Donald Trump held some kind of press conference yesterday at his Bedminster golf club, which, again, is not located in a swing state. Trump has barely campaigned this summer and the Trump-Walz campaign barely has a ground operation. The campaign is taking in money, but they’re not spending it on ad buys or offices in swing states or competency around their campaign events. It’s like Donald Trump expects free media constantly, and he’s getting it… but it’s not hitting the same way it used to. He was always a delusional nutjob ranting about whatever popped into his Adderall-addled brain, but it feels like there’s been a real shift in how Trump is covered. CNN did a surprisingly in-depth analysis of how Trump’s Thursday presser felt different. They described his “ranting” as Trump feeling “bitter, disoriented, and mourning the loss of the old campaign,” which was “laid bare in a self-pitying and raging stream of consciousness.” Oh my! Some highlights from this CNN piece:

LMAO: Almost every Trump event now feels like damage control for a previous one that went off the rails. Thursday’s news conference was a do-over for Wednesday’s trip to North Carolina, when the ex-president mocked his own aides for demanding that he give an “intellectual” speech on the economy and instead went his own way, focusing on insulting his opponent.

The groceries: Trump’s team did their best for him on Thursday. Someone went to a local supermarket and stocked up on groceries, including Cheerios, tubs of coffee and ketchup, and provided Trump with charts showing the high cost of goods in the Biden era. But their boss didn’t even get to the end of his first point before veering into a furious aside while falsely accusing Democrats of acting illegally by replacing Biden with Harris. “It was a coup by people that wanted him out, and they didn’t do it the way, not the way they’re supposed to do it. $129 more on energy, and $241 more. This is all per month on rent,” Trump said, running two thoughts together in his fury.

LMAO Part II: “We have wars breaking out in the Middle East. We have the horrible war going on with Ukraine and Russia. All these things would have never happened if I was president. Would have never, ever happened, and they didn’t happen. Since Harris took office, car insurance is up 55%,” Trump said, in another dizzying shift in direction. As his remarks stretched into a second hour, a squadron of flies assembled, likely attracted by several packs of breakfast sausages sweating in the summer heat. The bizarre spectacle only heightened the incongruity of using Trump’s private golf club as the backdrop for an event meant to illustrate the pain faced by millions of Americans at grocery checkouts.

Trump on his own aides telling him to cool with it the personal attacks: “As far as the personal attacks, I’m very angry at her because of what she’s done to the country. I’m very angry at her that she weaponized the justice system against me and other people —- very angry at her. I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she’ll be a terrible president.”

Republican analysis: “Donald Trump is not the Donald Trump of 2016, he seemed slowed down, he seems meandering, he seems low energy and he really is struggling to make a point,” said former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, who broke with the ex-president after he refused to accept his defeat in 2020. “He is somebody who is not performing at the caliber he once was and that might have worked when he was up against Joe Biden — the contrast did make him appear at times stronger and more vibrant. It’s not working against Kamala Harris who is the younger candidate and the one with more energy,” she said on CNN’s “AC360.”

A Very Calm Person and a Stable Genius: Trump told reporters “Now you’ll say he ranted and raved … I’m a very calm person, believe it or not.” But proving the opposite, Trump on Thursday dove down multiple rabbit holes — venting about Hillary Clinton’s emails as if he had been transported back to the 2016 election, relating bizarre conversations with people calling him “Sir,” musing about “bird cemeteries” he claims are caused by wind farms, lauding his own “great relationship” with China’s President Xi Jinping and fuming at prosecutors who charged him with seeking to overturn the 2020 election and of hoarding classified documents.

[From CNN]

This took me out: “relating bizarre conversations with people calling him “Sir,” musing about “bird cemeteries” he claims are caused by wind farms..” Trump and those damn wind farms, he keeps bringing them up and claiming that wind farms are killing bald eagles and that they’re affecting the fish as well. It’s just one of those things that is stuck in his (senile) brain, like “the late, great Hannibal Lector.” The stuff about the groceries rotting in the sun while Trump rants and raves at his private golf club… *chef’s kiss*.

Two more things – people are theorizing that Trump is having such a tough time finding an attack line against Kamala Harris because he finds her attractive. Honestly, that makes some kind of sense – he called her “beautiful” in his lispy conversation with Elon Musk and it’s clear that he doesn’t actually want to use the same derogatory language on Harris that he’s used on other women. Second thing – the Harris campaign sends out press releases every single time Trump or JD Vance open their mouths and the release after Trump’s presser was a classic:

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.