Just after 4:00 this afternoon, Donald Trump left the Oval Office and stormed straight over to the reporters who were crammed together behind a metal chain, waiting to ask him questions. He spent barely 7 minutes with them, and in that short time, he struggled to actually answer a single question they asked, instead once again choosing to attack female reporters, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a dummy. You’re a low IQ person. You’re a dummy, and you work for CNN.”
Barely 3 minutes later, another reporter, Karen Travers from ABC News, tried to question him on the same subject, the sanctions he chose not to impose on Russia, and he erupted once more, snapping at her with, “Are you a stupid person? Who do you work for? You’re a stupid person. And by the way, your network is the worst of all.”
That is two reporters from two different networks both asking about the sanctions he refused to impose on Russia, and Donald Trump unable to answer either of them, because he was on the verge of completely snapping.
With his frustration and anger boiling over, he stopped taking questions and made his way to Marine One to begin his journey to South Carolina for yet another midterm rally, or at least that was what he was supposed to be there for. The event was supposed to promote Darline Graham, Lindsey Graham’s sister, who is running to hold his Senate seat. But that is not what ended up happening. Instead, he spent almost an hour and a half talking all about himself, giving Darline barely a fleeting acknowledgment when he brought her up on stage for less than two minutes.
The rally was held inside the T. Ed Garrison Arena on Clemson University’s campus, though the university made it clear it was not sponsoring the event. And what he was hoping would be a much-needed show of support for him, especially after such embarrassing confrontations with the media back at the White House, didn’t turn out that way. Because not only was Donald Trump unable to keep the focus on the midterm candidates, he also faced at least a dozen interruptions from protesters within the first 20 minutes alone. They stood up, they shouted at him and the people who were there to worship Donald Trump, and one by one they were dragged out. Donald Trump, for his part, tried to keep talking, but each time the commotion interrupted his thoughts, and he had to regroup. As each new protester stood up, the president grew more visibly frustrated, eventually resorting to claims about why so many people were willing to interrupt him. He tried to tell the audience that the protesters were paid instigators who were being paid 250 dollars each, and he complained that they kept ruining his punchlines.
After one of the protesters was punched by a Trump supporter, Donald Trump praised and encouraged the violence rather than condemning what had just happened.
“That was great, man. Wow. Man, I loved that,” he told his radicalized audience. He even stopped to ask who had thrown the punch, and compared him to Evander Holyfield, who happened to be sitting in the audience.
Just the night before at a similar rally in North Carolina, President Trump told a story about how he used to tell his supporters to “beat the hell out of” protesters, before explaining that he had learned not to say things like that anymore. “Today I say, ‘Please don’t hurt them,’” he said, and then added, “This way, the press can’t get me.” He told everyone watching that he wasn’t trying to protect his fellow Americans from violence; he was just trying to avoid criticism from the media. Here we are just one day later, and he was standing on stage telling the crowd how much he loved watching someone get punched for using their voice.
After more than an hour of interruptions, insults directed at anyone he doesn’t like, and even encouraging violence against protesters, Donald Trump returned to some of his favorite talking points. He mused about renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself, joking about how the Arabs would feel about it. He talked about how he still needs to rename a lake and an ocean, just as he did with the Gulf of Mexico, which he now refers to as the Gulf of America. He even proposed renaming the Pacific Ocean, but then wondered whether Europe would be okay with that, apparently confusing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, or perhaps forgetting that Europe is on the other side of the world from the Pacific Ocean.
Then he stopped and looked out into the crowd and told them he was doing well. “I hope you’re having a good time today cuz I’m in a good mood. I’m in a very good mood.” But almost immediately, he went off on another tangent, this time about how the media would describe his speech. “Because the fake news would say he rambled. I don’t ramble. I got I know everything I’m doing. I got aptitude that they dream about.” Then he asked the crowd, “Why would I be unhappy?”
Something is very wrong with what we are watching, and it keeps getting worse. He wandered through a 90-minute speech saying things that made no sense at all. He complained about prizes he hasn’t won, confused the Nobel Peace Prize with the Pulitzer Prize, and barely mentioned the candidate he flew there to help.
Tonight’s troubling performance made me think about what the next two years are going to look like with him holding the most powerful office on the planet while he continues to lash out with nobody there to stop him. I think about what this is doing to the young people living through his corruption and cruelty and how it is shaping their understanding of the world and their expectations of the people in power.
As I was watching his rally on TV, my youngest walked into my room, and I immediately paused him talking because I didn’t want my daughter to hear the president of the United States call a woman a dummy and a low IQ person for asking a question. It’s not because I don’t think that she could handle it or that she isn’t old enough. It was more about preserving what little childhood she still has left and not having it filled with the narration of a madman in the background.
That’s not to say that she hasn’t or couldn’t hear what he said. She watches it herself and she is old enough to absorb it, and in many ways she should be seeing it, because there is something important in what is happening and she will need to recognize the warning signs of a would-be dictator in the future. She and all future generations need to see what this looks like so they can recognize it when it rears its ugly head again in the next authoritarian takeover attempt.
As I sat there, I kept thinking about past presidents and how none of us could ever have imagined Barack Obama calling a female reporter a dummy, stupid, or low IQ. Regardless of party, the office of the presidency used to carry a basic understanding that there was a minimum standard for how you treat people. There used to be a bare minimum of human decency until Donald Trump, and now it just keeps getting worse.
We are already starting to see a more unhinged Donald Trump, and this is just the beginning. He is going to push through everything he can, regardless of the outcome of the midterms. Win or lose, he still has two years. He can do it the easy way by still controlling Congress, or the hard way if he loses it. Taking back Congress does not stop him either, but it does slow him down. It forces hearings and subpoenas. It creates public records of what he did to our country, and it buys time for legal challenges, for public scrutiny, and for the institutions that are still functioning to catch up. That is what is on the line with our vote.
We also need to prepare for what comes after the vote, because what we saw today is not even his worst. Right now, ahead of the midterms, he is still holding back in a desperate attempt to maintain control. The moment the election is over, the restraints come off entirely, and the most dangerous window will start. That is the period between election night and the day the new Congress is seated in January, and it could extend into 2029 with the seating of a new president too.
He is already creating the story to explain the Republican Party’s loss: “They can’t win unless they cheat like they did in 2020.” He is planting the seed right now that the election was rigged and that the results cannot be trusted. From there, it could get even darker with him insisting that the winners should not be seated, and we could see him pressure Mike Johnson to agree. We are probably going to see a new attack on the media every single night, because he does not want any outlet telling the country that the elections were free and fair. He only wants voices that tell his brainwashed base that their votes were stolen. We have never had a constitutional crisis quite like the one that could be coming. Past presidents, even the worst of them, respected the transfer of power because they had some baseline of self-control and respect for the process, even when they didn’t like the outcome. Donald Trump has neither. He has spent years radicalizing people who will do anything to keep him in power, and they are not going to stop because an election told them to. We’ve already seen how this played out in January of 2021 when he sent his followers to the Capitol, and people died.
We are also voting for free and fair elections for the ones that come after this one, especially the 2028 presidential elections, and making sure the next president is actually inaugurated even if Donald Trump doesn’t like them.
Donald Trump loves to say that we need to pretend that he is on the ballot, and he ends his rallies with fake promises and accomplishments. But he does not need to pretend, we all know that he is. This election, we are not just voting for our preferred candidates; we are also actively voting against him and everything he has done. Watching so many people strategically protest him to the extent that they have been at his recent rallies really shows the reason Donald Trump snapped at reporters. It shows that people who wouldn’t normally be the type to take such a bold and brave stand against him are now willing to do so while surrounded by his hostile supporters. As exhausting as this time in history is, we are seeing so many signs that we are going to be okay. That we will get through this. Donald Trump is on the edge of snapping, and the sheer amount of coordination and number of people protesting at his rallies recently show how much the resistance movement has grown. More people are simply done with Donald Trump and his cruelty and chaos, and we are going to vote him and his enablers out. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: It’s a bit rainy tonight and very windy. So I won’t be able to see this kind of view when I’m out running errands for the next day or so, but I'm so thankful for some rain. As we Californians like to say, “we needed it.”
Links to sources used in writing this article:
President Trump Gaggles with Press Upon Departure from the White House, Oct. 21, 2026: YouTube video
President Trump holds midterm rally in South Carolina: YouTube Video
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-cheers-on-violent-attacks-on-protesters-at-chaotic-rally
https://www.thedailybeast.com/live-cnn-segment-captures-chaotic-moment-at-trump-rally
https://ground.news/article/trump-rally-derailed-by-series-of-protesters-in-opening-minutes
The dementia/mental illness is definitely progressing. I lived through it with my husband luckily he was a kind loving man to start. Inability to stay on topic, weird speech patterns and lack of impulse control. Impeachment will be necessary next year. I just hope there are 12-14 GOP senators that have some ethics left.
After reading Heather's account of Donald Trump's unhinged day, I read what the NYT wrote. It covered the campaign event in its usual bland style, minimizing the protests. None of the President's attacks on reporters were covered. I guess that his assaults on free speech are no longer news. The approach normalizes the conduct, as Heather has observed.