Welcome to the Jim Acosta Morning Memo on a Friday morning after Trump stunned the world with a bonkers Time Magazine interview — then hit the campaign trail to make things worse. I’m Jim Acosta. Let’s go to work!
Time Shocker: Trump shocked even his critics with an incoherent Time Magazine cover interview that raised new questions about his mental competence.
In one sample passage, Trump melted down after he was asked about Mitch McConnell, and raged:
Have you seen the videos of Mitch McConnell back in the Senate? Do you think he should resign because of his health condition?
It was a disappointment to a lot of Republicans. So that’s just—well, Sleepy Joe gave pardons to everybody. He gave them to Fauci. He gave them to this. But you mean I’m not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe’s allowed to give them? This ain’t gonna be much of a story. Here we are doing this. You haven’t asked me one fucking positive question. All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative. Why are you devoting all this time to the White House? You know how I do, I do that out of my back pocket. I pay for a lot of it, but I fix it because the White House should look like that. It shouldn’t look like—if you would have stood in that balcony and looked at that wall, half the wall was falling. It’s actually dangerous. People are walking under, crap was falling off it all the time. Every time it rained, it was leaking, horrible. Now it’s perfect, and I would say that I should be given credit for fixing the White House because I’m also doing very well with the war. I’m doing very well with another war that we already won, Venezuela. Do you notice you haven’t asked me a question about Venezuela?
That meltdown kept on going. There were many more such passages that went viral.
From there, it was off to Texas for some desperate damage control, but not before he faced reporters at the White House and gave himself a tone-deaf grade on the economy.
I give us an A-plus on the government, on economics, on everything.
More like A-HOLE plus, amirite?
Dooce Is Loose: Trump even faced a tough question from Fox News when Peter Doocy asked him why he’s going to Texas if his convention was such a success.
Q: And my other question for you is, if Paxton is telling people behind closed doors that he thinks the convention hurt his poll numbers, why go to Texas?
President Trump: Well, I’ll tell you what. We have to win this election. That convention, you were there. That convention was a tremendous success. It went up against the NFL, and as you know, they had 24… I guess it was, I said 25 yesterday. It was actually, they had 24 million views, and we had 107 million views. In other words, we beat the NFL by four times.
Sorry, Don, your Trump-a-pa-LOSER got 3.3 million viewers.
Job Fair (And Balanced): Speaking of Doocy, Trump singled him out when another reporter asked about a replacement for departed propaganda secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Q: What are you looking for in a new press secretary?
President Trump: Well, we have a lot of people that want that job. I would say many of them are right here. Would you like that job? Maybe a guy like Peter, but he’s making too much money.
Wow, that’s awkward for Doocy, and for Fox News. More on that later.
There was a lot more craziness that would be repeated later, but Trump was also caught flat-footed by a question about the outrageous Cornell rape case.
Q: Mr. President, do you think that Cornell University has done enough to investigate the alleged rape?
President Trump: Well, I don’t know that much about it, but Cornell is a fine school, and I’m sure they’ll do what’s right.
“Sure they’ll do what’s right?” The entire point is that at every turn, they didn’t!
Trump also spoke to reporters when he landed in Texas, and was asked about the botched execution of Krista Pike. Not surprising, but still shocking, Trump actually chuckled as he bantered with Dr. Ronny Jackson about the horrific incident. Watch if you can stand it.
Q: After the botched execution last night in Tennessee, are you going to be pushing for any changes for capital punishment?
President Trump: Well, that was an interesting situation, but you’re going to have to speak to Tennessee about it. Whether or not they’re going to go forward, you know what that was about. That was an execution where the medication didn’t exactly work. He would answer it better than anybody. How does that happen? He’s a great doctor.
Q: It should be easy to do, sir.
That’s the same “Doctor” Ronny Jackson who keeps gushing about Trump and his cognitive tests. Monsters of a feather.
AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR…
And Now A Word From Our Sponsor
It’s all about the video clips these days that’s why we use Snapstream.
Check them out at https://go.snapstream.com/the-jim-acosta-show.
Texas Toast: Then it was off to Denton Texas and a rally at a Peterbilt plant, where he campaigned for Ken Paxton by calling him “a pain in the ass.”
Ken Paxton was at my side more than anybody. And I have to always remember that, because he could be a pain in the ass sometimes. I’ll be honest. Is he here, by the way? Oh, there he is. Good. I didn’t even know if he’s here. I don’t care.
That’s become a pattern for Trump, who seems to be slowly venting his rage at having endorsed a guy who shows all the signs of handing Texas to the Democrats.
Meat Shield: Speaking of Democrats, here’s Trump taking his best shot at James Talarico with an overly drawn out and weird attack abou tquote “getting rid of the meat.”
Aside from being a lie, who could afford to waste meat with the price of beef the way it is?
Then there was this homophobic crack about Ronny Jackson.
