Windmills and Whoopi Goldberg: Trump’s Unhinged Rally Rants in Pennsylvania
With less than a month before Election Day, the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is coming down to the wire. Both candidates have embarked on a punishing schedule of rallies, interviewers, events, and fundraisers in their last-minute bids to win over voters. The former president seems to be growing even more erratic as polls show the race is neck-and-neck.
On Wednesday, Trump held back-to-back rallies in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state. Watching the two events, one might think that the former president isn’t in a close race for the most powerful political office in the world, but an angry uncle who’s hijacked a family dinner as a captive audience to air out decades of personal grievances.
The former president ranted about the wind, his memory, and his genetic background. He attacked his opponent as a “dumb woman,” and railed against Howard Stern and Whoopi Goldberg for interviewing her.
The Harris campaign noted that Trump spent more than an hour raving over a laundry list of complaints before addressing Hurricane Milton, which made landfall in Florida Wednesday night and has likely caused widespread devastation in the region.
Even by Trump’s standards, Wednesday’s rallies were a notable parade of absurdities and vitriol. Here are some of the lowlights:
He played footage from Full Metal Jacket
The former president spent a chunk of Wednesday’s rally juxtaposing snippets of R. Lee Ermey’s Full Metal Jacket character Gunnery Sergeant Hartman verbally and physically abusing Vietnam War recruits during boot camp, with modern-day LGBTQ members of the military. “Lets make our military great again,” the video declared.
Full Metal Jacket is, at its core, an anti-war film about the psychological horror that must be inflicted on an individual to turn them into a willing killer — not that anyone would expect Trump to get the message.
He ranted about “disgusting” Whoopi Goldberg
“Politics can do strange things to demented people,” Trump said. “Now I’ve hired Whoopi to work for me as a comedian — before this stuff, a long time ago. Her mouth was so foul … She was so filthy, dirty, disgusting. Oh, what a loser she is.”
Harris recently sat down for an interview with Goldberg and the other hosts of The View.
He bragged that he dropped Howard Stern “like a dog”
Trump is big mad that Stern interviewed Harris on Tuesday: “Howard Stern, he’s a weak guy, he’s weak… Howard, I know him very well — I was on his show many times — I used to think he was good but then I dropped him. I dropped him like a dog.”
He bragged about his memory and how he “can do things people can’t do”
“I have a great memory,” Trump claimed as a way to rationalize his myriad digressions. “I can talk about hundreds of things at one time and always get back to that point that you were trying to make. I can do things that people can’t do. But you know what, this is the most important period in the history of our country.”
He lied that a child goes to school one gender and comes back another
“Your child goes to school and they take your child. It was a ‘he,’ and comes back a ‘she,'” Trump claimed, falsely. “And they do this. And often without parental consent. Can you even believe we’re saying this?”
Trump has long been alleging Democrats want to change the gender of children without parental consent. This is, of course, totally false.
He said he’d like to have some Indian blood in him
“So I came up with the name ‘Pocahontas’ [for Elizabeth Warren] and it drove her crazy,” Trump said, referring to the Massachusetts senators. “So she went out and got a blood test. Remember what the number was? 1024th … That means essentially that I have more Indian blood in me than she has, and I have none, unfortunately. I’d like to have some.
He used the devastation from Hurricane Helene to complain about the renaming a fort after a Confederate general
Trump’s biggest pitch to residents of North Carolina, a swing state, seems to be that he will reinstate the name “Fort Bragg” to Fort Liberty. The military installation’s name was recently changed because it has been named after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg. He brought up the issue while discussing Hurricane Helene.
“[Harris] didn’t send anything or anyone at all, days passed, no help as men, women, and children drowned,” Trump said.“North Carolina has 8 military bases, great bases. Fort Bragg, remember Fort Bragg? They changed the name… Has nothing to do with Pennsylvania, but the people of North Carolina would like to leave it as Fort Bragg.”
He called Harris a “dumb woman” and a “horrible person”
“She’s a dummy,” Trump said. “I watched her over the years, that is one dumb woman, sorry. I’m sorry women, she’s a dummy.”
“The people of Pennsylvania have to tell Kamala Harris that we’ve had enough,” he said at the first rally earlier in the day. “We think you’re a horrible person. We think you’re a liar and we hate — Right? We think you’re a liar. We think you’re not a smart person, and we’re tired of having stupid people run our country.”
Trump also continued his obsession over Harris having worked at McDonald’s, claiming again without evidence that she is lying about it.
He ranted about windmills … again
Trump indulged his long-running vendetta against windmills on Wednesday night.
“The wind, the wind, it sounds so wonderful, the wind, the wind, the wind is wind is bullshit,” he said. “I’ll tell you. It’s horrible, so expensive, just too expensive. It doesn’t work… You remember when I used to say, ‘darling, I want to watch our president tonight on television,’ and the husband looks [at her] I’m sorry. They’re the windmills aren’t wind, there’s no wind, tonight you can’t watch darling, we’re not going to be watching tonight.”
He lied about FEMA … again
Trump has been repeatedly pushing conspiracy theories about the federal hurricane response because he thinks it will boost his election prospects.
FEMA “spent all their funds. They have no funds to take care — they have no funds, they have no workers, they have no nothing,” he said on Wednesday. “FEMA, we had such a good FEMA. FEMA was great under Trump, that I can tell you, we had tremendous success.”
“[Harris] has just led the worst rescue operation in history in North Carolina,” he said. “They had no money. You know, where they gave the money? To illegal immigrants coming in, many of whom are killers. Many of whom are drug dealers, many of whom are gang members.”
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