Trump's press conference in Bedminster crowns a disastrous, unfocused week

Given the past week of campaigning, it was nice of them to take the candidate out into the fresh air and give him a chance to chat to the clouds.

Former President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign capped an incredibly disastrous week by allowing its flawed and aging candidate to hold an imaginary “press conference” at his New Jersey golf resort.

The topic was… maybe something about food prices? Or the economy? Or maybe something about birds being killed by windmills?

It didn’t really matter. Trump delivered an epic marathon rant, nearly two hours of blatant, outright lies, weird digressions and whining – and then answered a handful of questions, most of them from pro-Trump media outlets that essentially asked the Republican presidential candidate to explain how he got so great.

Trump’s campaign team had an astonishingly terrible week at the rallies

Given the week the campaign has just had, it was nice of them to get the candidate out in the fresh air and give him a chance to talk clouds over. But Thursday’s event in Bedminster did nothing to dispel the growing sentiment that Trump’s campaign has been a mess since Vice President Kamala Harris rose to the top of the Democratic presidential nomination and surged in the polls.

His allies have implored Trump to dial back personal attacks on Harris, and he said Thursday: “I think I have the right to make 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 moderate suburban voters running away from him.

The more voters see of Trump, the more often they think: “Yuck!”

When asked what he thought of Harris’ plan to propose a ban on corporate price gouging, Trump replied – and this is no joke: “She doesn’t want fracking. ‘I do NOT want fracking.’ But that’s what she’s said her whole life. No fracking. But then a few months ago …”

At this point, the people gathered on the rich man’s golf property should have slowly walked away, careful not to move too quickly and not to upset the babbling 78-year-old.

But they stayed. And he continued, without saying anything to anyone in particular: “Instead of playing this game with the wind, which ruins everything, kills all the birds, destroys the fields, all these beautiful fields, you have windmills everywhere and you have birds. If you want to see a bird cemetery, just go under a windmill. You will see thousands of dead birds.”

My goodness. I’m sure GOP donors would be happy with a campaign that is all about windmills and bird conservation.

AI lies, a meaningless interview with Elon Musk… and then the existence of JD Vance?

Trump’s spectacularly bad week began on Sunday, when he claimed, without a shred of evidence, that the crowds at Harris’s recent campaign rallies were actually generated by artificial intelligence. That lie lasted a day and seemed stupid, and then Trump – whose political advisers must detest him – was on the phone with his not-so-weird friend Elon Musk on Monday night.

This alleged “interview” was a sketchy, absurd mess. It probably helped Trump win over the coveted Musk fan audience he already had a firm grip on, but it did nothing to dispel the “weird” label that Harris’ campaign had attached to him.

In case you missed it: Trump talks and babbles his way through the interview with Elon Musk. It was an absolute disaster.

That was all bad enough, but unfortunately for Trump, Senator JD Vance of Ohio remained his running mate, generating headlines like: “JD Vance is less popular than Sarah Palin,” “JD Vance’s team won’t comment on his viral drag photo,” and “Now JD Vance is accused of insulting all ‘postmenopausal’ women.”

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

Trump believes he alone can save his campaign. But he is seriously mistaken.

Trump – who will soon say, “Vance who? Never heard of them” – gave a speech on the economy in North Carolina on Wednesday. However, it wasn’t a real speech, more like another rant, and it had little to do with the economy.

Just more hackneyed insults and now recognizable lies that he repeats over and over again.

The Republicans’ women problem: You’re not imagining it. Republicans have been behaving strangely toward women for years.

On Thursday, the Trump team brought back former adviser Corey Lewandowski, a widely despised operative who was previously fired from a MAGA-affiliated super PAC after being accused of hitting on a donor’s wife.

This should calm the situation.

Harris campaign should thank Trump for talking so much

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

And whatever that has to do with China and artificial intelligence, he said, “They’re building a coal plant every week, but now I hear it’s two coal plants a week. And we’re hungry for energy. We don’t have energy. And they’re getting ready for AI because they’re going to generate so much power and we’re not going to be able to do it, but you guys will when I have it. Because this is an emergency.”

That this week in Trump’s presidential campaign has not resulted in Republican donors abandoning the election is shocking. That this week of relentless hypocrisy and mumbo-jumbo from Trump has not caused the American political press to write story after story questioning Trump’s mental state and abilities is an indictment of the industry.

Voters have seen a lot of Trump and Vance this week.

This is the best news the Harris team could hear.

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