RawStory

2024 Elections

'He couldn't help himself': Journalist singles out bizarre act by Trump during grilling

As part of the "Morning Joe" post-mortem on Donald Trump's abrasive and confrontational appearance before Black journalists in Chicago on Wednesday that ended with his handlers cutting the event short, the New York Times' Mara Gay noted one moment that she felt was illustrative of the former president's attitude towards Black women.

Speaking with fill-in hosts Jonathan Lemire and Katty Kay, Gay —who serves on the Times editorial board — followed up commentary about the speech from the Rev. Al Sharpton and began, "There was one more thing that I noticed when I watched the event yesterday, which was the deeply held personal animus and contempt that Donald Trump showed for the Black women interviewing him and the journalists in the room."

"I believe it's going to be — if he does take up Kamala Harris's challenge to debate him, I believe it'll be a problem for him with everyone outside of that Republican, the most rabid right-wing base. People are going to see that," she added.

ALSO READ: Mike Johnson's now-deleted Trump social media post sparks controversy

She then noted, "At one point, he even reached over to tighten ABC News' Rachel Scott's water bottle," before observing, "which was just an expression of dominance."

"He couldn't help himself," she elaborated. "It was almost as though he could not take, personally take the fact that these black women on stage had the platform..."

"They belong on the stage," Sharpton then interjected. "You are black and a woman, you shouldn't be questioning me."

"Right," Gay agreed.

Watch below or at the link.

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'Donald Trump is afraid': Analyst explains what led to furious meltdown before journalists

Reacting to Donald Trump's stunning display of anger on a stage in Chicago before the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Mara Gay of the New Your Times editorial board told the panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the ex-president is in fear for his future.

Trump's abrasive responses to questions from moderator Rachel Scott of ABC News led to gasps and nervous laughter from the assembled journalists and Gay contended that the pressure of watching Vice President Kamala Harris eclipse him on the polls has the former president in a panic.

"I think lately, Donald Trump has been trying to do his best impression of someone who actually respects women and likes black people," Gay began. "Now that Kamala Harris is the frontrunner and there's so much energy and momentum behind that campaign and really excitement about someone who represents the future of the United States, a multiracial democracy, biracial people are the fastest growing segment of America, I think now Donald Trump is afraid.

ALSO READ: Mike Johnson's now-deleted Trump social media post sparks controversy

"I think he is probably losing this election, and I think he feels that," she elaborated. "So what he is doing is he's going back to his old playbook of racism that really propelled his campaign back in 2016 when he started talking about Mexicans as rapists," she elaborated. "This is really just birtherism 2.0. It is clearly offensive."

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Trump staged his racist meltdown to be 'relevant again' after 'Harris mania': ex-spokesman

Donald Trump hurled racist insults at Kamala Harris and quarreled with a panel of Black journalists, and one of his former staffers suspects he staged the meltdown to drum up media attention for his suddenly flagging campaign.

The former president has grown accustomed to dominating the news cycle, but he has taken a back seat less than three weeks from an assassination attempt after president Joe Biden stepped aside and put Harris in the spotlight, and former White House communications director Mike Dubke said he made a spectacle of himself on purpose.

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'Wheels started spinning': Trump nephew recalls how his uncle 'got out of' Vietnam draft

Fred Trump III, the son of the late Fred Trump Jr., has published his own book about the famous family and the years of observations about his uncle, former President Donald Trump.

In a television appearance, Fred Trump began recalling a conversation where he triggered his uncle by quoting those saying the Trump name was "toxic." At one point, he and MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace turned to talk about the state of the 2024 race and the ex-president's aversion to the military.

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Trump supporters deride 'leftist' Harris as being backed by elites

Donald Trump supporters snapped up T-shirts calling rival Kamala Harris a vulgar slur as they filed into the Republican's first rally in Pennsylvania since he narrowly survived an attempt on his life in the US state.

Hawkers at the gathering in Harrisburg Wednesday did a brisk trade in shirts emblazoned with the words "say no to the hoe -- vote Trump 2024" around a crossed-out image of Vice President Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

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‘GOP has no answer for this’: Pollster says Harris campaign close to becoming a ‘movement’

Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for just over one week, is heading a campaign that is edging toward becoming a political and cultural movement, according to a top Democratic pollster and strategist, with some starting to compare her popularity to Barack Obama's historic 2008 campaign.

"There’s something happening," writes former DNC pollster Cornell Belcher, the President of brilliant corners Research & Strategies, and a frequent MSNBC guest, "last night this campaign moved in the direction of a movement."

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'Trouble for Mr. Trump at the ballot box': Red flag raised over Truth Social's low traffic

Former President Donald Trump's Truth Social platform just saw traffic nosedive for the third straight month, new data shows.

Truth Social, owned by the publicly traded Trump Media, attracted little more than 2 million unique visitors in June, down 38 percent from the 3.4 million it hosted in June 2023, according to TheRighting's analysis of Comscore data. The report didn't give numbers for May and April, but said a steady drop was recorded each month.

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'Don't be fooled': Trump said to have plans to implement 'MAGA document' Project 2025

Former President Donald Trump's campaign is trying to pretend they kicked Project 2025 to the curb, wrote Heather Digby Parton for Salon — but "don't be fooled," it is very much still informing their plans for a second term.

Project 2025, a 900-page transition plan written by the far-right Heritage Foundation, lays out how the next Republican president can replace federal workers with an army of loyalists, impose Christian nationalism in U.S. law, gut programs safeguarding racial civil rights, and eliminate a huge range of programs and services from Social Security and Medicare, to the National Weather Service, to federal funding for public transportation, to benefits for military families. This comes as Democrats have gone on the offensive by tying Trump to the most unpopular parts of the plan, and voters appear to be reacting with alarm.

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'A bad sign': Kari Lake's 'underwhelming' primary win is a red flag for the GOP

Former television personality Kari Lake may have won the battle to run as the Republican candidate for a seat on the U.S. Senate but, according to GOP insiders in her state, her victory on Tuesday over a sparsely funded conservative rival should set off alarms.

In her column for AZCentral, journalist Laurie Roberts — a constant thorn in Lake's side — stated that the feeling in Arizona is that the controversial conservative who has been losing in the polls to Rep. Rueben Gallego (D-AZ) needed to reel in over 60 percent of the GOP vote to show she can win in November.

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'This is all off-message': Trump campaign buried for not controlling the J.D. Vance damage

With Sen. J. D. Vance's inflammatory comments about "childless cat ladies" still an unrelenting hot topic on cable news and social media, conservative columnist Noah Rothman took Donald Trump's campaign braintrust to the woodshed for letting the controversy continue to dominate the news cycle since the GOP convention two weeks ago.

According to the National Review columnist, the ex-president's third run for the Oval Office is supposed to be a much more "disciplined" affair. But, he said, the campaign is blowing it by either not getting the Ohio Republican under control or indulging in a horrible misreading over what the voting public finds acceptable.

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Trump surrogate falsely says CrowdStrike firm plotted to 'take down' voting machines

Carla Sands, a surrogate for Donald Trump, falsely claimed this week that internet security firm CrowdStrike was plotting to take down voting machines on Election Day.

Sands, Trump's former ambassador to Denmark, made the remarks at a Wednesday rally in Pennsylvania for the former president.

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N-word political committee materializes during Trump interview with Black reporters

CHICAGO — In the midst of former President Donald Trump's interview today with Black journalists, a person created a federal super PAC that uses the N-word, according to an official filing with the Federal Election Commission that Raw Story reviewed.

A statement of organization for "N----- for Trump" was filed at 2:35 p.m. ET Wednesday with the FEC, the documents indicate.

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'Is he just that sick?' Ex-senator tries to figure out Trump's thought process at NABJ Q&A

Former U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill struggled Wednesday to figure out why former President Donald Trump went to the National Association of Black Journalists, and in doing so, set his campaign aflame.

Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, questioned, "What did he think he was going to get?"

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