At demented Phoenix rally, Donald Trump misquotes himself, whines about Charlottesville, rambles about Kenya

| 10:48 pm EDT August 22, 2017
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Many were expecting arrogant bombast from Donald Trump during his Phoenix rally tonight, as he tends to treat these events as an opportunity to go off script in unhinged fashion. But instead Trump served up something else: whiny bluster. Trump spent nearly his entire speech complaining about how the media covered his reaction to Charlottesville, and in the process he managed to misquote himself while also invoking Japan and Kenya.

Even by Trump’s standards, his Phoenix speech was almost indescribable, but we’ll give it the old college try. For an extended stretch he held a printed copy of his prepared Charlottesville speech in his hand, while reading portions of it to “prove” that he responded adequately. But Trump never actually gave that speech as it was written, instead having gone off script to blame “many sides” for the violence of his own white supremacist supporters. And while this was a stunning de facto lie, it might have been the least incoherent portion of the debacle.

At one point Trump tried to make a failed analogy by announcing “I love you because you’re from Japan or China” and then he repeated it again while substituting Kenya. The crowd cheered, even though none of them could have had any idea what he was talking about. At one point Trump falsely claimed that there were very few anti-Trump protesters outside the building, but at that point MSNBC put up a split screen showing just how many protesters were in fact outside.

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell tried offering real-time voiceover commentary for portions of Trump’s speech, pointing out where he was misquoting himself and where he was lying. O’Donnell then cut away from the speech entirely. Later he tuned back into the speech, only to find that Trump was rambling about having a medical degree and having a large apartment – and within five seconds O’Donnell had cut away from him again. Remarkably, Trump just put his poor reaction to Charlottesville back front and center, after the headlines had begun to fade. If you find Palmer Report valuable, make a donation.