Trump Weirdly Brags About Interview That His Team Cut Off Early (2024)

Donald Trump’s social media venture is losing users every month, hurting his bottom line and possibly showing that his rhetoric is losing appeal even among his own base.

The Guardian spoke to a right-wing media analyst, Howard Polskin, who said that Truth Social had only 2.11 million unique users in June, a decline of 38 percent from one year ago.

“The diminishing audience levels for Truth Social suggest a rejection of the harsh rhetoric expressed by the ex-president and his political allies that is one of the hallmarks of the two-year-old platform,” Ploskin said.

Trump Media & Technology, the parent company of Truth Social, had experienced a jump in its stock price of $46 per share after a gunman tried to kill Trump earlier this month. But those gains appear to have been short-lived, as the stock dropped to about $29 per share Wednesday. Both numbers are nowhere near the peak price this year, which was close to $72 per share in March after its initial public offering.

The venture was supposed to be Trump’s cash cow, as the former president and convicted felon owns 60 percent of the company. But a series of setbacks since launching have ruined Trump’s financial fail-safe. The company had a net loss of $58.2 million in 2023, numbers that had to be reaudited after its accounting firm was charged with “massive fraud” and subsequently barred from ever serving as accountants again. The company lost an astonishing $327.6 million last quarter, only bringing in $770,500 in revenue.

The United Auto Workers announced Wednesday that their union would endorse Kamala Harris for president.

The union’s executive board came to the decision because of “the Biden-Harris administration’s proven track record of standing with the UAW and delivering major gains for the working class,” according to a press release from the union.

“Our job in this election is to defeat Donald Trump and elect Kamala Harris to build on her proven track record of delivering for the working class,” said UAW President Shawn Fain in the statement. “We stand at a crossroads in this country. We can put a billionaire back in office who stands against everything our union stands for, or we can elect Kamala Harris who will stand shoulder to shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed.”

Following President Joe Biden’s endorsem*nt of Harris, many unions, including the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, or IBEW, and the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, rushed to back Harris. But the UAW held off.

Fain even took heat when he appeared on MSNBC to say his union was “not going to rush” its Harris endorsem*nt without the approval of the union members. The union had previously endorsed Biden in January.

In the UAW’s announcement, the union cited Harris’s commitment to workers on the picket line and in her voting records. “Kamala Harris walked the picket line with striking autoworkers in 2019, has taken on corporate price-gouging and profiteering, and has spoken out and voted against unfair trade deals that hurt the American worker like NAFTA and NAFTA 2.0, the USMCA,” the statement said.

Harris will head to Detroit on August 7 to rally with UAW members and Michigan voters. During that time, she will also meet directly with union members about the issues facing Michigan workers.

“This campaign is bringing together people from all walks of life, building a movement that can defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box,” said Fain. “For our one million active and retired members, the choice is clear: We will elect Kamala Harris to be our next President this November.”

Former President Donald Trump suggested Vice President Kamala Harris had suddenly turned Black, during an interview Wednesday at a convention for the National Association of Black Journalists.

Trump appeared onstage more than an hour late to take part in a conversation conducted by ABC News’s senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner, and Semafor’s political reporter Kadia Goba.

Scott didn’t hold back when it came to asking Trump about his party’s attacks on Harris as a “DEI” candidate. “Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a Black woman?” Scott asked.

“Well, I can say no, I think it’s maybe a little bit different,” Trump said. “I’ve known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage. And she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black.”

“So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?” Trump asked, noting that he’d respect “either one.”

“She was Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person,” he said. The audience let out a collective gasp and incredulous laughs. He went on to criticize Scott for her “hostile, nasty tone,” before turning his attention to fawn over Faulkner.

As the interview proceeded, Trump was simultaneously fact-checked online in collaboration with Politifact. The slogan of the weekend’s convention was “Winds of Change: Journalism Over Disinformation.”

Before the interview started, Trump posted on Truth Social, whining that he had to attend the event in Chicago, while Harris had opted to attend virtually.

After one of the heads of Project 2025, Paul Dans, stepped down on Tuesday, there was an immediate backlash from the right against Trump campaign staff.

The conservative manifesto has drawn a lot of criticism and attacks from Democrats, with Trump even taking issue with some of its extreme policy items, particularly its restrictions on abortion rights. But several right-wing personalities are directing their aim at Trump advisers for pushing out Dans, concerned that the move is a signal Trump is abandoning the project.

Mike Cernovich specifically targeted Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s campaign managers, in several posts on X (formerly Twitter).

Mollie Hemingway, editor in chief of The Federalist, and Chris Lonsdale, a Missouri state representative, also jumped in to attack Trump staff.

The gleeful email that LaCivita and Trump’s other campaign manager, Susie Wiles, sent out Tuesday celebrating “Project 2025’s demise” appears to have provoked anger from many on the right. They are refusing to believe reports that Trump himself is annoyed that the project has received so much attention, or that he resents the implication that the project is behind his policies and choosing his presidential staff.

January 6 defendant David Brian Howard claims that Fox News played a significant role in his radicalization and eventual participation in the January 6 Capitol riot.

Howard was arrested on charges of breaching the Capitol and is set to face sentencing on Friday. According to court documents shared by CBS’s congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane, Howard is “seeking mercy at sentencing” by noting that he was influenced by Fox News’s lies about the 2020 election.

The defendant “is/was simply a small-town man who between the years of 2014 and 2020 followed the media and news which much of his small community seemed to follow—Fox News,” the document read. While Howard “bought the lies sold to him and millions of others for many years and especially in the wake of the 2020 election,” the defense noted he has since had a change of heart, and is now “horrified by their ongoing misinformation, influence and affect and veers away from any of that.”

“Mr. Howard had no intention, ever, of engaging in the actions which led to his arrest. He came to Washington, DC, from Dallas (via Miami), on January 6th alone because he was led to believe—from his local media and large swaths of the community around him at home—that his vote for Mr. Trump in 2020 had been stolen; that the election had been stolen.”

Howard’s argument echoes that of critics who have placed some of the blame for the events of January 6 on Fox.