deconstruct

During a rambling and largely nonsensical presser in Los Angeles on Friday, Trump constantly tripped over himself, outright rejecting important questions from reporters while making absurd claims, such as the fact that the country was “perfect” in January 2021.

In one portion of his speech, Trump badly botched the name of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, by referring to her as “Comrade Howard” while shaking his head. He also referred to Harris as a “radical left Marxist Communist fascist,” an ideological combination that is technically impossible, and attacked her for her “woman-made destruction.”

Shortly after the speech ended, Trump had one final thought to share, which he posted in brief on Truth Social: “#.” At the time of publication, the post had more than 2,700 likes.

In another bizarre attempt to “own the libs” just by confusing them, openly anti-LGBTQ+ performer Kid Rock has been enlisted to headline a fundraiser for the self-loathing Log Cabin Republicans, the gay conservatives group.

The onetime Detroit rapper-now MAGA acolyte will headline the fundraiser “Red White & Rock,” the LCR announced over the weekend. The gay conservatives billed the event as a “star-studded concert uniting conservatives and celebrating American spirit.”

The high-dollar event takes place in Nashville on September 29, with special guests Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s out, onetime acting director of National Intelligence in the last, chaotic days of the twice-impeached president’s administration, and forever-fiancé Kimberly Guilfoyle, who’ll serve as emcee of the event, if never Donald Trump Jr’s bride.

For a variety of reasons, including operational security, a crew’s internet access is regularly restricted while underway, to preserve bandwidth for the mission and to keep their ship safe from nefarious online attacks.

But the senior enlisted leaders among the littoral combat ship Manchester’s gold crew knew no such privation last year, when they installed and secretly used their very own Wi-Fi network during a deployment, according to a scathing internal investigation obtained by Navy Times.

As the ship prepared for a West Pacific deployment in April 2023, the enlisted leader onboard conspired with the ship’s chiefs to install the secret, unauthorized network aboard the ship, for use exclusively by them.

So while rank-and-file sailors lived without the level of internet connectivity they enjoyed ashore, the chiefs installed a Starlink satellite internet dish on the top of the ship and used a Wi-Fi network they dubbed “STINKY” to check sports scores, text home and stream movies.

Asking to leave work on time or taking some time off can be tricky enough. Even trickier is tendering a resignation, which can be seen as the ultimate form of disrespect in the world’s fourth-biggest economy, where workers traditionally stick with one employer for decades, if not for a lifetime.

In the most extreme cases, grumpy bosses rip up resignation letters and harass employees to force them to stay.

Yuki Watanabe was unhappy at her previous job, saying her former supervisor often ignored her, making her feel bad. But she didn’t dare resign.

“I didn’t want my ex-employer to deny my resignation and keep me working for longer,” she told CNN during a recent interview.

A former congressional staffer has filed a lawsuit against Texas Republican U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, claiming he was forced to quit his position due to a “hostile work environment.”

Alex Chadwell, who is gay and began working for Nehls in January 2021, accused the representative, his chief of staff, and special adviser of regularly making homophobic comments such as “gays go to hell” or “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." He said that the chief of staff even once told him “not to engage with gay constituents."

Chadwell claimed that Nehls's special adviser kept an anti-LGBTQ+ poster in his office specifically to mock him and would often point at it in his presence, saying things like “We don’t need to let gays into military" or “We don’t need to support the queers."

Robert Morris, who founded and led Gateway Church for nearly 25 years in the affluent Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake, Texas, resigned after the scandal came to light in June. His exit sent thousands of evangelicals into a season of struggle that has lasted months.

Last week, a pastor who oversaw all of Gateway’s campuses departed amid an undisclosed “moral issue,” becoming the latest in a series of changes for the church: The cancellation of its annual conference. The departure of Morris’ successor. The renaming of its Houston campus and an exodus of worshippers.

At each weekend service, worshippers continue to face reminders of the scandal, with interim or guest pastors kicking off their sermons saying “I’m sorry,” talking about grief or finding hope in difficult times. They’ve noticed people who have sat and prayed around them for years are once again not showing up for service.

The church has seen a decrease of 17% to 19% in weekend services attendance, a church spokesperson told CNN.

A die-hard Trumper in Florida says he was discriminated against by a right-wing political advocacy group, claiming he was called a “slave” during his 12 days with the organization before it fired him for complaining.

Carl Baxter, who is Black, is suing Americans for Prosperity, the nonprofit “grassroots” conservative operation established by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire siblings and hard-line climate change deniers.

Baxter serves as president of the Republican Club of North & East Fort Myers, and is not at all shy about his outsized affection for Donald Trump. He can be seen on social media at Trump appearances, waving a MAGA flag at a “Trump Truck Parade,” at charity galas giving the camera a Trumpian “thumbs-up,” and donning a red MAGA hat and posing with, among others, a county tax collector who has come out as a vociferous opponent of critical race theory.

At an anti-vaccine conference in Georgia on Friday, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed his commitment to the cause and spoke to his base about how he, as president, would serve the movement he built.

“I feel like I’ve come home today,” he said to a standing ovation, crediting the assembled audience with his candidacy.

He then laid out his vision for a Kennedy presidency, which would include telling the National Institutes of Health to take “a break” from studying infectious diseases, like Covid-19 and measles, and pivoting the agency to the study of chronic diseases, like diabetes and obesity. Kennedy has suggested without evidence that researchers and pharmaceutical companies are driven by profit to neglect such chronic conditions and invest in ineffective and even harmful treatments; he includes vaccines among them.

“I’m gonna say to NIH scientists, God bless you all,” Kennedy said. “Thank you for public service. We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.”