Obama On Trump’s Recent Odd Behaviour: ‘Can You Imagine If I Did That?’

Barack Obama spent a while Friday night poking fun of Donald Trump’s odd behaviour as of late, warning that America would be getting “an older, loonier” version of him “with no guardrails” if he wins back the presidency next month.

“You would be worried if your grandpa was acting like this,” Obama joked to the crowd in Tucson as he stumped for Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Ruben Gallego, who’s vying for an open Senate seat there.

The former president laid in on Trump’s widely mocked town hall earlier this week, in which the GOP presidential nominee spent nearly 40 minutes swaying on stage to music instead of answering questions.

“Can you imagine if I did that?” Obama said. “Our playlist would probably be better.”

Then, addressing Trump’s recent head-scratching claim that he’s “the father of IVF,” Obama quipped: “I do not know what that means. You do not either.”

And Obama said his successor, who recently claimed the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C. was a “day of love,” made the deadly riot “sound like it was Woodstock.”

Then his tone darkened. “Tucson, we do not need to see what an older, loonier Donald Trump looks like with no guardrails,” the former president warned.

Obama also regaled the crowd with commentary about Trump’s various business ventures, from his $400 gold high-tops to his six-figure watches.

“When he’s not complaining, he’s trying to sell you stuff,” Obama joked. “He’s got his gold sneakers, he’s got the $100,000 watch — says it’s a Swiss watch, but nobody can actually figure out where in Switzerland was this thing made.”

But Obama’s “favourite” Trump product, he said, is a $60 Trump-branded Bible.

“He’s got the Trump Bible ― wants you to buy the word of God, Donald Trump edition,” he continued. “His name’s gonna be on there, embossed, right next Luke and Mark and Matthew,” he said, referencing three of the gospels from the New Testament.

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More Jan. 6 Evidence That Trump Tried To Keep Hidden Is Out

A four-part appendix detailing more about former President Donald Trump’s alleged criminal attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election hit the public record on Friday.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan approved the public release on the federal criminal docket in Washington, D.C., late Thursday, following weeks of Trump requesting to keep the appendix out of the public eye.

Trump told the judge on Oct. 10 he needed more time to weigh his “litigation options” if she decided to admit the source materials publicly, arguing they could be damaging to jurors and the integrity of the case. Chutkan agreed to give him one week to respond and make his arguments at blocking the release. He filed a last-ditch motion early Thursday asking for more time, but was denied.

The appendix is split into four parts with sensitive information redacted. The four volumes total more than 1,800 pages.

Volume I is mostly transcripts of interviews with witnesses who testified before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

There is a new detail in this first volume that stands out, however: testimony before the Jan. 6 committee from a White House valet to Trump.

The valet told the committee that on Jan. 6, when Trump was preparing to watch playback of his speech as violence erupted, Trump asked him if his “speech was cut off.” The valet told the committee that he tried to explain to Trump that it had been.

The record shows the valet appears to be reviewing photos with investigative counsel for the Jan. 6 committee when he is testifying about Trump’s reaction.

“And that’s pretty much the face I got the whole time, and it was kind of like he told me, Really? And I was like, yes sir,” the valet said.

This transcript with the valet has been released before — by House Republicans. But Smith’s version unmasks what they redacted.

The version published in March by Georgia Congressman Rep. Barry Loudermilk, the chair of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, redacted the section where the valet tells investigators that after Trump said “let’s go see” when he was told that his speech was cut off, the valet took off Trump’s outer coat, got a television ready for him and handed him a remote.

“And he starts watching it. And I stepped out to get him a Diet Coke, come back in, and that’s pretty much it for me as he’s watching it and like, seeing it for himself,” the valet testified, according to Smith’s version.

The Republican version of the transcript also redacted when congressional investigators next asked the valet: “So, you set up the TV. Did you set it up for him to watch his speech or live coverage of what was happening at the Capitol?”

“Typically, that’s — a lot of times he’s in that back dining room a lot,” the valet said.

The contents of the transcript with the valet cut off here in Smith’s appendix once investigators asked the valet if he knew, in fact, whether Trump was watching the events at the Capitol.

Volume I also contains a previously public transcript in which Jan. 6 committee investigators ask a witness about whether Trump’s Jan. 6 speech draft was something his staffers categorised as “political” or “official.”

This is a key distinction for the special counsel’s team because it argues that Trump’s activities when he was in a campaign capacity are not official and therefore are prosecutable.

Notably, the witness first told committee investigators they didn’t recollect whether anybody told them that day if Trump’s speech at the Ellipse was a political one.

But “afterward,” the witness said, they knew that transcriptions of Trump’s speech went out via text and it was “styled ‘internal transcript.’”

“And my recollection is internal transcripts were political speeches,” the witness said.

Another transcript in the first volume features testimony from Greg Jacob, former Vice President Mike Pence’s legal counsel. The transcript in the Smith appendix redacts Jacob’s name, but a side-by-side comparison by HuffPost of the Jan. 6 committee transcript and the one Chutkan published Friday, confirms it is him.

Here the material Smith attaches to his immunity arguments zeroes in on testimony in which Jacob told the Jan. 6 committee about attempts by Trump darling and “coup memo” author John Eastman to convince Pence and Pence’s staff that a vice president had the constitutional authority to count slates and object to them.

This meant, according to Eastman, that anything in the existing legislation that governed the count, like the Electoral Count Act, was unconstitutional.

“But if we were to do what [Eastman] suggested, it would mean that none of those debates happened in Congress. None of those Senators would get to make their objections. We would be asserting we have the unilateral authority to do all of that,” Jacob testified.

Jacob expressed that Eastman appeared to understand the scheme wouldn’t work for Pence and it would be rejected if advanced.

“John, isn’t this just a terrible idea?” Jacob asked Eastman.

Eastman “didn’t quite get to saying yes,” Jacob said, but when he told Eastman that, if they took the fight all the way to the Supreme Court, they would lose 9-0, Eastman balked saying it would be 7-2 and he might have Justice Clarence Thomas on his side.

The men went over a few of Thomas’ opinions and Eastman backed off a bit, admitting he would lose 9-0.

Eastman told Jacob “they” would be “really disappointed.”

“They’re going to be really disappointed that I wasn’t able to persuade you,” Eastman allegedly told Jacob.

Eastman didn’t clarify who “they” referred to before he left the meeting with Jacob.

Volume II is heavily redacted and primarily features tweets from Trump in which he said there had been pervasive voter fraud in battleground states and called on state and election officials to address it. In tweets from November 2020, including on and around Election Day, Trump calls on the Supreme Court to decide the outcome or alleges that fraud in those battleground states is an “unsolvable problem.”

The records show how officials including Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt were forced to directly rebut Trump’s bunk claims online but often with demonstrably less effect on social media, given Trump’s reach on Twitter.

The tweets and retweets relate, in part, to Smith’s allegation that Trump was exacting a pressure campaign on election officials predicated on information he knew to be false and despite being told numerous times after Election Day that the election had been the most secure in history. Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, made that announcement on Nov. 13. Former Attorney General William Barr would declare publicly on Dec. 1 that there was no evidence of voter fraud. None of that deterred Trump from pursuing his conspiracy theories, according to prosecutors.

This volume also shows tweets in which Trump calls on people to come to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and not just the first time, Dec. 19, 2020, when he blasted out the invite to his “wild” rally.

Smith’s appendix shows Chutkan that Trump sent out the call multiple times in December, including on Dec. 30, when he wrote, “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!”

The appendix also shows that Dec. 30 post was retweeted by Trump’s official “Team Trump” campaign account. So were several others.

Volume III has sections from Pence’s book, “So Help Me God.” Prosecutors highlighted certain passages in which Pence’s describes trying to console a despondent Trump over his defeat and Pence’s own awareness at the time that if there had been any voter fraud, it wasn’t enough to cost Republicans the 2020 election.

Other sections feature Pence’s recollection of Trump’s repeated calls to him on the eve of the U.S. Capitol attack.

“You gotta be tough tomorrow,” Pence recalled Trump telling him.

There are transcripts from court hearings in the third appendix, including a portion of one that took place in Arizona’s Maricopa County, where Trump and his cohorts peddled a fake elector scheme. Other transcripts come straight from political speeches Trump gave, including one on Jan. 4, 2021, when he endorsed Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue before a Georgia runoff election. Trump spent much of that rally talking about his own reelection campaign and claiming the presidential vote had been rigged.

“And I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you,” Trump said in a stump speech in Georgia, adding that he liked Pence but that if he didn’t “come through for us,” he wouldn’t “like him quite as much.”

Trump would echo those remarks 48 hours later at his speech on the Ellipse.

Volume III also includes copies of electoral vote certificates that so-called Trump electors tried to pass off in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.

Other records released Friday show a budget and trip plan for Jan. 4 to Jan. 6, in which close to $3 million was allotted for events with right-wing groups including Turning Point Action, Tea Party Express and Save the U.S. Senate.

Volume IV contains information that is mostly already in the public record and was obtained through the House Jan. 6 committee. Much of this 384-page document is redacted and it doesn’t offer much new to pore over. There are letters and emails already on the record about the strategy to advance fake electors as well as Pence’s letter issued on Jan. 6, 2021, stating that he did not have unilateral authority to determine which electoral slates should be counted.

It also includes a transcript of a town hall from May 2023 in which Trump defended his remarks made at the rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, and denied telling people to march to the Capitol that day.

The next big deadline Trump must meet in the election subversion case arrives Nov. 7, when he must reply to the 165-page immunity brief special counsel Jack Smith filed on Oct. 2. When he does, it is expected that Trump’s lawyers will emphasise that Trump genuinely believed there was widespread voter fraud and that he acted with the interest of the nation first to reverse his defeat.

Trump’s lawyers are also expected to push back on key distinctions Smith made around Trump as candidate for a new term in office versus Trump as commander-in-chief.

Smith’s immunity brief offered insight into Trump’s alleged conduct and frame of mind before and on Jan. 6, 2021, and included information on alleged efforts to advance fake electors in swing states that he lost to Joe Biden and pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results.

It pored over tweets, emails and testimony from dozens of Trump White House officials, insiders or allies to establish the contours of the sweeping conspiracy that culminated into a violent, armed and deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. Importantly, the brief also addressed which of Trump’s acts were and were not “official,” according to Smith, under the Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity decision.

The Supreme Court’s ruling granted presidents absolute immunity for their core acts and “presumptive” immunity for all other official acts. But actions outside of core acts are not given this protection.

It will be up to Chutkan to decide whether Smith’s interpretations and attempts to rebut the “presumptive” immunity standards can survive the standards the nation’s highest court has now set.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges he faces in the Jan. 6 case.

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JD Vance Really Doesn’t Want To Talk About Donald Trump’s 2020 Election Lies

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance still doesn’t want to talk about Donald Trump’s baseless claims that he was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election.

In a video clip released Friday from an upcoming podcast episode with The New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Vance refused five times to say whether he backs Trump’s conspiracy theory about that year’s vote, even though the former Republican president continues to espouse the claim as he campaigns to retake the White House.

The first time Garcia-Navarro asked Vance, he said he wanted to move forward from the issue ― a go-to line for him lately.

“Donald Trump and I have both raised a number of issues with the 2020 election, but we’re focused on the future. I think there’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020. I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020,” he said, proceeding to list off campaign talking points.

Garcia-Navarro asked Vance the same question a second, third and fourth time. Vance responded in a variety of ways but never answered the question directly. At one point, he tried to pivot the conversation to President Joe Biden’s son and his laptop. At another, he claimed that technology companies acted to “censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes.”

The fifth time Garcia-Navarro prompted Vance to answer, she got visibly frustrated with him.

“I have asked this question repeatedly,” she reminded him. “It is something that is very important for the American people to know. There is no proof, legal or otherwise, that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election.”

Vance then accused her of “repeating a slogan rather than engaging with what I’m saying,” and suggested he doesn’t care that multiple courts ruled against Trump’s election claims.

“I’m worried about Americans who feel like there were problems in 2020,” he said. “I’m not worried about the slogan that people throw: ‘Well, every court case went this way.’”

Eventually, he said that he would have voted against certifying the results of the last presidential election.

The full episode of Garcia-Navarro’s podcast, “The Interview,” is scheduled for release Saturday.

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Ex-Trump Official Calls Former President ‘A Total Fascist’

Retired Army General, Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, now says Trump is a “total fascist” and “fascist to the core,” according to a forthcoming book by Bob Woodward, the famed Watergate journalist.

“He is the most dangerous person ever,” Milley told Woodward for his book “War,” according to The Guardian. “I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realise he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.”

“A fascist to the core,” Milley said.

Part of Milley’s warning about Trump revolves around the former president’s promise to get revenge on his perceived political enemies. Trump has frequently told his supporters on the campaign trail: “I am your retribution.” Milley, who clashed with Trump in the White House and who has since been publicly critical of the current Republican presidential nominee, told Woodward that he’s afraid of being recalled from retirement to be court-martialled if Trump wins the election next month.

Former President Donald Trump speaks as Mark Milley, right, listens during a briefing with senior military leaders at the White House in Washington, Oct. 2019. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Former President Donald Trump speaks as Mark Milley, right, listens during a briefing with senior military leaders at the White House in Washington, Oct. 2019. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

via Associated Press

According to the Guardian’s report on Woodward’s book, Milley warned his former colleagues in Washington that Trump was “a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” adding: “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”

Milley was pointing in particular to how Steve Bannon — who rose to White House strategist after chairing Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and who is now in jail for being found in contempt of Congress — has threatened him. “We’re gonna hold him accountable,” Bannon has said of Milley.

Woodward’s book also details a tense Oval Office discussion Milley had with Trump and his second secretary of defence, Mark Esper. Trump reportedly wanted to get revenge on, or potentially court-martial, William McRaven, the retired Navy admiral who led the 2011 mission in which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed. Trump was enraged that the retired admiral publicly criticised him.

Milley told Woodward he was able to mollify Trump by saying he would “take care” of it but then warned McRaven and other former military commanders to keep off the “public stage” for a while and ease up on their criticisms of Trump.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a HuffPost request for comment about Milley’s reported comments to Woodward.

Milley’s stories about Trump in the White House are similar to recollections from other military figures, including retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, who was Trump’s chief of staff. As noted by the Guardian, Kelly said Trump reportedly insisted that generals should be “like the German generals” serving under Adolf Hitler during World War II, who were “totally loyal.”

On the campaign trail this year Trump has said he’d be a “dictator” on his first day in office. He has also repeatedly used explicitly fascist rhetoric while talking about immigrants in the United States.

Milley is not alone in his assessment that Trump is a fascist.

Robert Paxton, considered one of the foremost scholars of fascism, initially declined to call Trump a fascist during his rise to the White House in 2016, but he changed his tune after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Trump’s incitement of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 removes my objection to the fascist label,” Paxton wrote at the time. “His open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line. The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary.”

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Trump’s Response To Melania’s Abortion Stance Has Critics Saying Same Damning Thing

Donald Trump on Thursday addressed wife Melania Trump’s apparent pro-choice stance on abortion by claiming that he’d told her, “I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

The comment drew ire on social media, however, as critics suggested the former president and current GOP nominee is trying to tell other women exactly what to do with their own bodies via his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, which has led to the banning of or restriction to abortion in multiple states.

“Oh, so Melanie gets to choose but not millions of other women. Got it,” journalist Jemele Hill wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Many other commenters said the same thing. See their comments below.

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FOX NEWS: What’s your reaction to Melania championing abortion rights?

TRUMP: We spoke about it and I said you have to write what you believe. I’m not going to tell you what to do. pic.twitter.com/oPXPwbHMxC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 3, 2024

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FOX NEWS: What’s your reaction to Melania championing abortion rights?

TRUMP: We spoke about it and I said you have to write what you believe. I’m not going to tell you what to do. pic.twitter.com/oPXPwbHMxC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 3, 2024

Melania Trump wrote in her upcoming memoir, “Melania,” that it is “imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government.”

“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body,” which is a belief she’s held “throughout my entire adult life,” she said.

Commentators speculated as to whether Melania Trump’s comments were a genuine break from the GOP’s increasingly extremist position on abortion rights or whether it was some kind of political ploy to gain moderate swing voters for her husband’s campaign. The former president’s own stance on abortion has, after all, changed many, many times over the years. He is now suggesting that individual states control the issue.

Fox News’ Bill Melugin asked Donald Trump on Thursday, “What’s your reaction to Melania’s memoir about championing abortion rights and reproductive freedom?”

The former president answered, “We spoke about it, and I said, ‘You have to write what you believe. I’m not going to tell you what to do. You have to write what you believe.’”

“She’s very beloved. People love our former first lady, I can tell you that,” he continued. “But I said, ‘You have to stick with your heart.’ I’ve said that to everybody, ‘You have to go with your heart.’ There are some people that are very, very far right on the issue, meaning without exceptions, and then there are other people who view it a little bit differently than that.”

Watch the exchange above.

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Yeah, the wifey can write what she believes in her book while knowing her husband and the Republican party are doing everything they can to control and hurt women.

As long as you still know your place, right? GFY pic.twitter.com/zk0SlDGuRp

— ❤️🔥 A To The Z ❤️🔥 (@A_tothe_Z_Amber) October 3, 2024

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GFY pic.twitter.com/zk0SlDGuRp— ❤️‍🔥 A To The Z ❤️‍🔥 (@A_tothe_Z_Amber) October 3, 2024\n\n\n","options":{"_hide_media":{"label":"Hide photos, videos, and cards","value":false},"_maxwidth":{"label":"Adjust width","placeholder":"220-550, in px","value":""},"_theme":{"value":"","values":{"dark":"Use dark theme"}}},"provider_name":"Twitter","title":"❤️‍🔥 A To The Z ❤️‍🔥 on Twitter / 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Yeah, the wifey can write what she believes in her book while knowing her husband and the Republican party are doing everything they can to control and hurt women.

As long as you still know your place, right? GFY pic.twitter.com/zk0SlDGuRp

— ❤️🔥 A To The Z ❤️🔥 (@A_tothe_Z_Amber) October 3, 2024