Trump is doing a campaign rally around 7:30 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Tweets in this thread, mute thread if you hate thread.
Right Side Broadcasting, my go-to rally livestreamer, is interviewing a man attending his fifth Trump rally. Tonight, he says, "We're hoping that he'll announce the immediate arrest of Hillary Clinton and Hussein Obama for riggin' the general election."
"This is truly a historic week for America," Trump begins. "And you know what I'm talking about." There is a roar for the swearing-in of Brett Kavanaugh.
Repeating a line from his last rally, Trump thanks Republican senators for "refusing to back down in the face of the Democrats' shameful campaign of political and personal destruction."
Trump on Kavanaugh: "They wanted to destroy that man. 'Cuz they want to destroy me too. But that's OK. Me? We understand. Him? How could you do that."
Trump calls the anti-Kavanaugh protesters "phony protesters that got paid." He then says they're now protesting because they haven't gotten paid. Okay.
Trump announces that he's moving to allow "E15" (15% ethanol) gas sales year-round. There's a roar.
Trump refers to Democrats as "the dims." He says that Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity say that. Then: "Judge Jeanine says that, doesn't she. Laura. Laura. How good has Laura been?...Do we like Tucker?...Steve Doocy...Ainsley..." The president is reciting the Fox News lineup.
Trump calls Democrats "unhinged" and "crazy," but not, this time, loco.
Trump says he's not going to let Democrats pack the courts. Believe that's his first rally reference to the court-packing idea.
Trump: "They've gone wacko. They've gone so far left that they consider Pocahontas to consider a rational person. No, it's crazy. Elizabeth Warren. Oh I hope she runs."
Trump says Elizabeth Warren running would allow us to get to the bottom of "whether or not she has Indian blood." He falsely claims she's gotten many advantages from claiming Native ancestry. Boston Globe exhaustively looked into this, found it false. bostonglobe.com/news/nation/20…
Trump is, again, making up a long, entirely fictional war-heroism story he says Sen. Richard Blumenthal uttered. Blumenthal falsely claimed to have been in Vietnam, but he never said he was in Da Nang, fought in deadly battles, or was a hero.
There is a Lock Her Up chant for Dianne Feinstein.
Trump again says the Democrats, broadly, are "an angry left-wing mob."
In Iowa, Trump acknowledges a need for immigrant labour, saying people are needed to "run the farms," but says they need to come in legally. There is a Build That Wall chant.
Trump lies that he's started the wall (no, only has done fencing renos), lies that he's obtained $4.8 billion for those projects ($1.6 billion, with another $1.6 billion proposed for 2019 spending; he keeps inventing a third $1.6 billion.)
Trump lies that Barack Obama said manufacturing jobs are gone forever. Obama was talking about a subset of manufacturing jobs; he boasted in the same paragraph about how many the U.S. still has. 
Trump lies that "600,000" manufacturing jobs have been added since the election. From Nov. 2016 through Sept. 2018, 390,000 manufacturing jobs were added.
There is a fun extended interlude to allow for Nebraska residents to yell excitedly about Nebraska.
Trump, very inaccurately: "The Dems will end ethanol...they will take it away."
Trump says he has replaced "job-killing NAFTA" with the incredible USMCA. The USMCA includes significant changes to NAFTA, but it's very heavily NAFTA.
Trump again lies that Democrats want to dismantle law enforcement and eliminate America's borders. This Miller-y line has been in his prepared text in the last week or so.
Trump touts his longtime support of Steve King, who has either promoted white nationalism or come very close. "He may be the world's most conservative human being," Trump says.
Trump, with an epic lie about Iowa Dem governor candidate Fred Hubbell, says Hubbell "wants to take away your ethanol." Also lies Hubbell wants to eliminate U.S. borders. Then lies that countries "send" their bad apples into the visa lottery, in which people enter themselves.
Trump lies that people had been waiting "44 years" to get the Veterans Choice program passed before he did it. The Choice program was passed under Obama in 2014. Trump's law makes changes to the program.
Trump nicknames Iowa Democratic congressional candidate Cindy Axne "Cindy Taxne." He says, "That was so easy."
Trump begins reading an attack on Democratic congressional candidate Abby Finkenauer, makes a show of struggling with her name or maybe just struggles with her name, then says, "Who the HELL is that? Who is that?"
Trump: "The new platform of the Democrat Party is to abolish ICE." That's not true. It's still a minority position in the party, opposed by the party leadership.
Trump repeats his now-regular promise to "protect Americans with pre-existing conditions." He has offered no specifics whatsoever, and his administration is arguing in court that Obamacare's pre-existing protections are unconstitutional and should be voided.
Trump is on the ICE-liberating-Long-Island part of the speech. He says such liberation could not occur without ICE.
"They were ready to go to war with North Korea," Trump lies again about the Obama administration.
With China on trade, Trump says, "We've been losing 300 to 500 billion dollars a year." The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China. It was $337 billion last year.
Trump, talking about Japan, claims that the U.S. pays for "70% of their military. Nobody knows this." I know nothing about this subject; usually, when Trump cites a statistic and says "nobody knows this," it means he has made it up.
"This is a sick world in many ways," Trump says. He says he sees unspecified things "you don't want to know about."
Trump: "We have to be on guard for some really treacherous people that are running some places."
Trump says the media wouldn't have believed he could create 4.2 million jobs since the election. Over the equivalent period under Obama, the economy added 4.5 million jobs. (Though at different stages in the economic cycle.)
Trump boasts about the historic low in African-American unemployment, then adds, "Kanye West, who gets it..."
Trump mentions Hillary Clinton. There is another Lock Her Up chant.
Trump lies again that Hillary Clinton promised the trade deal with South Korea would create 250,000 jobs. She never said that. Obama said it'd support 70,000 jobs.
Trump is railing at length about the "horrible" trade agreement with South Korea. His recent changes to the deal are so small that they don't even have to be approved by Congress.
Trump lies that the European Union was formed "in order to take advantage of us on trade." This is the greatest hits tonight, man.
Trump lies that the U.S. spends 4.3% of GDP on NATO. It's 3.5%, according to official NATO figures.
Sir Alert: Trump is doing the long story, complete with Sirs, about how he got a Jerusalem embassy opened for mere hundreds of thousands rather than $1 billion or even "three or four billion." The renovations will cost at least $21 million.
Trump says the U.S. has 32,000 soldiers in South Korea, as always. It is 28,598, according to the Defense Manpower Data Center. He lies that South Korea doesn't pay the U.S.; it pays for about half the costs of the U.S. presence there.
Ooh, we have another Sir story. It is about the anti-missile system in South Korea. There are a number of Sirs, from an ignorant general who knows much less than Trump, the instinctive genius.
Like most Sir stories, there is a 0% chance this one about South Korea is accurate. I believe, though have not proven, that there is a correlation between the number of Sirs and the fictionalness of the story.
Trump concluding his Sir story: "I could go on all night but I want to get the hell out of here."
Trump lies, "We virtually eliminated the estate tax." He simply raised the threshold at which it is paid. As always, he misleadingly suggests it is a particular burden for family farmers, almost none of whom paid it even before his changes.
This is not the most surprising news, but very few things Trump has said tonight are true.
As always, Trump exaggerates how dire the situation was for patients before the Right to Try legislation was passed. It's not true that patients could not get experimental medication at all; they had to ask the FDA, which approved 99% of requests.
Trump on the Veterans Choice program that was created in 2014 under Obama: "I thought it was my idea...they said we've been trying to get it passed for 44 years."
Trump: "They don't want to show how big these crowds are...they don't want to show it...look, they're not spinning...look, I don't see one camera turning..."
He is saying all the things he says.
He is saying all the things he says.
Big cheer, and a U-S-A chant, when Trump says we proudly stand for the national anthem.
Trump says "speaking of the NFL," beginning to tell his story about getting the NFL's dispute with Canada solved, and there are boos, which he has to quiet, since he's not bashing the NFL. It's still wild to me that Republican rallies involve people booing the mention of the NFL.
Trump urges people to vote for various Republicans, then tells them to not bother voting for Steve King because he's gonna win anyway. Then adds that they should indeed vote for King.
Trump asks people to reject the Democrats' politics of anger, division, destruction, "and weakness."
Trump calls his 2016 campaign "the greatest movement in the history of our country," then says that even his opponents in the media "won't challenge that" assertion.
That rally is over. Good bye
