CNN Host Jake Tapper has eviscerated President Donald Trump over his latest “unsettling” and “incoherent” White House appearance.
The 79-year-old marked the first anniversary of his second term in office with a 104-minute marathon news conference on Tuesday that included wielding a book of his “accomplishments,” which he dramatically tossed on the floor.
Tapper said Trump’s performance was “rambling, at times incoherent, possibly unsettling.”
During the curious conference, Trump admitted he wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Trump, but said “I thought I would be killed if I did that.” He also waved mugshots of people arrested by ICE and bragged that the father of Renee Nicole Good, who was killed by an ICE agent this month, was a “fan” of his.
“For any supporters of his looking for reassurance that the Trump doing wild 1:00 a.m social media posts is not the same Trump in the White House, well, they were probably not reassured,” Tapper said.
The epic news briefing followed a slew of Truth Social posts in which the president shared apparent private text messages he had received from French President Emmanuel Macron and NATO chief Mark Rutte, questioning his demands to control Greenland and calling for his political opponents to be jailed.
Tapper pointed out that Trump’s “monologue” at the White House began by complaining about his public relations image, noting that it was “a common complaint of politicians who have horrific poll numbers.”
Trump’s meandering discussion also covered the ongoing ICE raids in Minnesota. The president claimed that Minnesota is “a very corrupt place, and the elections are totally corrupt. I feel I won it all three times.”
Tapper said, “He feels he won all three times,” before quoting conservative broadcaster Ben Shapiro’s saying, “facts don‘t care about your feelings.”
Tapper added, “President Trump lost Minnesota all three times fair and square every time. Not really surprising. Minnesota has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1972.”
The Lead host also mentioned Trump’s “frankly bizarre, rambling moments,” during the appearance where he complained about his predecessor Joe Biden. Tapper also said Trump is “weaponizing” the government.
“The U.S. Justice Department, right now under Trump, is investigating the Governor and the Attorney General of Minnesota and the mayors of Minneapolis and Saint Paul for what we don‘t know,” Tapper said. “But opposing Trump has a way of landing you in the sights of his Justice Department.”
CNN’s senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said Trump believes he is his own best spokesman. She referenced Trump’s use of the pseudonym “John Barron” in the 80s and 90s to pose as his own publicist when contacting the media to promote himself.
“You heard a lot of frustration from him today,” Holmes said. “He has seen all of the same poll numbers that we have seen. Just a reminder, it‘s not just public polling, they have their own internal polling. They know that people are unhappy with President Trump‘s handling of the economy in particular. They are also unhappy overall, but especially when it comes to the economy.”
Holmes, who was in the room for the not-so-brief briefing, said “it did not seem as though these were prepared remarks in any way.”
The White House had given media a “huge stack of paper” before the event that was headed “365 accomplishments and 365 days.”
“President Trump seemed to be kind of thumbing through it in real time, stopping reading various things from there and then elaborating on them… often going off script, talking about elections in Minnesota or fraud or a litany of other things,” she said.
Holmes summed up the conference as “just an airing of grievances for an hour and 45 minutes as he wrapped up his first year.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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