Donald Trump

NY Times - Former President Donald J. Trump told a jaw-dropping story on Thursday about nearly dying in a helicopter ride with Willie Brown, the former California politician and ex-boyfriend of his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. There was only one problem with the story. Or maybe two. Or maybe three.

It wasn’t the famous former San Francisco mayor on the helicopter flight at all. It was Gov. Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, who bears little resemblance to Willie Brown. There was also no emergency landing, and the helicopter’s passengers were never in any danger at all, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was also on the flight.

Jerry Brown, who left office in January 2019, said through a spokesman, “There was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris.

There was also no emergency landing, and the helicopter’s passengers were never in any danger at all, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was also on the flight. Jerry Brown, who left office in January 2019, said through a spokesman, “There was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris.”

 NY Times -Former President Donald J. Trump keeps adding new tax cuts to his list of campaign promises, and their projected costs keep piling up. Independent analyses suggest Mr. Trump’s plans could add close to $4 trillion over the next decade to America’s already fast-growing national debt, even after factoring in additional revenues from new taxes he wants to impose on imports. 

A look at claims made by Trump at news conference

Robert Reich - It appears that Trump — with a family history of dementia — is increasingly unhinged. He has claimed that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group, is “very smart.” That whales are being killed by windmills. That he won all 50 states in 2020. That he defeated Barack Obama in 2016. That the outgoing chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed.

 The most telling evidence of Trump’s growing dementia is found in his paranoid thirst for revenge, on which he is centering his entire presidential campaign.On November 11, he pledged to a crowd of supporters in Claremont, New Hampshire, that: “We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream."

Are these the words of a sane person? Or of an aging paranoid megalomaniac?  Even if it’s unclear to which category Trump belongs, shouldn’t this question be central to the coverage of his campaign for reelection? I’m no physician, and I have no idea whether Trump is suffering from early dementia. But the weight of the evidence suggests he is. So why isn’t the media covering this — at least with the same intensity they covered Biden’s apparent difficulties?

AP News - A Republican activist who signed a document falsely claiming Donald Trump had won Arizona in 2020 became the first person to be convicted in the state’s fake elector case. Loraine Pellegrino, a past president of the group Ahwatukee Republican Women, has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false document. … Seventeen other people had been charged in the case, including 10 other Republicans who had signed a certificate saying they were ‘duly elected and qualified’ electors and claimed Trump had carried Arizona in the 2020 election.

Via House Judiciary Dems

Daily Beast -  A former Trump adviser is saying what many of the former president’s critics have been claiming for a while now, that he has lost sight of what’s true and what’s false. John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in the Trump administration and is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, claims that in his old boss’s mind, “the truth is whatever he wants it to be.”

“He just can’t tell the difference,” Bolton told CNN host Kaitlan Collins, who asked for his response to Trump’s wild press conference from his Mar-a-Lago estate on Thursday in which he dared Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris to debate him and claimed he was protective of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election race.

“I was very protective of her,” Trump said at his press conference. “Nobody would understand that, but I was I think my people understand it. They used to say, ‘Lock her up, lock her up,’ but I’d say just, ‘Relax, please.’”

Collins screened several clips showing Trump attacking Clinton on the campaign trail, with one showing him saying: “I think she should be in jail. She should be locked up.”

Bolton claimed that Trump doesn’t know he’s lying and “doesn’t really care.”

“Trump can’t tell the difference between what’s true and what’s false,” he said. “It’s not that he lies a lot because to lie, you have to do it consciously. He just can’t tell the difference. So, he makes up what he wants to say at any given time.“If it happens to comport with what everybody else sees. Well, that’s fine. And if it doesn’t comport with any body else, he doesn’t really care, and he’s had decades of getting away with it.”