8 of the strangest and most excruciating things Trump has done this week

With the Covid-19 pandemic spreading across the US and a presidential election underway, President Trump has had a lot of airtime recently.

But that’s just given him ample opportunities to let the rest of us know what he’s been thinking about and feeling, which seems to actually centre around very similar things – the diagnostic test he took in Montreal (more on that in a minute), masks and Joe Biden.

With so many fresh horrors every week, it’s worth looking at them a little more closely.

Here’s a roundup of the eight most ridiculous things that Trump said and did this week.

1. He wished Ghislaine Maxwell “good luck.”

Ghislaine Maxwell was a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile and sex trafficker who died in a jail cell last year – she was arrested earlier this month.

When questioned about Maxwell by reporters, he said he wished her well. Out of all the things to say about someone who has been accused of being part of a sex trafficking ring, wishing them well might not be the one. Maxwell denies the allegastions.

2. He said he would send in more federal officers to Portland and other cities run by ‘liberal democrats’

Unrest and tension has characterised several American cities in the last couple of weeks, but the situation has escalated in Portland after federal agents in unmarked vans started to take people off the streets without any explanation of who they were. When Trump was pressed on the matter, he threatened to send more to other cities, such as New York and Baltimore.

He said, "We're not going to let this happen in our country, all run by liberal Democrats."

He also said, “America must be a sanctuary for law-abiding citizens, not criminal aliens. My vision for America’s cities could not be more different from the lawlessness being pushed by the extreme radical left.”

3. He said that he was in the White House because “Obama and Biden hadn’t done a good job.”

Trump called into Sean Hannity’s Fox TV show earlier this week to rant - as he is now known to do – and said that he would not be in the White House if it “wasn’t for those two”. Apparently, Trump hasn’t heard about presidential terms before (which is probably pretty worrying), but it just also sounds a little nonsensical.

4. He tweeted... a lot.

There’s not much more to say about this, because you really can just watch the tweets roll in as the day goes by – and be even more confused at the end of it. But some highlights from Trump’s feed this week include an article about how Joe Biden plans to destroy the suburbs, which he entreated the “Suburban housewives of America” to read and said that voting for the “Radical Left” would lead to big tax hikes.

5. He said that the US had done a good job of handling Covid-19.

Anyone who’s looked at the news knows this isn’t true – even though Trump tweeted that in comparison to other countries, the US is doing well. The US currently has a confirmed death toll of 146,000, with many cases spiking rapidly as states start to reopen in a bid to get the economy going again. But in the world of Trump, the US is doing a good job.

6. Of course, he bragged about his cognitive test abilities again.

Ever since last week – when Trump suggested that Biden should take a cognitive reasoning test, in order to make sure that he was fit for the role of president – he’s been obsessed with proving that he did well on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is not a difficult test. He said, in a couple of sentences which have now been turned into a meme,

“It was 30 to 35 questions. The first questions are very easy. The last questions are much more difficult. Like a memory question. It’s, like, you’ll go: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. So they say, ‘Could you repeat that?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. It’s: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.’”

He then went onto say that very few people actually repeat the sentence back, in order.

“And you go, Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. If you get it in order you get extra points. They said, ‘Nobody gets it in order.’ It’s actually not that easy. For me it was easy.”

7. He directly contradicted his own press secretary – by saying he’s never been tested more than once a day.

His White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said that the president was one of the “most tested” men in America and that he was tested multiple times a day.

He was also spotted mingling with guests in his Washington hotel without a mask on, which led some reporters to ask whether he was behaving appropriately. A few minutes later, Trump directly contradicted McEnany, saying, “I do take probably on average a test every two days, three days. I don’t know of any time I’ve taken two tests in one day.”

8. Claimed that he had cancelled the RNC convention in Jacksonville for “the American people”

Trump even went so far as to say his own staff had given him the go ahead – but he had nobly refused because he “was elected to help and protect.”

He said that he cancelled the RNC convention in Jacksonville, Florida – where a huge number of Covid-19 cases have been identified and are continuing to rise – even though he was looking forward to it. He said that he had to protect the American people, and that it’s what he’s “always done” and that it’s what he’s about, which is probably news to a lot of people, even in his own administration.