Trump Immediately Derails Press Conference With Weirdest Comments

Cereal, coffee, milk, and breakfast sausages sat displayed on a table in the 87-degree heat of Bedminster, New Jersey, mere feet away from Donald Trump as he held a press conference at his golf club Thursday, his second in as many weeks.

More than a prop, the food might have served as a signal to the meandering Republican nominee to stay on the topic du jour: inflation. Instead, the groceries served as a cringeworthy visual cue for those watching, and became increasingly absurd as Trump continually refused to acknowledge them. Try as he might, Trump just couldn’t stay on topic, and took off on a winding rant that repelled structure and meaning.

Despite the fact he began by reading from notes, which sat in a binder in front of him, Trump repeatedly, and for long stretches of time, went off-script into an array of insane claims and random stories.

Trump made the severely inaccurate claim that Harris was responsible for a California law that allowed for people to rob stores of goods with a total value under $950—of course, the state penal code actually says that a shoplifter will be charged with petty theft for stealing goods worth $950 or less, and grand theft if it’s more.

He detoured into his typical racist fearmongering about undocumented immigrants, telling a strange story about watching ICE agents beating up “packs” of MS13 “killers.” Trump warned Americans that under Harris, they might get a system where “everybody gets health care,” ranted about windmills ruining “gorgeous fields” and killing birds, and bragged that he was buddies with the head of the Taliban because he’d once allegedly called Trump “your excellency.”

After nearly an hour of non-stop talking (not to mention, taking no questions from the press) Trump finally gave a nod to the assortment of food behind him, scoffing at the price tags. But he predictably changed the subject back to call Harris “Margaret Thatcher, the liberal version.”

Trump’s allies have become increasingly concerned that the Republican candidate can’t stay on message to save his life. His team has adopted a new strategy, of smaller single-issue events, meant to keep the former president on task—but their first such event, held Wednesday and meant to focus on the economy, predictably descended into chaos .