic wand" comment about manufacturing, then says the US has gained "600,000" manufacturing jobs, though it is 497,000 through November.
Trump called for the impeachment of no-longer-president Barack Obama over his Obamacare "keep your doctor" comments ("I think we should impeach him for that. Let’s impeach him"), and suggested Obama should've been impeached for payments to Iran.
Trump, touting his trade policies, is criticizing "globalists." He says, "The globalists are passé."
Trump falsely claims Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador used to refuse to take criminals back when the US wanted to deport them. Though there may have been scattered such cases, all three have always been considered cooperative, not "recalcitrant," by the US government.
Trump says he used to be a donor to Chuck Schumer and also wants that money back: "He used to kiss my ass, Chuck Schumer. He'd do anything. He would have done anything for me." He says, "They act so pompous, they act so righteous."
I see a pattern here - the people he donated to aren't bowing to his demands. He paid for service; he wants it.
At more than 1 hour 42 minutes, this is now Trump's longest rally speech ever. He is not far from his longest speech in office, the two-hour ramble at the CPAC summit.
"How badly was Flint? Who was -- who were the geniuses that did that to you?" After decrying the Flint water calamity, Trump says, "I know your previous governor was a Republican, but I was not a big fan of his. I was not."
Paris. The Yellow Vests. French foreign aid. "Look at gas prices now." "The American embassy in Jerusalem." "We don't apologize." Trump on, I think but am not sure, the inspector general: "He's hit the golden pond."
I wonder how many people have left by now.
Trump falsely claims people had been trying to get a Right to Try medical law passed for "49 years." These laws are a libertarian-conservative creation of this decade; the first Right to Try state law was passed less than six years ago.
Trump is now musing about which of the people in the crowd is tough enough to arrest a MS-13 member.
Trump on San Francisco: "It rains, and it's filth, and it's needles, and it's drugs, and it's you know what, it's everything, and it goes right into those storm sewers...right out into the Pacific..." He's shown no evidence for his claims of needles ending up in the Pacific. Trump claims his government has given San Francisco a "tremendous dollar fine" over its supposed environmental violations. The EPA sent a notice of violation but did not impose a fine. Trump tells Speaker Nancy Pelosi to go back home and "take care of the homeless and take care of the filth."
Trump, talking trade, says that European countries "are as bad as China, just smaller...as bad as China, just smaller."
Trump again talks about Obama. He says France and Germany like Obama better than him but they should because he's doing his job and being tough on them.
"I could be loved in Germany," Trump says, saying "my father came from Germany." (His father was of German descent but was born in New York. His grandfather immigrated from what is now Germany.)
Trump has concluded his longest rally speech ever, which was also one of most bitter and most rambling. Trump's impeachment night speech was 2 hours 1 minute, one minute shy of his longest speech ever.
Two hours of batshit crazy oral diarrhea.
From Aaron Rupar's coverage:
Jesus, Debbie. Don't tell him that. That's what he was after.
Maybe talk to Debbie Dingell.
His face is especially dark for this rally. Do you suppose he thought more makeup wouldn't look orange? Or is that just a new shade?
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