Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV

This is a picture worth a thousand words of Donald Trump standing clueless on stage in Chicago at the National Association of Black Journalists after one of his campaign handlers had told ABC Newscaster Rachel Scott to end the event early. The photo shows Scott, in blue and two other Black journalists who were on the panel questioning Trump leaving the stage as Trump is left staring silently at the audience, which was hostile throughout.

As he has been doing at rallies and in speeches, Trump at first intentionally mispronounced the name of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. That drew yells from the audience telling him the correct pronunciation. After that, Trump used the correct pronunciation of Harris’ first name, Kamala.

That certainly doesn’t happen at his rallies.

Trump was repeatedly challenged on lies he told in answer to questions. When he claimed that “illegal aliens” are being granted the right to vote, an audience member called out, “False! False! False!” Another person yelled, “You just lie!”

Being challenged on his lies doesn’t happen at Trump’s rallies.

When Trump claimed that Vice President Harris had not passed the bar exam to become a lawyer, ABC’s Scott immediately corrected him. “She passed,” Scott said.

Being corrected in real time doesn’t happen at his rallies or speeches, either.

Reports from Washington have said that the Trump campaign has tried to steer him away from attacking Harris on the basis of her race and gender.

That went out the window in Chicago today.

When Trump was asked if he agreed with Republicans who are calling Harris a “DEI hire,” he tried to claim that he didn’t know what DEI meant. When the words diversity, equality and inclusion were spelled out to him, Trump veered off into attacking Harris’ ethnic heritage, claiming that she used to promote herself as being of Indian descent. “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?” After claiming that Harris had said she was “Indian all the way,” and just “became a black person,” Trump said “I think somebody should look into that too,” interrupting a questioner.

The Trump campaign apparently thought that by having Trump appear before the convention of Black journalists, Trump could use the occasion to drive a wedge between the African American and Hispanic communities. When Trump tried to tell the room full of Black journalists that they were going to lose their jobs to “illegal aliens,” he was challenged on that with a question about what he had meant in his speeches when he used the phrase, “Black job.” “A Black job is anybody who has a job,” Trump answered lamely, to laughter from the audience.

Trump hit some other familiar tropes. Asked if he would pardon people convicted for assaulting police officers at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump answered, “Oh absolutely, I would.” Reminded by ABC’s Scott that there was video evidence showing the assaults on police by those who had been convicted in courts of law, Trump claimed, “They were convicted by a very tough system,” one in which the insurrectionists at the Capitol don’t enjoy the same immunity from prosecution the insurrectionist in chief was recently granted by the Supreme Court.

This was an off-script appearance by Trump, unusual for his campaign, which normally puts him in front of friendly MAGA audiences using a teleprompter. It had the smell of desperation by a candidate whose own campaign was buried under the deluge of stories over the last ten days about his new opponent, Kamala Harris.

Trump is panicked, and as his appearance today proves, when he is panicked, he makes mistakes. His biggest mistake this time was agreeing to speak to an audience that would catch his lies every time he uttered them. His own campaign responded by giving him the hook before the event was scheduled to end.