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(The transcript is here. Mind-boggling.
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-rose-garden-press-conference-transcript-july-14)
NY Times, July 15, 2020
The White House Called a News Conference. Trump Turned It Into a
Meandering Monologue.
By Peter Baker
WASHINGTON — In theory, President Trump summoned television cameras to
the heat-baked Rose Garden early Tuesday evening to announce new
measures against China to punish it for its oppression of Hong Kong. But
that did not last long.
What followed instead was an hour of presidential stream of
consciousness as Mr. Trump drifted seemingly at random from one topic to
another, often in the same run-on sentence. Even for a president who
rarely sticks to the script and wanders from thought to thought, it was
one of the most rambling performances of his presidency.
He weighed in on China and the coronavirus and the Paris climate change
accord and crumbling highways. And then China again and military
spending and then China again and then the coronavirus again. And the
economy and energy taxes and trade with Europe and illegal immigration
and his friendship with Mexico’s president. And the coronavirus again
and then immigration again and crime in Chicago and the death penalty
and back to climate change and education and historical statues. And more.
“We could go on for days,” he said at one point, and it sounded plausible.
At times, it was hard to understand what he meant. He seemed to suggest
that his presumptive Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joseph
R. Biden Jr., would get rid of windows if elected and later said that
Mr. Biden would “abolish the suburbs.” He complained that Mr. Biden had
“gone so far right.” (He meant left.)
Even for those who follow Mr. Trump regularly and understand his
shorthand, it became challenging to follow his train of thought.
For instance, in discussing cooperation agreements with Central American
countries to stop illegal immigration, he had this to say: “We have
great agreements where when Biden and Obama used to bring killers out,
they would say don’t bring them back to our country, we don’t want them.
Well, we have to, we don’t want them. They wouldn’t take them. Now with
us, they take them. Someday, I’ll tell you why. Someday, I’ll tell you
why. But they take them and they take them very gladly. They used to
bring them out and they wouldn’t even let the airplanes land if they
brought them back by airplanes. They wouldn’t let the buses into their
country. They said we don’t want them. Said no, but they entered our
country illegally and they’re murderers, they’re killers in some cases.”
At another point, he took a jab at Mr. Biden’s mental acuity. “Let him
define the word carbon, because he won’t be able to,” Mr. Trump said.
That has been a theme of his lately, unsubtly implying that Mr. Biden
has grown senile. Just last week, Mr. Trump, 74, boasted that he had
recently taken a cognitive test and “aced it,” while insisting that Mr.
Biden, 77, “couldn’t pass” such an exam.
The disjointed monologue, however, may not have been the most convincing
evidence. On Twitter, his critics quickly compared him to a grandfather
who had broken into the sherry cabinet. “Trump is a truly sick
individual,” wrote Jon Favreau, who was President Barack Obama’s chief
speechwriter. Rick Wilson, a founder of the Lincoln Project, a group of
anti-Trump Republicans, called it “rambling verbal dysentery.”
The appearance came on the same day that the president’s estranged
niece, Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist, published a scathing book
questioning his mental health and asserting that pathologies stemming
from his childhood are playing out now on the world stage. Mr. Trump has
not commented about the book, but in the past he has rejected such
contentions by describing himself as “a very stable genius.”
The focus of the evening session with reporters took a turn after Mr.
Biden received extensive television coverage earlier in the day for his
$2 trillion climate plan, according to a senior official who spoke on
the condition of anonymity. The Hong Kong Autonomy Act, the ostensible
reason for his appearance, was treated as an afterthought.
In effect, the news conference turned into a campaign speech to
substitute for the one Mr. Trump was scheduled to give last weekend in
New Hampshire only to cancel amid concerns about flagging attendance,
citing a possible storm at the site of the rally. While presidents as a
general rule are not supposed to engage in overt campaigning from the
White House itself, Mr. Trump made little effort to disguise his intent
as he mentioned Mr. Biden’s name more than 20 times as he spoke in the
Rose Garden.
Most of the time, the president paid little attention to the text he
seemed to have brought with him, but he eventually read from what he
claimed was Mr. Biden’s campaign agenda but was in fact a misleading
compilation assembled by his own political advisers.
Reading from what he was given, he quoted Mr. Biden. “He said that the
idea that China is our competition is really bizarre,” the president
said. “He’s really bizarre.”
The appearance came on a day when Mr. Trump seemed eager to challenge
convention and, at times, basic facts. During an earlier interview with
CBS News, he denied that Black Americans suffered from police brutality
more than white Americans.
Asked why Black Americans were “still dying at the hands of law
enforcement in this country,” Mr. Trump said: “So are white people. So
are white people. What a terrible question to ask. So are white people.
More white people, by the way. More white people.”
Statistics show that while more white Americans are killed by the police
over all, people of color are killed at higher rates when accounting for
population differences. A federal study that examined lethal force used
by the police from 2009 to 2012 found that a majority of victims were
white, but that Black people were 2.8 times likelier to be killed than
white people.
In the same interview, Mr. Trump dismissed concerns about the
Confederate battle flag. “With me, it’s freedom of speech,” he said.
“Very simple. Like it, don’t like it, it’s freedom of speech.”
Asked about those who see it as a painful symbol of slavery, he said: “I
know people that like the Confederate flag, and they’re not thinking
about slavery.”
In a separate interview, with the conservative website Townhall.com,
that was published on Tuesday, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that a white
couple in St. Louis who confronted peaceful marchers outside their home
with guns were on the verge of being attacked. “They were going to be
beat up badly, and the house was going to be totally ransacked and
probably burned down,” he said.
Video of the episode, which became a flash point in the national debate
over racial inequality, showed that the protesters at no point
physically threatened the couple.
Mr. Trump’s Rose Garden appearance had its share of false or misleading
statements, as well. He complained once again that the rising cases of
the coronavirus in the United States were really because of an increase
in testing. “If we did half the testing, we’d have half the cases,” he
said. He likewise brushed off the death toll of more than 136,000 by
saying that he had saved as many as three million people by taking the
actions he did.
But he was eager to take on Mr. Biden after weeks of trailing him by
double digits in the polls, blaming the former vice president for
everything from crumbling highways to closed factories. “Joe Biden is
pushing a platform that would demolish the U.S. economy, totally
demolish it,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Biden, he added, has moved so far to the left that he has “the most
extreme platform of any major-party nominee by far in American history.”
He cited Mr. Biden’s climate plan to reduce carbon emissions for new
homes and offices by 2030. “That basically means no windows,” the
president said.
While advertised as a news conference, in fact Mr. Trump took only a few
questions, devoting six minutes of the 63-minute event to responding
before abruptly cutting it off. But he promised he was not finished: “We
will be having these conferences again.”
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