Rant-filled rallies, an unpopular VP and lies, lies, lies: Trump just had his worst week yet

Former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign capped off a gobsmackingly disastrous week by letting its flawed and aging candidate hold a make-believe “press conference” at his New Jersey golf resort.

The subject, was … maybe something about food prices? Or the economy? Or possibly something about birds getting killed by windmills?

It didn’t really matter. Trump delivered an epic rant-a-thon , nearly two hours of pure, uncut lies, weird tangents and whining ‒ then took a handful of questions, most from pro-Trump outlets basically asking the Republican presidential nominee to explain how he got to be so awesome.

Trump's campaign had an astonishingly terrible week in rallies

Given the week the campaign has had, it was nice of them to take the candidate out for a little air and a chance to babble at clouds. But Thursday’s event in Bedminster did nothing to quell the rising belief that Trump’s campaign has been a mess since Vice President Kamala Harris rose to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket and surged in the polls .

Allies have been pleading with Trump to dial back the personal attacks on Harris, so on Thursday, he said : “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence.”

You could almost feel the whoosh of moderate suburban voters racing away from him.

The more voters see of Trump, the more they think, 'Yikes'

Asked how he felt about Harris’ plan to propose a ban on corporate price gouging , Trump responded, and I’m not making this up : “She wants to have no fracking. ‘I want NO fracking.’ But for her whole life she said that. No fracking. But then a couple months ago ...”

It was at that point that the people gathered on that rich man’s golf property should’ve started slowly walking away, careful to not move too fast and agitate the blathering 78-year-old.

But they stayed. And he continued, saying to no one in particular : “Instead of playing this game with wind that is ruining everything, killing all your birds, destroying the fields, all these gorgeous fields, you got windmills all over the place and you have birds. You want to see a bird cemetery, just go under a windmill. You see thousands of birds dead.”

My, my, my. I’m sure GOP donors are glad to see a campaign laser-focused on windmills and avian safety.

AI lies, a vapid interview with Elon Musk ... and then JD Vance existing?

Trump’s spectacularly not-good week began Sunday when he said, without a smidgeon of proof, that Harris’ crowds at recent campaign rallies were actually AI-generated . That lie sat there and looked dumb for a day or so, and then Trump ‒ whose political advisers must loathe him ‒ hopped on a phone call Monday night with his not-at-all-weird friend Elon Musk .

That alleged “interview” was a glitchy, absurd mess . It likely helped Trump lock down the coveted Musk fanboy demographic, which he already had an iron grip on, but did nothing to drive away the “weird” label Harris’ campaign has stuck to him.

In case you missed it: Trump rambles, slurs his way through Elon Musk interview. It was an unmitigated disaster.

That was all bad enough, but unfortunately for Trump, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio continued to be his running mate, pulling in headlines like: “ JD Vance is more unpopular than Sarah Palin ”; “ J.D. Vance’s Team Won’t Comment on His Viral Drag Photo ”; and “ Now JD Vance Accused of Dissing All ‘Postmenopausal’ Women .”

At one of the small campaign events he did this week, Vance forgot which Pennsylvania VFW post he was at and had to pull out a card to remind himself, right after calling it the “VFA.”

Trump thinks he alone can save his campaign. He's very, very wrong.

Trump ‒ who will soon be saying, “Vance who? Never heard of ‘em” ‒ gave a Wednesday speech on the economy in North Carolina . Except it wasn’t really a speech, more another rant, and it had little to do with the economy.

Just more tired name-calling and now-recognizable lies that he repeats over and over.

The GOP's problem with women: You're not imagining it. Republicans have been weird about women for years.

On Thursday, the Trump campaign brought back former adviser Corey Lewandowski , a widely disrespected operative who was previously canned by a MAGA-affiliated super PAC following accusations of hitting on the wife of a donor .

So that should certainly calm things down.

The Harris campaign should thank Trump for talking so much

Then Trump held his New Jersey festival of narcissism, griping, for no apparent reason, about Hillary Clinton , pointing out that he beat former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley in her own state “by legendary numbers” and praising brutal Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban.

And he said whatever this is about China and artificial intelligence : “They’re building a coal plant every week, but now I hear it’s two coal plants a week. And we’re dying for energy. We don't have energy. And they're getting set for the AI because they're gonna create so much electricity and we're not gonna be able to do it, but you'll do it if I have it. Because that's an emergency.”

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That this week in Trump’s presidential campaign hasn’t sent GOP donors fleeing is shocking. That this week of hearing Trump dissemble relentlessly and chatter disjointedly hasn’t led the political press in America to write story after story questioning Trump's mental state and capacity is an indictment on the industry.

Voters saw a lot of Trump and Vance this week.

That’s the best news the Harris campaign could hope to hear.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rant-filled rallies, an unpopular VP and lies, lies, lies: Trump just had his worst week yet