Trump Aborts Interview after Smart Black Women Ask Tough Questions

/182 Comments/in /by

I’m an outlier about the value of the disastrous interview Donald Trump just did with three Black women journalists: Rachel Scott, Kadia Goba, and Harris Faulkner. I think the interview will help Trump reclaim the attention of the press. I think he used it to seed spurious attacks on Vice President Harris that will work to placate his dumb trolls. And I think journalists are falling into the same patterns of enabling this atrocious behavior as they have for years.

The interview was delayed a half hour. Journalists involved said a fight over whether the journalists could fact check in real time caused the delay. Trump claimed there was a sound problem.

Scott started by asking what Trump would say to Black voters after the shoddy treatment he has given to Black people (this Aaron Fritscher thread documents that all of them were things Trump himself said, but they include his attack on the Squad and other Black journalists) and his hosting of Nick Fuentes. Trump responded by accusing Scott of being rude and ABC of being fake news. He filibustered. His mispronounced “Kamala.” She asked for an answer.

She then asked if it was appropriate for other Republicans to call Harris a DEI hire. Trump deflected the question by asking Scott to define the term. Ultimately, he didn’t answer that question. He then falsely claimed that Harris switched her identity from Indian to Black. “All of a sudden she became a Black person.”

Trump’s most noxious supporters were prepared for that attack line, with Laura Loomer releasing Harris’ birth certificate, claiming that because it lists her father as Jamaican, she’s not Black. Others posted old articles that describe her as South Asian without ever saying she’s not also Black.

As is the general pattern, journalists ran to ask Republicans in Congress about Trump’s disgusting behavior. As is normal, they instead gaslighted, daring journalists to call them out, yet another means by which Trump disciplines Republicans, by demanding they act stupid for him in public.

And then a bunch of mainstream outlets parroted Trump’s words, without labeling them clearly as false, much less demonstrating that Trump staged his tantrum to attract attention by being as outrageous as possible.

It’s certainly possible that, this time, it’ll be different. It’s certainly possible that, this time, Trump won’t succeed in reclaiming the media attention without ever paying a price for his racism. It’s certainly possible that Kamala Harris will be able to flip this tired old script.

It’s certainly possible, too, that American voters are simply uninterested in the latest Birther conspiracy peddled by a conman.

But to my mind, one of the most important takeaways is that the former President couldn’t even take this damned interview to term: According to Scott, his handlers halted the interview after around 35 minutes, just as he got his first question about Project 2025.

He aborted an interview after three smart Black women asked tough questions.

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182 replies
  1. Mark Gardiner says:

    He actually did, kind of, answer the DEI question when pressed one more time after he questioned Harris’ racial identity. His response: “I really don’t know, I mean I really don’t know. COULD BE. I know there are some, there are plenty, I…” (emphasis mine)

    • Rayne says:

      If you mean he regurgitated some random words in response to a question, sure, he answered.

      Welcome to emptywheel.

      • Mark Gardiner says:

        Been reading EW for years. Guess I should be pleased to earn a snarky Rayne putdown the first time I comment. Subtly dropping in his signal as he did here, whether consciously or just instinctively, is one of the ways Trump gets negative innuendo out there. It was not just some random words.

    • dopefish says:

      Regarding the slight tangent of the right’s attacks calling Vice President Harris a “DEI hire”…

      Over at motherjones.com, Kat Abughazaleh has a short, great video explaining this racist dogwhistle to the rest of us.

      “You hear ‘DEI’ and you probably think of your job’s HR department,” explains Kat Abughazaleh. “But for your QAnon uncle, ‘DEI’ is an activation phrase to send the most unhinged memes in the family group chat.”

      (I know that’s pretty obvious to readers here, but you can send them that video when a family member tells you the “DEI hire” attack isn’t racist or sexist.)

    • Terrence says:

      George Conway quipped that Trump was the DEI president: deranged, egotistical and incompetent. Seems like that, actually, works better as the IDE president.

  2. PieIsDamnGood says:

    A very literal example of him forcing media attention from NPR’s front page. https://imgur.com/a/PmZ28RQ

    The previous headline was “The story behind the woman who inspired Harris to break barriers” now the top story is “Trump attacks Kamala Harris’ racial identity at Black journalism convention”

  4. coalesced says:

    35 minutes would place the him middle of 2nd trimester. ~19 weeks. That would make it illegal in 25 states.

  5. Badger Robert says:

    The Bulwark guys thought it wasn’t that tough. Politicians train themselves to handle interviews like that, in the view of the Bulwark guys.
    So Ms. Wheeler’s second to the last paragraph is the takeaway. The Trump campaign now knows how little self control is left, and they know if they tell Trump some garbage like the VP doesn’t matter, he will repeat it in public.
    He was never smart and now,…

  6. Matt Foley says:

    Q: What is a black job, sir?
    A: A black job is anybody that has a job.

    Whew, glad he cleared that up.

    • Terrence says:

      I really wish Ms. Scott had followed up with the question, “Is president of the United States a black job?”

    • xyxyxyxy says:

      I would have loved to see where this would have gone if he answered “A black job is any job held by a Black person,” but somehow he held back from going there.

  7. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Do “real” journalists ever run to ask Democrats what they think of Trump’s atrocious behavior. Or do they treat them like David Brooks’s diners in small-town Pennsylvania – a trope into whose mouths they can put whatever they please?

    • SteveBev says:

      Taliking of putting putting tropes into the minds/mouths of others:
      Harris Faulkner went from
      1 audibly reacting “Oh My Goodness!!” at Trump’s first attack on Rachel Scott for her supposed rudeness to him,
      to 2 explaining in a post match take away on Fox News that she could tell the audience enjoyed it “What I loved about , what you couldn’t see today, how much of that audience was enjoying the moment of hearing from a candidate that they might not always agree with, and that is the whole point, that that . ..”
      https://youtu.be/w67YFU7ET-A
      1 @ 1:07
      2 @ 13:06

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        My, Harris Faulkner or his editors were not at the same convention that was televised. I didn’t hear anybody enjoy it. Most seemed flabbergasted at the abuse and mistreatment of the moderators and the audience. Trump showed up, insulted everyone for not being his fawning acolytes, and slumped off in a huff.

        As Marcy suggests, that’s the performance he came to give. He gave it. Whatever an whomever he cares about, none of them were at that convention.

      • SteveBev says:

        @EoH

        Harris Faulkner was at the convention in the sense of being on the stage as part of the panel, and to use the room as a backdrop for her post match analysis for Fox

        But she was not present in the sense of being mindful of (with the purpose to report accurately on) the collective reaction (including her own) to Trump

        She was there to present a puréed version of it for easy and agreeable consumption by Faux News talking heads and their audience of saps. This was definitely not the convention everyone else watched.

        • RitaRita says:

          I thought she was on the panel primarily to tee up Fox-type leading questions for Trump and to clean up any messes that he made. As in, “You didn’t mean you’d be a dictator, did you?”. I’d be surprised if Trump didn’t condition his appearance on having her on the panel. No wonder he was upset when her mike was not working.

      • Matt Foley says:

        I am pretty sure Faulkner meant “Oh my goodness, you are so right! She was so rude!”. Faulkner worships the ground he walks on. She threw him several slow pitches to try to help him regain control.

  8. Zirczirc says:

    I differ with you somewhat, EW. Yes, he has managed to direct attention to himself momentarily, but from everything I have seen/read, his camp had felt it was cutting into democrats’ traditional advantage with black voters, especially with men, and wanted to build on that perceived momentum. I don’t see how this particular moment in the media sunlight helps him do that. I suspect he’s just shot himself in the foot with regard to achieving that specific goal.

    Zirc

    • Richard G del Rio says:

      I do not agree with your premise but following your train of thought maybe it was a tacit concession that the Harris candidacy put that goal out of reach? Therefore, in his mind better to seize the headlines and rededicate to his White base.

  9. fatster says:

    O/T Khalid Sheik Mohammed to plead guilty.

    https://apnews.com/article/sept-11-khalid-sheikh-mohammed-guantanamo-76a2dc11440cf9c4c287ee69bd742aa3

    [Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the SAME USERNAME and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. I’ve changed the username on this comment to match the one you first used back in 2008; I assume you didn’t intend to use your RL name. You’ve also accrued +5000 comments and are therefore grandfathered on the site’s username minimum standard. Thanks. /~Rayne]

  10. Rayne says:

    Some non-journalist Black Americans have been concerned about the National Association of Black Journalists, that they would platform Trump and extend his abuse of that privilege for his own aims while abusing Black Americans.

    As noted in the NYT piece, NABJ’s co-chair Karen Attiah stepped down yesterday because she didn’t approve of NABJ giving Trump this platform; how did it get past her? Who in NABJ approved this, and why? There’s a story there though the audience may be the Black American community who needs to know why ahead of future events they’ll depend on for information.

    Maya King, a female Black journalist, is bylined on that NYT article. King may be a member of NABJ — there’s nothing in the article or her bio to indicate if she is. A Black journalist definitely should cover this event but it should be clear to readers if they are/aren’t a member of NABJ.

      • Rayne says:

        Agreed. That headline stands out from all the others about the event as well as article’s overall voice.

        Though I do wonder if Matt Brown and another contributor are NABJ members.

    • Peterr says:

      The Guardian has a piece up with quite the headline:

      Black journalists respond to ‘disastrous’ Trump panel at annual convention

      Many expressed frustration with National Association of Black Journalists for inviting ex-president ‘into our home’

      April Ryan was — as expected — eloquent in expressing her disgust. And she was but the first quoted by The Guardian.

      • dopefish says:

        The Guardian also has another article up about it, byline Andrew Lawrence:

        Incredulous laughter, audible gasps: Trump’s performance at Black journalists’ panel left him exposed

        When ABC’s Rachel Scott opened the proceedings by asking the former president his impetus for addressing the Black journalists, women and Chicagoans in the crowd who have been regularly subject to his hostility, Trump dismissed the question as “horrible” and called Scott “nasty” before turning his bluster meter up to 11.

      • Rayne says:

        That was a pretty powerful article, gave voice to much of the frustration experienced by NABJ members and attendees.

        This excerpt is so raw, I can almost feel their nausea:

        The journalist Natasha S Alford wrote about the difficulty of watching a decades-old, once well-respected organization make the decision to host Trump.

        “On a personal note, NABJ has meant a lot to so many of us, so this has been hard to see play out on multiple levels,” Alford wrote on X. “But I will never forget that Donald Trump insulted and was hostile to a Black female journalist in our own communal space and was unchecked. And the feeling of powerlessness watching it.”

        This event was a warning — I can’t convey this strenuously enough to white people who haven’t experienced this kind of aggression from Trump or his minions. If he is willing to be such an overtly nasty piece of work right now while he is supposed to be persuading Black voters to pick him, how will he act should he manage to “win” the election, when there are no more restraints, no guardrails on his behavior?

      • Error Prone says:

        Peterr – Guardian has another item, an eyes on the prize thing which has been undercovered by U.S. media, even when touting Harris: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/01/kamala-harris-working-class-voters – headlined, “Kamala Harris needs to mobilise voters around class – not race.” The item expands on that theme. Subheadline: “If liberals insist workers should focus more on race than shared class interests, they give right wing ammo for their culture war.” Neoliberal identity politics might win, might not, but why not go for the whole enchilada?

  11. Peterr says:

    Radley Balko re-posted a bluesky post that screencapped two tweets from others, saying that the delay at the start was because Trump was threatening to tank the event if they did live fact-checking of him, as they had said they would.

    Somewhere else — can’t find it right now — said that NABJ eventually agreed not to do live fact checking in the room during the event. This did not prevent them from doing so in real-time online, however, in which phrases like “Pants on Fire” and “no evidence” and “unsupported claim” and similar judgments figure regularly:

    https://nabjonline.org/blog/nabj-to-host-former-president-trump-for-a-conversation-in-chicago-during-its-annual-convention/

  12. Tech Support says:

    It may help him reclaim the attention of the press, but I don’t think that will be in a good way. The corrosively passive voice of the NYT notwithstanding, this interview was such a colossal shit show that at least one venue that regularly engages in softball journalism is lighting Trump on fire:

    https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/31/donald-trump-kamala-harris-race-attacks-00172149

    This piece, currently on the masthead, is the most brutally worded review of the event from a “neutral” outlet I’ve seen so far.

    More important than this individual event however is the continuing dynamic where the “grown ups” in the GOP are openly begging for the campaign and it’s surrogates to back off the racism and the misogyny with little to no success. We’re on the 2nd day in a row of Sen. Murkowski basically telling the candidates through the media to STFU. Trey Gowdy going out of his way to boost childless women on FOX, and so forth.

    I think that the most surprising thing to me is that while I expected Trump to be perma-triggered until November, I thought Vance had proven his capacity to pivot. Maybe the book on him is not that he’s a callow opportunist, but that he’s been sincerely radicalized and cannot separate his longer-held wacko opinions from his more recently adopted ones, and is now incapable of moderating himself for the national audience.

    • John Paul Jones says:

      Politico has suddenly (today!) developed a sorta-kinda paywall. I don’t think you have to pay (yet), but in order to read, they’re demanding your email, etc. Sucks.

    • Molly Pitcher says:

      If Politico is ‘neutral’, I’m a Republican.

      From Google:
      “In 2021 it was acquired for reportedly over 1 billion USD by Axel Springer SE, a German news publisher and media company. Axel Springer is Europe’s largest newspaper publisher and had previously acquired Business Insider.” ” Axel Springer is owned by Mathias Döpfner (born 15 January 1963) is a German businessman, author, art collector, and journalist. He is the CEO and 22% owner of media group Axel Springer SE.”

      From Wikipedia:
      “In September 2022, the Washington Post disclosed an email from Döpfner to executive colleagues before the 2020 US presidential election, praising specific policies of President Donald Trump and expressing a desire for Trump’s re-election. He described this email as an “ironic gesture” aimed at those critical of Trump, highlighting his concern about journalism’s increasing polarization”
      And:
      “Döpfner is married to Ulrike Weiss, who is the daughter of Ulrich Weiss, a former executive of Deutsche Bank AG. The couple has three sons, with one of them serving as chief of staff to entrepreneur Peter Thiel. In 2016, Döpfner also had a child with billionaire art collector Julia Stoschek”

      • dopefish says:

        Yes, Politico has a definite right-leaning bias. They sometimes publish pieces critical of Trump but more often they softpedal him.

        Similar to The Hill, you can read interesting stories at politico.com (and I’ve sometimes shared them here), but always keep in mind their bias.

    • RipNoLonger says:

      That was a great clip to watch. There was obviously respect between Biden and Harris during the debates but there were (are?) differences in perspectives and approaches.

  14. c-i-v-i-l says:

    An excerpt from journalist Raquel Willis’s response (she cancelled her appearance at the NABJ and is boycotting the organization):

    Donald Trump is a known quantity, as a former President who has wreaked particular havoc on communities on the margins and our democracy for years. There is no vetting him. He is a fraudster. He is a white supremacist. He is a misogynist. He is an insurrectionist. He is a sexual abuser. He is a bigot. And he has been especially anti-truth and anti-journalism since his political ascendance.

    The old guard of the journalism industry can not continue to act like we live in “business as usual” times. Trump has banked on “bothsideism” and “neutrality” for far too long, and it’s disappointing that a Black-led and Black-serving organization is legitimizing him and rehabilitating his image under these guises. We have to wonder if NABJ’s leadership has learned nothing from the last eight years of Trump media coverage.

    Without moral clarity, all journalists fail. “This is just my job” is an insufficient response to the growing threat of fascism and existing systems of oppression. When we don’t forcefully expose and rebuke white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, and careerism, we feed them. The power and access NABJ leadership seeks by platforming Trump has already come back to bite, but it’ll undoubtedly do so even more in the future.

    http://www.raquelwillis.com/blog/2024/7/31/statement-on-nabj-and-trump

  15. MsJennyMD says:

    Another opportunity for Trump to bait, bash and blame creating drama. Now he is back in the headlines. The MSM are covering his natural nastiness so he gets attention. Remember he likes press whether it is positive or negative. As long as it is about him. This is who he is. No different then descending an escalator in 2015 with his foul remarks, however people are FINALLY calling out his abusive, bully and cruel behavior. The man is a Chi Sucker.

    • Savage Librarian says:

      If Tim Walz doesn’t become the VP choice, I think a special Cabinet position should be created for him. A Cabinet position that deals directly with Human Rights issues, independent of DOJ, DOE, DOL, DOD. It could be a coordinating and training department. He has strong skill sets in how to deal with bullies.

    • Eichhörnchen says:

      I agree. If Trump is able to bait Harris or her campaign into responding to the specifics of his statements, he will have pulled her into his mud and regained control of the narrative. So far, Harris appears to recognize the bait and to have no intention of taking it.

  16. FL Resister says:

    I had the misfortune to watch the “interview.”
    It consisted mainly of Trump talking over the moderators, repeatedly insulting one of them, using the old trope of not being able to understand another, not answering questions, engaging in lie-mongering about abortion, immigrants at the border, and claiming he could cure inflation by drilling for more oil. Just a bunch of garbage nonsense to push his conspiracies and magical thinking. And he repeatedly lied about why they started late!

    Oh yeah and Trump claimed he “won” the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

    • dopefish says:

      But if there is a positive side to this, its that perhaps some undecided American voters saw this event, or will see footage of it on YouTube, or will read some of the coverage of it, and decide that maybe they don’t want to re-elect a total racist asshole to the office of President of the United States.

        • Rayne says:

          Gives me gooseflesh thinking about his tiny nasty mits touching her water bottle. I’m not a germaphobe but I detest encroachment of personal space and items like that.

      • posaune says:

        Yes. this. seemed like an aggression into the panelist’s space (and personal property)! Disgusting! Who does that?

        • ExRacerX says:

          Disgusting, entitled, rude, unsanitary, invasive, creepy, passive-aggressive, sneaky (Scott’s head was turned away), misogynistic, childish, petty, and just plain WEIRD.

      • klynn says:

        Rayne,

        Now I think I prefer “fucking creepy and nasty” to “weird” as Trump’s descriptor!

      • Booksellerb4 says:

        ##!&&**$$??##!! + creepy & nasty, fer sure!
        Another “D” for Don:
        He’s gone beyond deplorable.
        De·gen·er·ate
        adjective

        1. having lost the physical, mental, or moral qualities considered normal and desirable; showing evidence of decline:

        noun

        1. an immoral or corrupt person:
        “get out of my house, you degenerate!”
        verb

        1. decline or deteriorate physically, mentally, or morally:
        “the quality of life had degenerated”

        I try to re-assure myself that there’s a collective force of good will in motion that will prevail. :)

      • Knowatall says:

        I don’t disagree about the predatory invasion of her space, but it appears he is opening the bottle (counter-clockwise twist), not tightening it. It appears to me to be more of a nervous tic/unconscious presumption of privilege than his usual petty bullying.

        • Rayne says:

          There’s a bottle of water at his right hand which is substantially closer to him than her bottle. Nope.

          He made instead the assumption that the bottle he sees — any bottle he sees — is his for the taking.

          Think like a narcissist. Of course the bottle is his. Of course he can grab her bottle, just like he can grab her time/space/pussy.

        • harpie says:

          Rayne: Of course the bottle is his.
          Of course he can grab her bottle,
          just like he can grab her time/space/pussy.

          Yes, that’s Depraved Donnie’s core truth.

      • likeagodcow says:

        I don’t know debate rules, but I’ve never understood why it was okay for him to full-on stalk Hillary Clinton on the debate stage. That’s made my flesh crawl for years, especially that a whole room of people saw this and what? decorum? kept anyone from saying “Hey, back the fuck off her.” SO gross.

      • Alan Charbonneau says:

        My thought is that he did it to make it hard for her to open, a nine-year-old “getting even” mentality. He has to get even for she, a black woman, made him look bad. If he frustrates her and it takes her awhile to open it, good; if she can’t get it open, better—it shows women are weak.

  18. Savage Librarian says:

    Well, one thing is for certain, Donald still hasn’t committed to Kamala’s rallying call:

    “If you got something to say, say it to my face!”

    Nope. Donald is so cowardly that he has to use proxies. Well, at least we now know what to expect if he ever does decide to man up. Thanks for the dress rehearsal, Donald.

    • LargeMoose says:

      I’ll bet he’ll never debate her either: He’s too full of “CHIC-KEN!” nuggets…
      I hope he does try though. She’ll wipe the floor with him.

      • posaune says:

        I saw one clip where a reporter asked Kamala if Trump was afraid to debate her. Her pitch-perfect response: “He should be.”

  20. BobBobCon says:

    I just watched Harris speak for the first time on the campaign trail this year, with a short retort to Trump today, and my reaction is she is genuinely good at this.

    She kept the focus on issues like abortion and democracy and I thought brought Trump’s attacks into the larger context of his contempt for freedom over all, rather than acting wounded. She spoke from a position of strength rather than being forced to respond.

    The contrast with him is striking and I don’t think that’s accidental on her part – she’s accentuating his instability and her readiness to lead. The whispers from official DC that she was a weak campaigner are definitely off base. She didn’t stand out in 2020 primaries because it was a strong Democratic field, but of course the pundit class couldn’t admit that.

    There will obviously be millions of Republicans who are unable to deal with a smart, coherent, qualified Black woman, but I think she has the kind of confidence and command that can convince even more people she’s the right candidate. I can see why the GOP is sweating.

    • Savage Librarian says:

      I agree. I think she has learned a great deal since 2020. She is so much stronger and smarter than Trump. And I’m sure her VP will be strong as well.

      • Tech Support says:

        Not to underestimate what she accomplished in her California races, but it does feel like she’s leveled up.

      • Cheez Whiz says:

        When Harris was running for President and for a while as Veep, the SF Chronicle and on-line/free SFGate ran regular blurbs of anonymous ex-staffers complaining she was mean and hard to work for. Those dried up after a while. I think she’s learned a lot about playing in the Big Leagues. I’m suprised the Trump campaign hasn’t scraped those up, maybe they’re going chronologically since they’re still on her birth certificate (talk about playing the hits!).

  21. RitaRita says:

    Too often interviews with Trump just provide him a more respectable and more watched platform to spew his venom than the Fox platform. The interviewer asks him a question, he finds a phrase to tie in with one or more of his memes and he is off to the races, spewing lies as fast as he can talk. More often than not, the interviewer just lets him go.

    Rachel Scott set up her question by citing examples of his past racist slurs. She effectively shut off the galloping lies. She did what Prof. Jay Rosen of NYU recommends – give a truth sandwich to inoculate against the lies. In contrast, Harrison Faulkner did what Fox News people do with Trump – she teed up the question for him. You can tell which journalists are doing journalism by how Trump talks about them. The journalists are the ones he thinks are nasty and rude.

    My favorite part of the interview was the part about how no one votes for Vice-President. I guess Vance now knows how Trump really feels.

  22. BreslauTX says:

    He has been avoiding an interview with ABC and came across as not eager to do a Debate moderated – led by ABC.

    So I expect Rachel Scott to be cited as part of the reason why he won’t do a Debate on ABC.

  23. Shide_31JUL2024_2121h says:

    IMO the big takeaway should be that trump’s handlers took him away before he could put his words and thoughts about Project 2025 on film and tape. Everybody knows he’s a racist and a misogynist (that’s a feature for his supporters), but the GOP doesn’t want MSM viewers to know that he wants to take away education and ACA healthcare and Social Security. That’s where they will lose votes.

    [Welcome to emptywheel. Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We have adopted this minimum standard to support community security. Because your username is too short it will be temporarily changed to match the date/time of your first known comment until you have a new compliant username. Thanks. /~Rayne]

    • Rayne says:

      I have wondered whether this malicious appearance was intended not just to figuratively spit on ABC network via their employee Rachel Scott, but to thwart questions about policy at all including Trump’s intentions wrt education, healthcare, Social Security.

      Notice how we’re not talking about Project 2025 but about Trump’s misogynoir bullshit.

      • Ithaqua0 says:

        Nah, don’t get sucked into the 12-dimensional chess thing. He was trying to convince some fraction of Black people that Kamala wasn’t authentically Black, merely opportunistically Black, to try to cut down any advantage she would have with them because of shared race. Keep Georgia in the GOP column! Tough to do to someone who pays attention to the facts, but many people don’t. And this would be the forum to do that, after all!

        Misogynoir will quite possibly gain the Democrats more votes than 2025 will lose Republicans, but I’m hoping for high counts from both.

      • BreslauTX says:

        His handlers had kept him sheltered since the event with Biden and to go into a situation that could expose him didn’t fit with what he has been doing earlier in July.

        Did Trump and/or his handlers

        1. Get over confident since other Media people such as Welker, Tapper etc allowed themselves to be walked over in earlier encounters and there was a belief that the Media would continue to be servile?

        2. Want to take a shot at ABC since the Buzz has been that they wanted him to sit for an Interview and this was his way of poking them in the eyes?

        3. A Dog Whistle to energize his Base?

        4. Feel desperate and thus needed to take a chance?

        Based on the reports about the POTUS Daily Briefing having to be adjusted for him and some apaprent decline mentally over the past several years, I don’t think that he could focus for an hour to have a rational discussion about Policy topics. Maybe focusing for just 30 minutes on Policy topics might be beyond what he is capable of handling going forward.

        It will be interesting to see how Team Trump handles things going forward.

        1. Hide him which makes it difficult to regain momentum.

        2. Debate Harris and/or let him interview with Non Right Wing Media which could hurt him some more since it is clear that he is easily triggered and liable to say many inappropriate things.

        • Rayne says:

          There’s another possible explanation for Trump’s behavior at the NABJ event — dementia of some form. His handlers may have done what they could to mask it but his inability to concentrate under pressure may have been why he left the stage early. It may also explain the friction about fact checking delaying his appearance as well as his hostility toward Scott.

          In hindsight it can explain the rejiggering of Project 2025 in relation to Trump’s campaign. Trump can remember his agenda hence “Agenda47” but he can’t remember Project 2025. So the campaign team hides it with this stupid shuffling of personnel.

        • RitaRita says:

          I think he got yanked by his staff because they could see that he couldn’t turn off the cranky old white man performance and that he was bordering on entering the sharks and batteries/Hannibal Lecter/bleach territory.

          Am I right to imagine Sean Hannity sending urgent texts to Trump staffers to tell them that Trump is hurting his legacy?

        • Stephen Calhoun says:

          My armchair opinion is CFTFG has no ability to focus on policy at all.

          Are there any documented examples of him speaking coherently for more than five minutes on a policy matter?

        • BreslauTX says:

          Rayne

          It very well could be that Dementia is impacting him. Even when RW Media sets him up in a dialog for a “Win”, he often fails to take advantage of it. In Media events with Welker and Kaitlan Collins (Townhall), he really wasn’t pushed very hard.

          He stayed away frrom the GOP Debates during the Primary Season and did a Campaign Speech rather than Debate with POTUS Biden.

          He didn’t come across as POTUS material when he was in Courthouses.

          Rather than putting him in somewhat difficult situations to toughen him up and learn how to think on the fly, his handlers have been hiding him. When they finally allowed him to go outside of a favorable situation, he quickly Crashed & Burned.

          RitaRita

          A Crankjy Old White Man might now be his default behavior/approach and being anything else for very long is difficult for him to sustain.

          Stephen Calhoun

          He was botching discussions about Covid four years ago, so discussing Policy beyond a few Buzz words very well could be beyond him now.

  24. Badger Robert says:

    Trump created some filler for Fox e-News. That may have been a campaign goal. And he fed the MAGA grift.
    But the illusion that he might win the popular vote, or the dream that he’ll pull off another EC miracle seem untenable. His own people may have told him those are not realistic hopes.
    But there are two illusions. One is that through violence and intimidation he could become President without winning the EC tally. But Joe Biden has control of the government, and that scheme did not work when Trump held the levers of power. That illusion exists but state and federal cooperation seems unlikely.
    There could be a judicial coup, Judge Cannon style. But the trial courts and 1st level appellate courts have an easier tactical path, they can just wait it out until certification. The math for a Harris victory does not require certification by every state. Only about 308 EC votes are needed to have a convincing result.
    But maybe Trump needs the illusions to keep the horrible reality he faces at bay. He definitely needs these illusions to keep the MAGA grift going. Maybe he needs the illusions to keep the Russians from concluding that Trump is not going to be able to deliver.
    I await the analysis by younger and sharper minds.

    • ExRacerX says:

      “But the illusion that he might win the popular vote, or the dream that he’ll pull off another EC miracle seem untenable.”

      I dunno, BR, I wouldn’t count on it—I was convinced that Trump had tanked his chances back in ’16 with all the looming, lying, and loud overtalking at the debate, but then he was elected.

        • ExRacerX says:

          True, but I was still amazed at the percentage of the popular vote he got after that debate debacle—or what I took to be a debacle.

    • Fancy Chicken says:

      Badger Robert said:

      “ But Joe Biden has control of the government, and that scheme did not work when Trump held the levers of power. That illusion exists but state and federal cooperation seems unlikely.”

      Oh how sad I am to contradict you. Yesterday I posted a link to a Rolling Stone investigative piece that discovered at least 70 election deniers in elected positions dealing with voter certification in every swing state. Who knows how many in other states.

      If one county refuses to certify it holds up the whole state and will have to drag through court to be settled.

      I saw a Rachel Maddow piece from the other day pointing out that we need to be much more concerned about all the statements Trump is making about “I don’t need your vote, I have enough votes.”, rather than him telling Christian Nationalists they only have to vote once.

      What this most likely indicates is that Trump is not planning on winning the election by winning the vote count, he intends to win it by contesting the results and relying on the election deniers refusing certification.

      As much as the mood has improved by leaps and bounds with Harris at the top of the ticket, we all need to be prepared for the shitshow that is going to happen after voting day which will try to snatch the win from Harris.

      Trump’s not planning on winning the election, he’s planning to steal it and this time he might come disastrously close and rend our country in the process.

      • Cheez Whiz says:

        The Republican party has been pretty up-front about it.
        https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/jun/25/charlie-kirk-turning-point-usa-chase-the-vote-trump
        Is a pretty good overvire of 1 piece, “ensuring the vote” at the ground level, though it also has a bit of power struggle infighting from the group of Republicans who worry about internal polling and winning by relying on a smaller but more fanatical base. Remember that 24-hour news blurb about “Republican leaders in Congress” going ixnay on the EIDay and acismray? How’d that work out?

      • Memory hole says:

        There is also the fact that the Trumpers got ahold of voting machines to steal the hardware in at least Mich, Georgia, and i believe Colorado. Maybe they cracked the code and really don’t “need the votes”. Maybe some of the computer programmers out there would know if that is a possibility

      • Fred Raymond says:

        “…. he intends to win it by contesting the results and relying on the election deniers refusing certification.”

        Yes, that’s what his behavior indicates, I am 100% in agreement.

        (I apologize in advance for my name. Rarely do I comment. I will do my utmost to use this name only.)

        [Welcome back to emptywheel. SECOND REQUEST: Please use the SAME USERNAME and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. This is your third username since your first known comment in October 2023; you have commented as “Fred Thompson” and “Jiggle the Handle.” I can’t stress enough that you must use the same username as changing names this frequently constitutes sockpuppeting which is bannable. /~Rayne]

  25. P J Evans says:

    I think he left “on time” for the plane trip to Harrisburg. If he hadn’t delayed the start by forty-some minutes, he would have had a shot at the full hour. (I heard he was trying to get them to drop the live fact-checking.)

    Weird and creepy: when he stretched across the table, took the reporter’s water bottle, tightened the cap, and put it back down in a different spot on the same table. She was talking to the other reporters at the time, but there’s a clip from C-Span. https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5126739/user-clip-water-bottle

    • ExRacerX says:

      That merely shows that Trump has once again manipulated the media into making the news about HIM like he has always done & will always do.

      His bulldozer-in-a-china-shop tactics rarely leave any oxygen for the other stories to breathe and grow.

      • ButteredToast says:

        Trump’s insatiable appetite for attention hasn’t abated, but he sounds much more unhinged and demented than he did even in 2020. I’m not convinced that more attention would help him at this point. His favorability and poll numbers went UP when he was out of the news and holding no public events. Now he is reminding low-info swing voters exactly what they disliked about his presidency. His shtick is exhausting and becoming even more offensive, and the more it’s in their faces, the harder it is for people who pay little attention to politics to convince themselves he should be trusted with the nuclear codes. The “journalists” who regurgitated all the bullshit about Trump becoming calmer and more serene ended up with egg on their faces because of how the candidate himself behaved and spoke since being shot. If he and Vance had simply held no events, my guess is that this naïve narrative would have been more likely to take hold. All publicity isn’t good publicity for Trump.

  27. Bob Roundhead says:

    It’s weird that he won’t allow journalists to fact check him in real time and then they won’t fact check him in their bylines or reporting. If I didn’t know any better, I would think that the press has a fascist bias.

  28. Ravenclaw says:

    An interesting angle (or so I think): This may in part be simply another expression of the man’s pathological narcissism. “All of a sudden she became a Black person.” Well, no, she’s clearly identified with that part of her heritage for a long time, e.g., attending Howard and joining a Black women’s fraternity. What did happen was that “all of a sudden” Trump’s opponent became a Black person. In his world, that’s all that matters – how it affects him. So here he was, hoping to build some kind of crazy case that he was better for Americans of color than Joe Biden (yes, absurd, but possibly sellable to low-information voters), and suddenly he’s running against one of their own.

    Whoops.

  29. BobBobCon says:

    The cleanup crew at the NY Times is hard at work.

    They changed the headline on the home page to “Trump Falsely Questions Harris’s Identity as Black” (but haven’t yet changed the article headline).

    They also wiped the old language that referred to “the kind of *racially charged* (emphasis added) attacks Mr. Trump once employed against President Barack Obama” and updated it with “Mr. Trump’s earliest racist gambit against Mr. Obama.”

    Explictly using the term “racist” to refer to Trump’s birther conspiracy theories has been approved previously by Times editors, but it seems like every single time they have to take time out to clutch pearls before they clear it for publication.

  30. SelaSela says:

    I remember 2016, before the election. Almost every day the headline was something like “OMG. We can’t believe Trump just said that!” with one more outrageous thing Trump said.

    This pattern worked for Trump for many reasons:
    1. It allowed Trump to get constant attention from the media, and control the news cycle. This is how he received 2 billion dollars of media reporting for free.
    2. It desensitized people to Trump. No matter what he said, people stopped being shocked or bothered because we all knew “Trump is just saying outrageous things. That’s his style”.
    3.The focus was always on what Trump says, not what he did. This allowed people to think “Oh, he’s saying outrageous things, but he’s still a very successful business person, and he could still be a great leader”. This, of course, is far from being true. But with the constant focus on what Trump said, it was easy to miss the stories about Trump being a terrible businessman, his various cons (such as Trump University), etc.
    4. While the media’s attention was on what Trump said, when they talked about Clinton, it was about what she did, or more often than not, what the media falsely claimed she did. There was a lot of insinuation that Clinton was “corrupt”, her emails, all sort of scandals from the past, her health etc.

    I think this is what tanked Clinton in 2016, and gave Trump the presidency. It was “Trump is saying awful things, while Clinton is corrupt”. Which was, of course, completely false. A minor technical issue like the email server became a huge issue and an used as “evidence” for her corruption, while Trump’s corruption, which was 100 times worse, was mostly ignored while focusing on his trolling.

    At least, the media didn’t start doing the same thing to Harris. So there is some hope it would be different this time.

    • dopefish says:

      Clinton might still have won, if not for some Russian interference (which was somewhat coordinated with the Trump campaign). Wikileaks dumped hacked emails from the DNC one day after Trump’s “grab em by the pussy” Access Hollywood tape came out. Trump said on live TV: “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” and Russian gov’t hackers immediately started trying to do so.

      There was also James Comey’s October surprise, violating policy to announce the FBI re-opening a “but her emails” investigation shortly before the election. It went nowhere, but may have tipped the balance for some voters.

      • SelaSela says:

        With such a narrow victory, there are a lot of events that could’ve tipped the balance, and it’s possible that without any one of them Clinton would’ve won. But this all came against the backdrop of a persistent anti-Clinton campaign for a year, while not taking seriously Trump’s corruption and giving him free press. Without that, Comey’s October surprise and the Russian hacking and disinformation campaign wouldn’t be as effective.

        The media is still discounting/minimizing Trump’s corruption and giving him free press, but hopefully, everything else is different enough to give Harris a better chance.

      • Memory hole says:

        Another thing that put Trump over in 2016 was the silent removal of black residents from the voting rolls. I recall in Wis that more black voters were secretly dropped from the rolls before the election than Trump’s margin there. No way to know how many tried to vote and couldn’t, but it was reported than dropped. I seem to recall that the same thing happened in Mich, but not positive on that. Also , there was the micro targeting of individual voters by Cambridge Analytica. Shave a few votes here and there and you may have a razor thin margin.

        • c-i-v-i-l says:

          Somewhat related disgusting news:

          Elon Musk has a new PAC with a website, ostensibly to help people register to vote.

          But once a user clicks “Register to Vote,” the experience he or she will have can be very different, depending on where they live.

          If a user lives in a state that is not considered competitive in the presidential election, like California or Wyoming for example, they’ll be prompted to enter their email addresses and zip code and then directed quickly to a voter registration page for their state, or back to the original sign up section.

          But for users who enter a zip code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

          Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cell phone number, and age. If they agree to submit all that, the system still does not steer them to a voter registration page. Instead, it shows them a “thank you” page.

          https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/02/elon-musk-pac-voter-data-trump-harris.html

  31. Matt Foley says:

    As far as I can tell Fox hasn’t posted the full interview, giving Faulkner an excuse to go on Hannity to spin the trainwreck into a win, e.g., the crowd was laughing at Trump’s jokes. Fox gonna faux.

  32. Matt Foley says:

    Nobody confronted him on his 34 felonies and at least 1 rape. When he called Scott rude and nasty and disrespectful for telling the truth I wish she’d reminded him that she gives him the same respect she gives all convicted felon rapists. People need to stop being so deferential to him! Hold him accountable!

    • likeagodcow says:

      But by that logic, shouldn’t he have not been there at all? A convicted felon rapist shouldn’t even be a presidential candidate, but that’s where we are. There’s no way even the limited amount of Q and A that did take place would have happened if she’d taken that needlessly provocative route. If this had to happen, it was more effective for (two of) them to just do their jobs and let him show his entire ass and horrify like, the whole world including even his own peeps.

  33. bgThenNow says:

    I have already commented up thread about her follow up in Houston. In which she refers to the event that just happened in Chicago, which she did not attend, gave her audience a moment to respond and gave a knowing look.

    When you listen to her, the ideas, the focus on the future, the closing: WE ARE NOT GOING BACK.

    She is putting together better and better stuff for her speeches. Some of it will not get old.

    I hope everyone here is doing what they can to help every way possible. I think this can be a campaign that really moves us ahead. But I also think we have to work at it. After November, the possibility of change is going to be happening. I’m making buttons with the QR code for Vote.gov that say Register Vote. I’ve made little slips of paper with the same but Register AND Vote. I’ve been passing them out to people I interact with. Young people, workers. I hope it helps. But I will be knocking doors soon.

  34. earlofhuntingdon says:

    “Journalists involved said a fight over whether the journalists could fact check in real time caused the delay. Trump claimed there was a sound problem.”

    I see why Trump would demand not to be fact checked during an interview. It gets in the way of his control of the narrative, while he avoids answering the questions asked. But, the NYT questioning a Republican aside, that’s standard journalistic practice. A convention of reporters wouldn’t give an inch to such a demand.

  35. DChom123 says:

    He was white then he was orange. Someone ought look into this.

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  36. MsJennyMD says:

    President Obama is biracial. Trump had a megaphone as Mr. Birther going after him. Vice President Harris is biracial. Trump is claiming she is Indian and “happened to turn black.” New birtherism.
    Ignorance is a choice.

  37. soundgood2 says:

    The Trump campaign may have thought that him beating up on “rude” black females journalists would help him with the type of anti feminist black men that they think are or could be Trump supporters.

  38. Clare Kelly says:

    Replying to bgThenNow
    August 1, 2024 at 2:07 am

    I did listen to the whole speech.

    She’s ‘not new’ to depraved rhetoric and is familiar with both Eastman and Leonard Leo.

    From the former LATimes journalist who moderated her 2010 campaign debate:

    “Opinion: What Harris’ run for California attorney general can tell us about this campaign
    Today’s presumptive Democratic nominee for president was yesterday’s underdog in both city and state elections”

    [snip]

    “A decade later, Eastman wrote a column questioning Harris’ qualifications for the vice presidency on the grounds that her parents were not naturalized citizens when she was born. A fringe theory, yes, but it caught Trump’s eye and is already being raised anew.

    In the coming weeks, Harris will face all kinds of attacks. A few might be substantial, but my guess is that most will border on ridiculous. Can you imagine? The candidate laughs. And she dances!

    During Harris’ runs for California attorney general and U.S. Senate, I saw firsthand what kind of candidate she can be: tough, formidable, disciplined. Without a doubt, Republicans should wish they had stopped her when they had their best chance.”

    Dan Morain
    East Bay Times
    August 1, 2024
    https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2024/08/01/opinion-what-harris-run-for-california-attorney-general-can-tell-us-about-this-campaign/

  39. c-i-v-i-l says:

    A couple of additional takes:

    NYT columnist Lydia Polgreen:
    “I think what is really behind the “she’s not Black” thing is a bizarre accusation of a kind of stolen valor. The right thinks that people on the left are obsessed with oppression and want to claim the most oppressed identity. This is nuts, of course.”
    https://bsky.app/profile/polgreen.bsky.social/post/3kymjywpzuc2w

    Political scientist Seth Masket‬:
    “Implicit in Trump’s strain of American racism is the idea that people of color get all the breaks, and it’s illegitimate to claim two races because then you’re entitled to two visits to the goody room.”
    https://bsky.app/profile/smotus.bsky.social/post/3kynzvirrdk2k

  40. CovariantTensor says:

    “Trump claimed there was a sound problem.”

    I had no difficulty hearing the question, and Trump’s bullet traumatized ear was opposite the speaker.

    I get the contrarian argument that Trump was sending human audible dog whistles to his base and dumb trolls, but it seems to me, considering the rest of the audience, that this performance will be a net negative. Trump can’t help himself when the opportunity for racist talk arises, and Harris’ much thicker skin will serve her well. “America deserves better”, indeed. This is, of course, no cause for complacency.

    • Matt Foley says:

      It can be hard to hear on a stage if there were no monitors. Not that it matters because he doesn’t answer questions he hears, either.

  41. Frank_01AUG2024_1153h says:

    I am 75% Italian and 25% Irish. By the RNC logic I choose to be Irish on St Patrick’s day and then choose to be Italian on St Joseph’s day.

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  42. gmokegmoke says:

    Trmp’s treatment of Rachel Scott reminds me very much of his treatment of Megyn Kelly at the beginning of his first campaign for President. It’s his schtick, a tactic, a variation of “the neg” that “how to pick up chicks*” guys think is so powerful.

    * Duke Ellington spelled this word as “chic” which tells me something about the man.

  43. The Old Redneck says:

    This EW post is just . . . so true. Someone else is getting attention, and then, in a completely calculated way, he says something outrageous. And then, each and every time, the spotlight swings back to him. Journalists just keep playing into his hands.

    Their response is always that he’s a presidential candidate and they have to cover him. But they’re the ones invariably choosing to put him on page one rather than page 14.

    Will this cycle of reinforcing such clownish and buffoonish behavior ever stop? Probably not. It sure is tiresome, though.

    • Matt Foley says:

      re Wikipedia see also
      “Personal and business legal affairs of Donald Trump”.

      In case you were wondering there’s also
      “Legal affairs of Donald Trump as president”.

      Somebody needs to add “Adulterous affairs of Donald Trump”.

      I’m surprised he doesn’t take credit for being a “content creator”.

  45. Frank Probst says:

    I agree that this was just an attention-grabber, and the media fell for it (again). But Harris’s response was brilliant: “It was the same old show.” It comes across as more of verbal eye-roll than as an angry response (which is what Trump wanted). And she managed to sneak the word “old” in there without directly calling Trump an angry old man. I would have gone with a sigh and a “He sounds confused.”, but I think Harris handled it even better.

  46. Alan Charbonneau says:

    Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg suggested that Trump was slamming Harris for being Indian and then black was a slap at JD Vance. Vance’s kids are bi-racial and Trump has remorse for picking him, so in his diseased mind, he’s showing hatred of Vance.

    Interesting theory. 😁

    • c-i-v-i-l says:

      I don’t know about that. CNN: “Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance defends Donald Trump’s false claims about Kamala Harris’ racial identity, saying the former president’s comments were ‘totally reasonable.'” And just as amazing, when Vance was “Trump wants to take away some birthright citizenship. Do you agree with him on that?,” he responded “I really do,” despite his wife having immigrant parents and having citizenship by virtue of having been born here. I have to wonder what the discussions in the Vance household are like right now.

    • Rayne says:

      Hard to understand how Trump thinks — yes, diseased mind at work — but that does smack of the truth.

      BTW, please don’t use emojis. They’re not searchable. Emoticons are acceptable and searchable.

    • Rayne says:

      Every accusation is a confession.

      The really stupid part: multi-racial Americans are the fastest growing demographic in the US. GOP is burning bridges to the future allowing Trump to bear their standard while insulting current multi-racial Americans and their parents. As if Trump now polling within MOE with Harris can afford to piss off +10% of Americans.

        • Rayne says:

          Yup. It’s a problem the white cis-het founders didn’t predict because white cis-het founders.

          Until we can develop an alternative to the EC we need to do our best to elect Democratic senators in every state, with the proviso Democratic candidates and incumbents acknowledge the EC doesn’t serve the nation equitably.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_race/ethnicity

          It’d also help if territories were also afforded senators — we don’t even have to make them states, just assure they also had representation since they are US citizens.

        • wa_rickf says:

          Barack Obama was elected twice – even with the electoral collagen place. We got this.

          USA! USA!

        • Rayne says:

          Reply to wa_rickf
          August 2, 2024 at 7:32 pm

          Extremely important to remember that Obama was elected before John Roberts’ SCOTUS decided Shelby County v. Holder undermining the Voting Rights Act; before the 2010 and 2020 censuses which were problematic (2020 far more so given the pandemic and Trump interference); before a number of states rejiggered their voting processes to increases voter suppression; and again, before the pandemic itself.

          You may have been kidding around but this is not a laughing matter.

  50. grizebard says:

    It’s certainly true that Trump is a fervent believer in the old adage that “All publicity is good publicitly”. Aided-and-abetted as he has been for too long by click-hungry courtier media. But fame – and public perception – are fickle, and can turn sour, even with him. Framing matters. Once Trump is no longer widely perceived as a news-making “entertainer” of sorts, but instead as a weird-coloured flailing bully with a bad choice of friends, it could all go south for him very quickly. And escalate as he begins to flail at the loss of control. As began to happen on this occasion, so that he had to be prematurely “rescued” part way through. We’re not there yet, but this encounter does point the way forward, so on balance I think it was worthwhile.

    The Kamala Harris team evidently have the measure of him, and have barely started yet. I do believe he has finally met his match – the one opponent who can and will beat him.

    • wa_rickf says:

      Donald Trump is the vilest candidate for POTUS the U.S. has ever seen, by far. His loathsomeness extends to every aspect of his being.

  51. wa_rickf says:

    That geriatric convicted felon is nuttier then squirrel feces. Clearly someone you wouldn’t want to sit near in a restaurant – let alone be POTUS.

    h/t VP Harris campaign

  53. Clare Kelly says:

    For anyone who didn’t see fact checks:

    Fact-checking Donald Trump in Chicago at National Association of Black Journalists conference
    https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/jul/31/fact-check-donald-trump-chicago-at-nabj/

    His HBCU ‘white savior’ routine bugged me more than I care to admit, so I’m just going to drop this here:

    Donald, Q. (2021, July 06). Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) (1837- ). BlackPast.org.
    https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/institutions-african-american-history/historically-black-colleges-and-universities-hbcus-1837/

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