In a way, the words proved prophetic, but probably not in the way the GOP candidate’s campaign had in mind. NBC News reported:

Trump spent 12 minutes at the beginning of his roughly 90-minute speech telling stories about [Arnold] Palmer, the late professional golfer for whom the airport was named. At one point, he suggested that Palmer had unusually large genitalia. “He was strong and tough, and I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there they said, ‘Oh, my God. That’s unbelievable,’” Trump said.

The former president has spent months, on a nearly daily basis, telling anyone who’d listen that he’s not at all “weird.” But when candidates for the nation’s highest office ramble for 12 minutes about a deceased golfer, culminating in comments about his genitalia, I think reasonable observers can agree that’s incredibly weird.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1847765615962182014

.....The former Democratic president concluded, “You would be worried if your grandpa started acting like this. ... The point is we do not need to see what an older, loonier Donald Trump looks like with no guardrails.”

There’s probably no point to referencing every example of the former president’s recent breakdowns — there are simply too many to chronicle in a single blog post — but for those concerned about the Republican’s mental acuity and cognitive fitness, Trump adds fresh fuel to the fire with unsettling frequency.

And given that he’s hiding his medical records for reasons that have not been explained, it’s tough to blame Harris and her allies for issuing these warnings to the public.

The day after his event in Latrobe, Trump participated in a Q&A in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in which he tried to address the matter. “I have no cognitive,” the Republican boasted, adding: “There’s no cognitive problem.”

Asked about Trump describing many Americans as the "enemy within," Chris Sununu offered the dumbest of all possible defenses.

In fact, the New Hampshire governor proved the opposite of his intended point.

ABC News’ Martha Raddatz asked Gov. Chris Sununu about the comments, and at least initially, the New Hampshire Republican conceded the former president’s rhetoric “should give everyone pause.”

And if the governor had simply stopped there, his response wouldn’t have been especially notable. But in the same “This Week” interview, Sununu went on to say:

Nobody likes that type of stuff and that type of hyperbole. But, let’s look, he was president for four years. Did he go after his political enemies? Did he weaponize the Department of Justice and go after Hillary Clinton? ... Of course, he didn’t do that, right?

I’ve heard a few defenses for Trump’s “enemy within” rhetoric, but the governor’s defense is easily the worst because it proved the opposite of his intended point.......

Ahead of Election Day 2020 — nearly four years after Clinton’s defeat — the then-Republican president again publicly called for the Democrat’s incarceration and lobbied then-Attorney General Barr to prosecute the former secretary of state for reasons unknown.

Sununu effectively told a national broadcast audience, “We can trust the arsonist not to follow through on his threats to start a lot of fires. After all, the last time we handed him matches and lighter fluid, he didn’t set anything ablaze, right?”

Except it’s not right. The arsonist set a lot of fires. We all saw it happen. I kept the receipts.

Sununu asked, “Did he go after his political enemies?” What I don’t understand is why the governor is unaware of the answer to his own question — because Trump absolutely went after his political enemies, over and over again, and he’s vowing to go further in a second term.

The New Hampshire Republican was trying to make Trump look better, but he ended up making Trump look worse.

MILWAUKEE (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump told supporters at a rally on Monday that if elected he will rename the Washington Monument after the legendary golfer Arnold Palmer.

“Arnold Palmer was a great American, and possibly the biggest American,” he declared.

“Unlike Arnie, George Washington had no body parts worth remembering,” he continued. “He had wooden teeth, which, quite frankly, were disgusting.”

“Get him out of here!” he bellowed.

Commenting on Trump’s performance, a campaign aide said, “At this point I think we’re better off just playing music and having him dance.”

Good on CBS this has been sorely needed. $20 billion just to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants!

Trump's plan to deport millions of immigrants would cost hundreds of billions, CBS News analysis shows

Immigration researchers, lawyers, and economists have pointed to immense constitutional, humanitarian and economic problems posed by Trump's oft-repeated pledge. But beyond the anticipated damage to immigrant families, communities and local economies, the roundup and deportation of some 11 million people is near impossible to bankroll, according to an analysis of U.S. budget and immigration court data by CBS News.

Even if Congress approved the hundreds of billions of dollars in spending, deporting every undocumented immigrant living in the U.S. would take far longer than four years, the analysis finds.

CBS News' analysis of immigration system data found:

Apprehending and deporting just 1 million people could cost taxpayers about $20 billion.

Deporting 11 million people over four years would cost more than 20 times what the nation spent a year over the last five years on deporting people living in the U.S. Most of that would be new funding that would have to be approved by a majority of both chambers of Congress.

Assuming Trump did get the funding and could rapidly expand the staffing in immigration enforcement and courts, the backlog of cases would grow — not decrease — by millions of cases based on what's happened in the last two administrations.

Trump's own administration, despite promising to deport millions in 2016, deported 325,660 people during the fiscal years he was in office.

......But even when Trump was president and the number of border crossings was lower than they were during the post-pandemic spike, the cost of deporting one person was still $14,614. To deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the U.S. at that time would have cost between $40 billion to $54 billion a year over the next presidential term — up to $216 billion total. ICE was allocated only $9 billion last year.

Even the lower end of that annual estimate, $40 billion, is enough to provide 20 million families each with a Child Tax Credit each year, and is more than double the Federal Emergency Management Agency's entire budget. Over four years, the sum — $160 to $216 billion — is comparable to the cost of constructing around half a million new homes across the country.

After praising Vice President Kamala Harris for deftly handling an interview with a combative Bret Baier on Fox News earlier in the week, a tongue-in-cheek Michael Steele extended an invitation to Donald Trump to appear on his MSNBC "The Weekend" show with a tantalizing offer.

After noting that Trump insiders have admitted that the former president has been canceling interviews and appearances because he is "exhausted," the MSNBC host and former RNC chair stated he would go out of his way to make Trump "comfortable."

After stating he thought the millions of viewers who watched Harris on Fox News "...gave her a lot of street credit for sitting down in a hostile environment, politically, and handling it," Steele turned to her opponent for the presidency.

Hugo Lowell: “Elon Musk says on stage at a town hall that America PAC will be awarding $1 million every day until the election to a registered Pennsylvania voter who has signed his petition. Musk awarded the first $1 million this evening to someone at the town hall, bringing the guy onto the stage and handing him a jumbo check, lotto-style. Musk is essentially incentivizing likely Trump voters in PA to register to vote: Petition is to support for 1A and 2A, so basically R voters. But they also have to be registered to vote, so if they weren’t already, they would do it now.”

Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal. See 52 U.S.C. 10307(c): “Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both…” (Emphasis added.)

See also the DOJ Election Crimes Manual at 44: “The bribe may be anything having monetary value, including cash, liquor, lottery chances, and welfare benefits such as food stamps. Garcia, 719 F.2d at 102. However, offering free rides to the polls or providing employees paid leave while they vote are not prohibited. United States v. Lewin, 467 F.2d 1132, 1136 (7th Cir.
1972). Such things are given to make it easier for people to vote, not to induce them to do so. This distinction is important. For an offer or a payment to violate Section 10307(c), it must have been intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.… Moreover, payments made for some purpose other than to induce
or reward voting activity, such as remuneration for campaign work, do not violate this statute. See United States v. Canales 744 F.2d 413, 423 (5th Cir. 1984) (upholding conviction because jury justified in inferring that payments were for voting, not campaign work). Similarly, Section 10307(c) does not apply to payments made to signature-gatherers for voter registrations such individuals may obtain. However, such payments become actionable under Section 10307(c) if they are shared with the person being registered.” (Emphases added.)

I’d like to hear if there’s anyone who thinks this is not a clear case of a violation.

UPDATE: Musk said at his rally that one had to be a petition signer to be eligible for the $1 million prize. (“So– we really want to try to get as many people as possible to sign this petition. So. I have a surprise for you [crowd cheers] which is that we’re going to be awarding a million dollars, randomly, to people who have signed the signed the petition every day from now until the election.”) I’ve also learned that to get the $100 bounty one also must be a petition signer. And who can sign the petitions? Only registered voters in swing states, which is what makes it illegal. See the screen shots of the offers below:

If Donald Trump wins the Nov. 5 election, the New York Times will be partly responsible.

As the dominant voice in American journalism, the Times could have fundamentally changed the way Trump has been covered not just by its own journalists but by the political media as a whole. It could have stopped using soft, empty language and false equivalence, and made it crystal clear to the public that if elected Trump would turn America into a racist, authoritarian regime where facts don’t matter......

Here are a few examples of the troubling coverage — or lack thereof:

When Trump seized up at a rally this week and bizarrely swayed to music for 39 excruciating minutes, the Times called it an “improvisational departure.”

Trump’s racist threats to deport millions of undocumented people are actually just full of “hyperbolic rhetoric” and “fury.”

When it was reported that Trump’s top general, Mark Milley, called him “fascist to the core” the Times buried what should have been front-page news deep in an article about something else entirely.

Times journalists refuse to call Trump’s “false claims” what they are: malicious lies.

Hurling racist invective at a vulnerable community to fire up a hateful and bigoted base is just “rabble rousing” to the Times. It’s “combative conservatism.”

And even in an otherwise admirable article on Trump’s cognitive decline, the Times couldn’t bring itself to use the term “cognitive decline.”

Meanwhile, the day-to-day coverage treats Trump like a normal candidate, rather than as the wildly dangerous and unhinged felon that he is. Day in and day out, the Times “sanewashes” his dark and unintelligible ramblings. Day in and day out, it treats the divisions about basic facts and democratic rule as just so much partisan squabbling. ......

The way the Times covers Trump comes directly from the top – as did the disastrous decision in 2016 to devote so much front-page real estate to Hillary Clinton’s emails instead of to the danger represented by Trump.

What we’re left with is this conclusion: If Trump wins in part because the public was insufficiently alarmed by the press coverage of the 2024 election, the people who run the Times will have the extremely dubious distinction of having gotten Trump elected twice.

LATROBE, Pa. — Seventeen days from the election, here in arguably the most decisive swing state, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spent the first 10 minutes of his speech without mentioning politics.

Instead, he delivered a long tribute to Arnold Palmer, the late golfer who was born here and is the namesake of the airport where Trump was speaking. Trump’s soliloquy about Palmer included an account of how other athletes reacted to seeing him in the showers.

“Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that in all due respect to women and I love women. But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable,’” Trump said.....

At about 10 minutes, the digression about Palmer lasted roughly as long as Vice President Kamala Harris’s entire speech at a get-out-the-vote event earlier Saturday in Detroit. Trump’s speech was filled with asides, abrupt changes of subject and profane and personal attacks......

Trump has expressed frustration with his accelerated campaign schedule and shown impatience with his prepared scripts and advisers encouraging him to stick to issues such as the economy and immigration. Trump had other subjects in mind Saturday and spoke freely about a variety of disconnected themes......

Trump frequently meandered during his hour-plus speech. As he railed about Harris replacing President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, he paused and commented on his hair, as he looked at the screen displaying his live speech. “Excuse me, I’m going to recomb my hair, do you mind?” he said. “I’m going to recomb my hair, Mr. Future Senator,” he added, a reference to U.S. Senate candidate David McCormick of Pennsylvania......

He disparaged foreigners in inflammatory terms, comparing immigration with an “invasion” and saying he would “liberate” the country. He misrepresented Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics to falsely claim thousands are “on the loose,” and he repeated his pledge to launch a mass, militarized deportation operation modeled on a 1950s program.