Donald Trump kept his Montana rally crowd waiting for about 90 minutes Friday night and then immediately insulted the state. He was scheduled to speak at 8 p.m. but didn’t show up until about 9:30 p.m., then said, “I must like Tim Sheehy a lot to be here,” referring to the Republican Senate candidate who spoke before him. Trump went on to complain that it takes him “at least two hours” to get anywhere in Montana.
Throughout the speech, Trump appeared to level accusations against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, even trying to accuse her campaign of colluding with the media to push the narrative that he and his running mate J.D. Vance are “weirdos.”
“then [Harris’ running-mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz] “He said, ‘You know, I think J.D. Vance is eccentric,’ you know, it’s a word they use. I think he calls me that, too. No, we’re not eccentric. We’re very consistent people. We want to have strong borders, we want to have good elections, we want to have low interest rates, we want to be able to buy a house, we want great education, we want strong borders. I think we’re — in fact, I think we’re the exact opposite of eccentric.”
Trump continued, addressing his own conspiracy theories:They are “Weird! You know what they do? They work with the press to come up with a sound bite… And every station that night – all of them, CBS, ABC, NBC – they all said, 'Oh, they called him Weird, Weird.' It's unbelievable, you know, it's not a word that's used very often in politics, you know, it's terrible that they could do that. It's just a sound bite. No, J.D. Vance is a great patriot and he's a United States Marine and he's a real Marine, and he's a brilliant man.”
Trump also attacked the media, saying: “It's fake. It's fake news.”
“They are very evil. I think they are the most evil people on earth,” he added.
In addition to accusing his opponents and the press of conspiring against him, Trump intentionally mispronounced Kamala’s name several times and claimed that “nobody has a clue” what Harris’s last name was. He attacked her for allegedly wanting “windmills everywhere.” He accused her of allowing undocumented immigrants into the country, even though Harris has not served as the “border czar” Trump and Republicans claim. He called her “crazy Kamala” and a “crazy nutcase.” He claimed she “wants to take your guns away” and wants to “defund the police,” even though Harris has never made such statements. “She has refused to do a single interview. You know why? Because she’s stupid,” he said.
Trump also said he had a larger crowd at his rallies than Harris and Walz, continuing his habit of lying about crowd size. Rolling Stone Trump was reportedly privately aghast this week, “not happy” with the enthusiastic crowds Harris seemed to be attracting. During his press conference on Thursday, Trump claimed that his speech at the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6 (which preceded the Capitol attack) had a larger audience than Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, though that was clearly a lie.
“In New Jersey, I had 107,000 people. The press never talked about it. They don’t talk about it. I went to South Carolina. They didn’t talk about it. I had 80,000 people,” Trump told the crowd on Friday. Those numbers are greatly exaggerated.
Amid his attacks on Harris and the media, Trump repeatedly mentioned President Joe Biden — who is no longer in the race. He also launched anti-fat attacks on Sen. Jon Tester, saying the senator had “the biggest belly I’ve ever seen.”
Trump brought Rep. Ronny Jackson, who led the White House medical unit during his administration, onto the stage where Jackson claimed that “swamp hippo” Tester was behind reports that Jackson was “recklessly prescribing drugs.”
“He called me on TV a candy seller. He said I was prescribing drugs recklessly,” Jackson said. “I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve prescribed drugs in the White House in 14 years. He said it. He said I got drunk and crashed a government car… He knew it didn’t happen, and it’s been proven it didn’t happen. He didn’t care. He was going to destroy me to improve his career, and he passed this information on to these idiots in the back, the mainstream media, who were willing to put it out there.”
Rolling Stone In March of this year, it was reported that the White House medical unit Trump created under Jackson’s leadership was “like the Wild West” when it came to prescription drugs, including Xanax and Speed. A 2018 Senate report found that Jackson not only prescribed the drugs irresponsibly and kept poor records, but also caused a government vehicle accident while drunk and fostered a toxic work environment.
The White House said at the time that after a thorough review of Jackson’s vehicle records, they found three minor accidents but no evidence of an accident. Last year, police body camera footage emerged of Jackson calling a Texas state trooper an “absolute idiot” after Jackson refused to pull over during a medical emergency. The officer arrested Jackson, who threatened to “call the governor.”
While Trump’s rhetoric seemed to be well-received by the crowd, things got darker on Truth Social. As reporter Zachary Petrizzo noted, trending hashtags on Trump’s social media platform called for the firing of Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita and adviser Susie Wiles.
