Most Don't Think Trump Is A Good Public Speaker

The chart above reflects the results of the YouGov Poll -- done on July 16th of a nationwide sample of 2,117 adults. No moe given. 

Trump Gave A Rehash Of 4 Myths (None Of Which Are True)

 The following is by Norman Eisen and Sarah Jackel at The Contrarian:

Trump didn’t claim that there was any actual interference in voting or election results. At no point did Trump say or point to any evidence that a single vote was changed or altered. Indeed, even White House conspiracy theorist John Solomon admitted as much to reporters afterwards. That’s because it did not happen. Audits, recounts, certifications, federal investigations, and more than 80 judges, including those appointed by Trump himself, have all uniformly rejected his attacks on the 2020 election.

What we got instead on Thursday was a rehash of four myths, all of which fall apart on close examination.

1. Myth: Purported Vulnerabilities in Electronic Voting and Ballot-Counting Systems Trump spoke broadly about vulnerabilities in voting machines, but he did not say there is evidence that voting machines or votes were breached. And that’s because they weren’t. He wants to scare you with the hypothetical, but truth is that our election officials put safeguards in place to minimize any vulnerabilities. Their dedicated work and vigilance ensure our elections work as intended, protected from technological exploitation.

2. Myth: China’s Acquisition of American Voter Data This is a scare tactic. Trump made wild claims about the compromise of election data, but let’s be clear: He did not say that votes were exploited or compromised. The voter registration data he is in a twist about actually consists of basic and publicly available data such as names and addresses — far less personal information than what the average American shares when ordering clothes on Temu.

3. Myth: Michigan Voter-Registration Investigation Again, there was zero evidence of voting fraud here. Trump didn’t point to any and can’t. Though there were isolated cases of irregularities in registration, local election officials flagged them in real time. Our elections systems worked as intended to unearth them. This is a backhanded endorsement, not a critique.

4. Myth: Noncitizens on State Voter Rolls Trump has made these wild claims of folks improperly registering over and over again using baseless allegations and wrong lists, such as the error-ridden and oft-abused Department of Homeland Security SAVE databases. The truth is that Americans follow voter registration laws and cast ballots in good faith, as we documented in our Democracy Defenders Action report with LULAC on The Big Lie.

Then there was the avalanche of documents Trump said would prove him right. They did just the opposite. For example, they show Russia, not China, was working to interfere in the 2020 election — to help Trump! If all of this is the best he and the election deniers have, they are in trouble.

Thursday was a flop — a predictable one. One of us (Norm) was asked by cable TV to do a curtain raiser for the speech. The forecast was for a comically loony mish-mash along the lines of other famous conspiracy theories, and boy did Trump deliver.

Trump lost in 2020. This will remain true no matter how many pieces of bogus evidence he invents or floats. The truth is Trump and his fellow election deniers are not just trying to prove bizarre counterfactuals about prior elections. They’re trying to fool us into doubting the next one.

Mayor Mamdani's Speech On America's 250th Birthday

This is a transcript of Mayor Mamdani's speech:

Good morning, my fellow Americans. Season after season, year after year, the tides have come in and out of New York Harbor. Long before the name “New York” had ever been spoken, Lenape dugouts crossed these currents. It was on these waters that tall masts crested the horizon, captained by explorers like Verrazzano and Hudson after whom we’ve named our bridges and rivers. And ever since, ships full of travelers weary from long journeys have passed through the Narrows, the winds of the Atlantic at their backs.

  

When those passengers lifted their heads to glimpse what lies just beyond the waves, what did they see? They saw land, lush and teeming with life. They saw men waiting at the docks to take them into bondage. They saw tenements rife with squalor. They saw industry rumbling with activity, steam and smoke rising, a city on the move. They saw a towering monument to freedom, her torch glowing world-wide welcome. They saw New York City. They saw America.

  

Tomorrow, our nation marks 250 years since we declared our independence. Two hundred and fifty years of a grand experiment in self-governance — an experiment so audacious that some in 1776 doubted it would last more than a few years, let alone a quarter of a millennium. From Lexington to Los Angeles, Selma to Seneca Falls, Morrisania to Midwood, Americans will come together for a day, just as we do each year. Families will gather around the grill. Fireworks will fill the night sky. This will be no ordinary day of celebration. Two hundred and fifty years presents a rare opportunity for more than 340 million people to turn together — both towards one another and towards ourselves, to take measure of who we are as a nation. When we look at America, what do we see?

  

Here at City Hall, as I sit behind George Washington’s desk, alongside new Americans who came to this country, I cannot see all of America. But like so many who came before, I can see New York City. 

 

The city I see today looks very different than the one that greeted George Washington. In July of 1776, our city simmered under the yoke of oppression. The British had imposed a colonial rule so repressive that 250 years ago, 80 miles south, a small group of newspaper editors, farmers, and soldiers signed their names on a document declaring truths that feel self-evident now but were revolutionary then, establishing the ideals our nation still strives to fulfill.

  

The British did not take it well. War broke out. And that August, as the largest battle of the Revolutionary War unfolded in Brooklyn, batteries on Governors Island took aim at British ships anchored just offshore. We were outgunned, we were outmanned and we were soundly defeated. After only a few months, it appeared our fledgling attempt at democracy was on the precipice of collapse.

  

But that night, with the moon overhead, thousands of our soldiers silently climbed into ferries and flat-bottomed boats and escaped to Manhattan. The Continental Army survived to fight another day. Independence may have been declared in Philadelphia, but it was rescued in New York City. George Washington was the last to leave Brooklyn. As he waited at the river’s edge, the sun beginning its rise, he would have looked out over New York City’s waters and seen what so many have seen in the 250 years since — an opportunity to begin anew. Those opportunities — like everything in New York City — are not given. They are won. 

 

In 1838, 11 years after New York outlawed slavery, a recently emancipated Black man by the name of James Weeks sought to begin anew as well — and to help hundreds of others do the same. He bought property in Brooklyn, won himself the right to vote, and sold lots to others newly freed. When they landed in New York Harbor, they knew they had something waiting for them that they had never had before: a home. Weeksville still stands today — a living, breathing testament to what we know America to be: a place each of us has the power to make.

  

The Harbor was busy those years, as ships poured in from around the world. Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty. Chinese sailors settled in what is today, Chinatown. Millions more traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island — Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty, Syrians seeking economic opportunity.

  

Each of these new arrivals peered through portholes onto a city that was changing as fast as the nation. They saw merchants peddling their wares on the docks, streets being laid out on a grid, buildings rising into the clouds. They could not yet see the nativism they would face — the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand. But no matter how much smog hung over the harbor, they still saw an opportunity to begin anew. 

 

Over the years that followed, despite laws enacted by the federal government to bar their entry, despite sweatshop fires that killed hundreds of women, despite riots aimed at their very existence, immigrants made homes here in New York City, and they helped to make New York City. That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extends to them, too, is no relic of the past. It carried millions of Black Americans north during the Great Migration; it drew hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans to New York City after the Second World War; it invited countless others from the West Indies, and South Asia, and West Africa, and across the world. And it is what brought my family to this city when I was seven years old. 

 

My family did not arrive by boat, although we saw the Statue of Liberty from the window of the plane. Even from the air, we could make out the promise of America — the promise of the beautiful, patriotic work of rendering America, year after year, a little more faithful to its founding ideals. There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped it: American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West, is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here. 

 

And yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional. For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshipping the wrong Gods, angering the wrong people. It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants for whom power was something someone else had. We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. 

 

The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all. It belongs too to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel — the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means. 

 

The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.

  

How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest. But time and again — including 250 years ago — those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress. As Thomas Paine once wrote, “this new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty [...] hither have they fled.” And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted — but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum. As we mark 250 years, what do we see?

  

We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands — those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone — and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.

  

Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick, but that is not all I see when we look for America. We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighbor. 

 

Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work and still believes his country can do better by his family. 

 

Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder. Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people.

  

We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors — without asking how long they have lived here, or what papers they have — as ICE invades our neighborhoods.

  

We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots.

  

We see America each time working people demand more — not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans. 

 

There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain: “Love it or leave it,” they say. But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent, it is every march led under the heavy sun, it is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free? 

   

Today, I think not only of the Fourth of July — I think too of the ninth of July. Five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, it arrived here in New York City. Redcoats had disembarked on Staten Island. More than a hundred British ships loomed just offshore. Across this city, the Continental Army prepared for an invasion. George Washington commanded his brigades to assemble just a few feet from this building. It was known then as the Commons — today, we call it City Hall Park.

  

There, within range of British guns, Washington ordered his generals to read the Declaration aloud. And with the world’s mightiest empire poised to attack, Washington told the people of New York City what we will celebrate tomorrow — that we had declared our independence. That freedom was within reach. That evening, danger loomed. Conflict was not a question but a certainty. And yet when those early New Yorkers marched toward the statue of King George III that stood in Bowling Green, a statue they would melt down into bullets for their young army, they walked in unison — grounded not in the pursuit of plunder, but in ideals that for the first time had a name: America. 

 

Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them. Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived. A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America — the striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection.

  

What a privilege each of us has, to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses, to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before. What power each of us holds, to bring America ever-closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores — the greatness that, for 250 years, has been America.

  

Thank you. God Bless America, God Bless New York City, and happy Fourth of July.  

Talarico's Speech To Fellow Democrats At Their State Convention

The following is part of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico's speech at the state Democratic Convention:

“Texans don’t like tyrants. And we don’t surrender easily.

We are strivers and builders and dreamers of all colors and creeds of all backgrounds and beliefs. It’s in our blood.

Texas is big. Big hair, big hearts, and big dreams. Our athletes are beloved across the globe. Cowboys, Astros, Spurs. Our musicians, our musicians are so iconic, they only need one name. Willie. Selena. Beyoncé.

But the current political landscape is too small for Texas. Texas used to be known for our hospitality…. Friendship across tribes, friendship across divides. That’s what makes Texas so great. We’re this big mash-up of all these different people, all these different cultures, all these different friends. Think about, think about Tejano music. If you’re listening to a Selena song, you’re hearing Spanish vocal styles from northern Mexico. But you’re also hearing polka dance rhythms from Czech and German immigrants. This uniquely…Texan ability to welcome new friends and new ideas has made us one of the most exciting and innovative states in the country.

We’re the state that put a man on the moon. We’re the state that pioneered ranching and energy and computers. We’re the state that gave this country Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, LBJ, and the Great Society. We’re the state that put breakfast in a taco.

Today, we face a new threat. Our state is being taken over by a new kind of tyrant: billionaire megadonors. They’re not invading with an army. They’re just buying the system. The billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens, they are turning neighbor against neighbor. Weakening that spirit of friendship that makes Texas so great. They divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, so we don’t notice that they’re picking our pockets. It is the oldest strategy in the world. Divide and conquer.

But, Texas will not be conquered.

Their puppets have the wrong state of mind. Their hearts and their dreams are just not big enough. We let these small men get their hands on our big state. You know the kind of people I’m talking about. The kind who make themselves feel big by making everyone else feel small.

These men, they took all the money and power they could grab, and they set out to shrink Texas down to their size. They’re shrinking our Texas economy with job-killing tariffs. They are shrinking our Texas public schools with private school voucher scams. They’re shrinking our healthcare, so it covers less and less. They’re shrinking our paychecks and how much those paychecks can buy. And they’re shrinking our power by attacking our God-given rights at the ballot box and redrawing our districts to keep themselves in power. They have been shrinking Texas for three decades now. But that ends this year in this election.

In November, we can make Texas big again. We can make Texas friendly again. We can make Texas, Texas, again. We have the chance to take back our state from those billionaire mega donors and their puppet politicians who stole it from us.

What would Sam Houston think about the small men who are shrinking Texas? What would Sam Houston, who put Texas before himself, say about Ken Paxton, who puts himself before Texas? What would Sam Houston say to all of us at this critical moment in Texas history? I think he would say, do right, and risk the consequences.

There’s an old country song by Gary P. Nunn, called ‘What I Like About Texas.’ In the song, he lists the rivers and the bluebonnets, the music and the food. But ultimately, he settles on one answer. He says it’s the spirit of the people who share this land. The spirit of Barbara Jordan. The spirit of my mom, the spirit that’s in this room. The feeling that we can accomplish whatever we want to.

This election shouldn’t be about the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. It should be about chasing a vision of what our state can be. Texas schools that are the envy of the nation. A Texas economy that is second to none, and Texas families that are stronger and healthier than ever before. It won’t happen overnight. But a giant state deserves giant dreams. We are— We are bigger than extremism. We’re bigger than partisanship. We’re bigger than corruption. Texas is bigger than all of those things. Because it’s not just a state. It’s a state of mind.

Texans don’t like tyrants. And we don’t surrender easily. Tonight, standing before you, to accept your nomination for the United States Senate, I make the same commitment to you that my ancestor made 200 years ago. Any duty that my bodily strength would enable me to perform, either in public or private, that would advance the cause of Texas, I feel anxious and ever ready to perform.”

Michelle Obama's Speech At The Opening Of The Obama Presidential Center

Michelle Obama spoke at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center - and it was one of the best speeches I have ever heard. Here is a transcript of her magnificent speech - first talking about her husband, and then about this country:

Oh! Well, my goodness. 

I got my tissue in hand, I don't know about all of you. 

Wow, hello everyone. And what a beautiful day, right? Nothing like a project by my husband to bring out the sun.

Let me start by thanking Addison for that magnificent introduction, and for exemplifying the heart, excellence and determination that has blossomed right here on the South Side for a very long time. I also want to send some love to everyone who made this day a reality, the construction workers, landscapers, designers, the architects, artists, chefs, our staff, our board members, our donors. Barack, and I simply cannot thank you enough for the care and brilliance you've poured into every square inch of this campus. 

I also want to recognize all of the elected officials and distinguished leaders from around the city, the state, the country, and yes, the world. Thank you for being here to celebrate with us, especially to all of my fellow formers, to Joe and Jill, George, and Laura, Bill and Hillary, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service to our country over so many years, and for your constant friendship and support of our family. We love you guys truly. 

To our daughters, Malia and Sasha, who will always be my babies, even though we're no longer playing hide and seek on the South Lawn with Bo, or hosting sleepovers in the solarium. I see a lot of some sleepover girls here. You both have grown into such brilliant and beautiful young women making your way out there in the world. Thank you for bringing so much joy and spirit and energy to a life you had no voice in choosing, and for making us proud every step of the way. Love you, babe. 

So please indulge me for a moment, because I'm going to take a little time to do something that I know my husband will not do today, and that is to fully sing his praises.

Barack— you got to look at me. You told me all those years ago that you couldn't promise me the world, but you could promise me an interesting life, and of course you outdid yourself and managed to give me both. 

I know it hasn't always been easy, but there hasn't been a single second through this experience that standing by your side hasn't left me in awe. 

Eight years in the crucible, and not once did you melt from the heat. Not once did you let it harden you. Instead, you used it to reveal your truest essence, your stubborn optimism and unflinching courage, your dazzling brilliance and unpretentious decency, your ferocious work ethic and absolutely unshakable moral fiber. 

And to do it all as a first, and the higher standard that comes with all that. The claims that a U.S senator and constitutional law expert wasn't qualified for the job. The lies about your birthright, your faith, your patriotism. The outrage when you stated the biological fact that if you'd had a son, that he too would be Black. 

Yet you were unflappable at every turn. Always focused, always calm, always looking at the long view. 

How absurd it is to even imagine that you might have buckled under the pressure, even once lashed out in frustration, lost your temper. How absurd it is to imagine that you might have done anything but make our family and this entire country proud. 

No, you were too busy. 

I'm not done, y'all. Not done. So much to say. 

You were doing the people's work: rescuing our economy, expanding health care, ending a war, ordering the bin Laden raid, saving an auto industry, winning a peace prize.  Keeping us safe from Ebola, regulating the banks, standing up for marriage equality, listening to science, and comforting an entire nation in the face of unspeakable tragedies. And you did it all with such grace and class and cool that you made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park. Your mother, Toot, Gramps — you are a tribute to their love. They are up there grinning and hugging today because you never forgot who you are and where you came from. 

Single mother working hard to get by and get an education and show her son the world. Grandparents who didn't have much, but they had the perfect recipe to nurture your flame. You never forgot the folks in the union halls and church basements here in Chicago, where you first put your ideals to this test. You never forgot all the voters you registered, and students you taught, and neighbors you organized. You never fell for the temptation of a quick fix or an easy payday. You never changed from that idealistic summer associate who showed up on that rainy day when we first met without an umbrella.

You always gave us the very best within you, and in doing so, you reminded the rest of us that we could too. 

Barack, there are no words to express how proud I am of the way you showed up and continue to show up every single day. It has been an honor to be by your side. You have made me a better person and have given us all an example that we should strive to emulate, and I hope you know there is truly no higher calling than that. 

All right, to all of you joining us today, our invited guests, and everyone listening and watching from afar, the Obama Presidential Center was created as a beacon of hope, a monument to our unshakable values, the ones my husband has exemplified his entire life: equality, empathy, honesty, inclusion, fairness. And especially during these anxious and divisive times, it is so important that we remember that those values are not unique to my husband. They are the same ones that your husbands and wives, your parents and children, your friends and neighbors exhibit and pass on. Every single day, millions of people in this country wake up doing their very best to live decent and purposeful lives. 

We're all tested in one way or another. And there are plenty of times we all fall short. But deep down in our hearts and souls we all know right from wrong, we know selflessness from greed, righteousness from injustice. We understand that we all rise and fall together, that every last one of us is an invaluable contributor to the greatness of America. And I'm talking about the workers living paycheck to paycheck, hoping to give their kids a better future, the teachers using their own money to take their students on field trips, the business owners struggling to meet payroll, but refusing to close their doors. All those folks sweating over stoves to provide meals for their communities. Folks shivering in the freezing cold to deliver our packages, picking up trash to keep our parks clean. Volunteers dedicating their weekends to coaching T-ball or directing the church choir or mentoring a child. 

That's where the truth of this country lies. Not in grabbing as much as we can get for ourselves or knocking folks down to prop ourselves up, but in the overwhelming goodness, the relentless striving, the quiet dignity that is inside all of us. 

Our greatest hope is that this center can reflect back just a fraction of that light. That it can capture the beauty of who we all are, no matter what we look like, or where we come from, or how much money we earn, or how we pray, or vote, or speak or love. 

It's why during our administration we threw open the White House doors to all sorts of folks who don't usually get to meet the President or First Lady. The families pinch and pennies to send their first child to college. The teenagers who know that a hot afternoon means the bullets start flying, the military spouses and children serving and sacrificing just like their loved ones in uniform. The native kids showing us that resilience and pride can never be stolen. the 4H-ers and FFA members with calluses on their hands from feeding livestock. The immigrants proving what it truly means to be a dreamer.

These folks, these folks aren't Americans too — they are America.  hey are the beating heart of this country. They are us, and we are them. And to ignore the simple truth, to refuse to respect the contributions and experiences of people who aren't exactly like us, y'all it puts us all at risk. 

Failing to see the humanity in all people puts us all on a slippery slope, and once that slide starts, there's no telling where it stops. A dangerous precedent that flies in the very face of our faith and of the founding promise of this democracy: that all of us —all of us — are created equal. That each of us is a child of God with inherent value. And that no one, and I mean no one, has the right to sit in judgment of who is American enough.

And that's why, folks, we simply don't have the luxury or time to be cynical or complacent, to wring our hands in despair, to wait for someone else to fix the problem. 

Y'all, hope is all we have, because hope is the essential spark that lights the fire of change.

But hope is a choice. Whether or not we use our voices to speak up is a choice. Voting is a choice. Being a decent human being is a choice. Believing that we still hold the power to build a country that reflects us all is a choice. 

The Obama Presidential Center is a living testament to the power of choice, y'all. The historic example that millions of you gave the world about what this imperfect democracy has strived for and achieved, and an urgent call to go out there and do it again. 

So I hope that when you walk through this campus and bring your children here, you are reminded of the power of choice and the steady work of change. The arduous, unglamorous march up that mountain, one foot after another, day after day, generation after generation. But I also hope you fully absorb the elation of achieving something together; you know, that feeling when you clear the tree line and see a vista that takes your breath away, a feeling that can never be erased.

And I know that can be hard to grasp right now, when everything feels so upside down. When fact and fiction run together, when folks seek to stifle speech, limit access to education, devalue diversity, erase the inconvenient parts of our history. When our phones constantly buzz with the latest outrage. 

So I hope that this place can offer a respite from all that, at least for a little while. I hope it can reignite the optimism and empathy and ambition that has always powered this country's greatest change.

So we want you to come here and put away your phones, and talk and laugh and cry — because you gonna cry —and make new friends. Get your hands dirty in my garden. Push your baby on a swing in the playground. Have a romantic picnic on the Great Lawn. Because that's the work of democracy too: being neighborly, taking care of public spaces, having some fun, enjoying each other, shaking out of the isolation and division that have crept too deeply into our lives.

And to my fellow Southsiders, I want you all to make this campus a part of your lives. Be inspired by the world class art. Check out the books from our beautiful public library and bring them back on time. Drop some beats in the recording studio, hit some corner threes at home court, hold birthday parties, jump start clothing drives, host citywide cleanup days here, use this campus to show off this place we call home. 

This joyful place where Marion and Fraser Robinson taught their two kids to dream big. This hopeful place where an unknown guy with an unknown name took flight. This stubbornly optimistic place, where family after family scrapes and claws and laughs and dances their way to a better tomorrow. That's what this has always been about. 

Barack and I have always said that this center is grounded in our stories, but it has never been about us. It's never been for us, and it's going to be here long after we're gone. So, what it becomes and how it's preserved, that work has to be done by all of us, just like our democracy. 

And thankfully, you have shown the world what we are capable of. You've proven that a lasting legacy isn't an award or name on a building or number of zeros in a bank account, but the difference we make in one another's lives.  It's about seeing each other and showing up for each other and carrying each other when we're weary or faltering or losing faith. That's how you build something that endures, and that's what you all have done at every twist and turn of this extraordinary journey.

You have protected and proclaimed the hope that beats within the heart of this campus. You rekindled and renewed this untamable, unpredictable and unbreakable democracy. And I know that you all are going to astonish us even more in the months and years ahead, because you all have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that when we truly see each other, when we strive to bring out the best in ourselves and one another, oh, there is no limit to how high we can go. 

Thank you all. I love you all. God bless you, and God bless this country we love.

Why Did Melania Make Her Speech About Epstein?

 

On Thursday, Melania Trump gave a six minute (and very self-serving) speech in which she denied being friends with Epstein or his girlfriend (Ghislaine Maxwell) - in spite of the many photos of her with both. I doubt that anyone but die-hard MAGA cult members believed her.

She also called on Congress to question Epstein's victims under oath. But she did not offer to testify under oath herself, or ask that her husband be questioned under oath. She also did NOT demand the release of all the Epstein files.

It seems that the only thing she accomplished with her strange speech was to put the Epstein scandal back on the from pages - something her husband had been trying to prevent.

The question now - Why did she make that speech?

Here is some of what Robert Reich had to say on that question:

Why did Melania Trump hold a news conference today? Standing at a lectern in the Grand Foyer of the White House, the first lady labeled as “lies” unspecified allegations linking her to Epstein, and said they “need to end today.”. . .

But who’s even been thinking about Melania and her potential relationship with Epstein or Maxwell in the midst of Melania’s husband’s threat to obliterate 90 million Iranians? Who cares about Melania and Maxwell when the price of gas is through the roof? Why would anyone be interested in such “unspecified allegations” when Iran still possesses 970 pounds of highly-enriched uranium and now has more motive than ever to turn it into nuclear weapons?

 

Besides, there hasn’t been the faintest whiff of scandal about the relationship between Melania and Maxwell, let alone Epstein. . . .

Why, then, did Melania hold today’s news conference?

 

I can think of three possible reasons:

1. She was urged to do it as a way to revive interest in the Epstein scandal. You heard me right. The White House figures that Epstein is easier to handle right now than the fallout from the catastrophe of Trump’s war in Iran. Plus, Pam Bondi is gone and won’t be testifying, and the emerging regime at the Justice Department — Todd Blanche and Harmeet Dhillon — can more reliably be counted on to bury anything in the Epstein files that might incriminate Trump. In other words, a great way to change the subject.

 

2. Amazon is now in negotiations over streaming rights to Melania’s 2026 documentary Melania, which has been a box office bomb, grossing only $16.6 million worldwide against a massive $40 million production budget and $35 million in marketing, and leaving Amazon with a significant financial loss. Amazon and Bezos urged Melania to stir up publicity for herself, and what better way to get attention than to deny any relationship with Epstein?

3. Melania is pissed off at Trump for any number of things, and today’s news conference was a way of letting him know she’s capable of making his life miserable.