With just over two weeks until Election Day, both candidates are plunging into nonstop rallies and interviews in a bid to get in front of as many voters as possible. (Though notably, Trump has backed out of several recent high profile media appearances, including a sit-down with 60 Minutes.)
Vice President Kamala Harris sat for a contentious exchange with Fox News host Bret Baier this week, and headlined rallies in the swing states of Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan. Former President Donald Trump, for his part, sank to new lows during a suite of appearances—lobbing crude insults at his opponents and rambling incoherently. Let’s review Trump’s very weird week, which, even by Trumpian standards of shock, veered into increasingly alarming territory. Let’s go day-by-day:
Monday
At a Pennsylvania town hall Monday night, Trump ranted about Hannibal Lecter, renewed his longstanding attacks on the “fake news,” and then abandoned answering questions entirely to listen to “Ave Maria,” “Hallelujah,” and “YWCA” for a half hour as he swayed on stage.
“Turn it up louder!” — Trump calls for Ave Maria to be played again while his favorite chart is displayed, which he says “I sleep with every night. I kiss it.” pic.twitter.com/bLCOBNuCjI
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 14, 2024
Tuesday
At an interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait on immigration and economic policy, Trump took a question about inflation as an opportunity to bash Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), an architect of the Green New Deal: “She never even studied the environment in college. She went to a nice college. She came out. She just said—the Green New Scam. She just named all these things.” (Ocasio-Cortez studied international relations and economics at Boston University.)
That exchange was indicative of the interview at large: While Micklethwait repeatedly pressed Trump on the specifics of his economic policies and their potential impacts—higher prices due to tariffs, the loss of immigrant labor due to his proposed mass deportation plan—the former president went on tangent after tangent. When Micklethwait asked him if Google should be broken up, for example, Trump responded with a grievance about voting in Virginia. When the host called him out for his meandering, Trump offered his now-common but unsatisfying explanation: “It’s called the weave.” Other highlights: Trump called Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) “Newscum” and claimed the insurrection represented “a peaceful transfer of power.”
Trump: New scum I call him
Micklethwait: There are CEOs out here if they said that sort of thing about a rival CEO they would be sacked.
Trump: They don’t have to go through pic.twitter.com/eqbLuTwaaN
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 15, 2024
And at an all-women’s town hall hosted by Fox News host Harris Faulkner taped Tuesday, Trump called himself “the father of IVF”… despite the fact that the Dobbs decision—which he made possible by appointing three of the five Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe v. Wade—has undermined IVF access and Senate Republicans twice blocked a vote on a Democrat-led bill to protect the fertility treatment.
Trump: “I’m the father of IVF”
FACT CHECK: IVF is under threat across the country because Trump ended Roe v. Wade and his Project 2025 plan could effectively ban IVF altogether. pic.twitter.com/tEOUiufDjO
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 16, 2024
His campaign dismissed the bizarre remark as a joke. But as former President Barack Obama said at a rally for Harris in Arizona Friday night: “I do not know what that means. You do not either.”
Wednesday
At a town hall for Latino voters hosted by Univision, Trump called Jan. 6, 2021—the day he unleashed a mob on the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election—”a day of love.” He also falsely claimed “nobody died” other than Ashli Babbitt, and “there were no guns.” January 6, as my colleague Mark Follman has covered extensively, was in fact a heavily armed insurrection.
He also doubled down on the racist lies his campaign helped spread about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio eating house pets, claiming without evidence they are “eating other things, too, that they’re not supposed to be.”
Question: Do you really believe that these people are eating people’s pets?
Trump: I was just saying what was reported. And eating other things too that they’re not supposed to. pic.twitter.com/GAXezwPkqe
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 16, 2024
Friday
During a sit-down with Fox and Friends, Trump took viewers’ questions… including softballs from children who asked about his favorite animal and favorite former president. We’ll just leave one of his responses here:
A six-year-old asks Donald Trump what his favorite farm animal is:
“I love cows. But if we go with Kamala you won’t have any cows anymore. I don’t want to ruin this kid’s day. I love cows, I think they’re so cute and so beautiful.”pic.twitter.com/qNxVPQ2suQ
— The American Conservative (@amconmag) October 18, 2024
Saturday
To cap it all off, at a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump called Harris a “shit vice president” and spoke about the penis size of golfer Arnold Palmer. Yes… really.
Trump: You’re a shit Vice President pic.twitter.com/cB2w7nknQM
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 19, 2024
Trump 10 minutes into his Arnold Palmer story: But when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there. They said, oh my God. That’s unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/kRLKWixpT8
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 19, 2024
All this makes it no wonder, then, that Harris is drawing voters’ attention to Trump’s rambling incoherency and insults. “He has called it the weave,” she said at a rally in Detroit Saturday. “I think we here will call it nonsense.”
Correction, Oct. 20: An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as the former VP.
