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Former President Donald J. Trump began his news conference on Thursday in the lobby of Trump Tower, standing in front of seven American flags. He laid a bound folder down on a lectern and declared that he was going to focus on the southern border, where his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, is headed on Friday.

That lasted about 10 minutes.

Mr. Trump quickly appeared to grow bored with the remarks he read from, and drifted repeatedly toward other topics.

. . . At the beginning of the news conference, Mr. Trump struggled at times to articulate his thoughts or make a point clearly. He stumbled over some words as he read from remarks he had plainly not written. He bootstrapped one thought onto another based on whether the words associated with something else, as opposed to having a clear through line.

After he accused Ms. Harris of ruining San Francisco while she was the district attorney, a recent favorite line of attack, Mr. Trump followed it up with tangents that related loosely to the city of San Francisco as opposed to the reason he was at the lectern.

. . . Then he dodged several questions about whether Ukraine should cede its land to Russia in order to end the bloody incursion that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia first began in 2022. Ms. Harris earlier in the day made a jab at Mr. Trump, arguing that people who would propose Ukraine cede some of its territory to Russia were asking the country to surrender.

“It would have been a lot easier to work out prior to the start,” said Mr. Trump, who has praised Mr. Putin over the years and described the invasion as “smart” when it first occurred.

He answered a question about whether he would rescind his endorsement of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina, who’s running for governor and who has been linked in a CNN report to making homophobic, racist and antisemitic statements on a pornographic website before he was a candidate. Mr. Trump responded, “I don’t know the situation.”

As he left the lobby, he stopped when someone asked if Ukraine should give up territory.

“We’ll see what happens,” Mr. Trump said.

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/29215

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19883294

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Late in the summer of 2003, a team of television producers stepped off the elevator on the 26th floor of Trump Tower eager to survey the set of their next reality show. After years filming “Survivor” in jungles around the world, training cameras on exotic spiders and deadly snakes to evoke danger, they came looking for a different set of sensory clues, the tiny details that would convey wealth and power.

Right away, they knew they had a problem.

The first thing they noticed was the stench, a musty carpet odor that followed them like an invisible cloud. Then they spotted scores of chips in the finish of the wooden desks and credenzas. The décor felt long out of date, making the space seem like a time capsule from when Donald J. Trump opened the building early in his first rise to fame.

The place did not exactly buzz with energy either. Fewer than 50 people worked at Trump Organization headquarters in midtown Manhattan. At the office’s spiritual center, Mr. Trump’s own desk bore no evidence of work, no computer screens or piles of contracts and blueprints, just a blanket of news articles focused on one subject: himself.

“When you go into the office and you’re hearing ‘billionaire,’ even ‘recovering billionaire,’ you don’t expect to see chipped furniture, you don’t expect to smell carpet that needs to be refreshed in the worst, worst way,” recalled Bill Pruitt, one of the producers of the new NBC show.

That program, “The Apprentice,” would at its essence be a game show, with a job in this office as the ultimate prize. But that prize, in a literal sense, stank. Making viewers believe the central conceit — that Ivy League grads would eagerly connive and humiliate themselves for a chance to learn at the side of this icon of success — would test the bounds of reality television magic.

“The whole thing was absurd to all of us,” remembered another producer, Alan Blum.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13360785

Sandy Springs-based UPS is laying off more of its employees, after earlier this year announcing it was cutting 12,000 jobs in its management ranks.

UPS made $7 Billion dollars net profit last year. It was a decline from the 11.5 Billion net profit they made in 2022.

State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the U.S. Postal Service that it hasn’t fixed persistent deficiencies.

In an alarming letter, the officials said that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted. They also noted that properly addressed election mail was being returned to them as undeliverable, a problem that could automatically send voters to inactive status through no fault of their own, potentially creating chaos when those voters show up to cast a ballot.

A ride though a sunflower field near Lawrence, Kansas. The field, planted annually by the Grinter family, draws thousands of visitors during the week-long late-summer blossoming of the flowers

CHARLIE RIEDEL/AP

cross-posted from: https://yall.theatl.social/post/3678525

From the Atlanta Daily World:

Photo: Getty Images The NAACP is calling on the University of South Carolina to cancel a scheduled event where right-wing figures will “roast” Vice President Kamala Harris. According to The Hill, the NAACP sent a letter to University of South Carolina President Michael Amiridis, urging him to cancel the event because of its “blatant sexist … Continued

The post NAACP Urges University Of South Carolina To Cancel ‘Roast’ Of Kamala Harris appeared first on Atlanta Daily World.

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cross-posted from: https://yall.theatl.social/post/3608192

From the Atlanta Daily World:

Photo: Republican Club of North & East Fort Myers A Black Trump supporter in Florida is suing a Republican group, claiming he was called a “slave.” According to NBC 2, Carl Baxter, a well-known Trumper from Lee County and president of the Republican Club of North and East Fort Myers, filed a lawsuit against Americans … Continued

The post Black Trump Supporter Sues GOP Group For Allegedly Calling Him ‘Slave’ appeared first on Atlanta Daily World.