The 20 Craziest Moments of the 2024 Presidential Race

Already the presumptive 2024 GOP nominee for president, Trump walked into a New York courtroom on May 30 and heard a jury pronounce him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The historic verdict — the first criminal conviction of a U.S. president — was the surreal outcome of a hush money payment Trump had arranged during the 2016 to prevent adult film actress Stormy Daniels from talking about their alleged sexual encounter a decade prior.

Trump had made the trial into a spectacle, drawing rebukes for repeated violations of a gag order against attacking witnesses and jurors, sometimes falling asleep in court, complaining of the chilly temperature in the room, and ranting about the supposed unfairness of the proceedings to reporters (as well as on Truth Social). After becoming a convicted felon, he insisted the trial had been “rigged.”

In the ensuing months, Democrats hammered Trump as a criminal candidate, a theme that picked up again with the elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, to the top of the party’s presidential ticket. His sentencing was delayed until Nov. 26, three weeks after the election, which is likely to determine whether he faces any punishment at all. Meanwhile, three more criminal cases are pending against Trump. 

After months fending off speculation that his cognitive health was in decline, Joe Biden arrived to his June 27 debate against Donald Trump with something to prove — and he didn’t clear the bar. The onstage clash between the two septuagenarians was 90 minutes of spine-curling, please-turn-it-off-I-can’t-watch cringe. Biden stumbled over his words, repeatedly lost his train of thought, and spoke in a raspy whisper that gave an overall impression of frailty. 

Trump was by no means on his A-game. The former president — predictably — lied, rambled, and bickered with the moderators, but Biden seemed to be lost within his own head. In one particularly bad moment, Biden weakly trailed off in response to a question about the national debt by declaring that Democrats had “finally beat Medicare.” The president managed to up his energy late in the broadcast — engaging with Trump in a spirited debate over their golf handicaps, but the damage was done. 

Biden’s on-air implosion broke the dam on Democrats’ concerns that the sitting president was not physically able to effectively campaign — a flood that would ultimately lead Biden to suspend his reelection campaign.

If there’s a single image that encapsulates the chaos that rocked the 2024 election cycle, it’s that of a bloodied Trump, pumping his fist and shouting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” after a would-be assassin’s bullet struck his ear during a July campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump’s near-death experience was the first of two assassination plots against him in the final months of the campaign. In September, Secret Service agents apprehended a man with a gun waiting outside of Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course as the former president played a round.

The two attempts on Trump’s life became a rallying point for Republicans, who attempted to accuse Trump’s political opponents of inciting violence against the former president by describing him as a threat to democracy — despite no evidence linking the shooters’ motivations to Democratic rhetoric. Trump and his surrogates have regularly referred to the attempts at rallies as evidence that God is on Trump’s side, and Trump is selling a variety of merchandise commemorating his survival of the attempt in Butler, from books to sneakers to cologne.

Whether it was a lucky turn of the head or — as his supporters see it — a divine hand intervening on his behalf, the image of Trump, encrusted in Secret Service agents while yelling defiantly after having his ear grazed by a bullet, will wind up in history books.

The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee was a showcase of Trump’s only-in-America brand of authoritarianism. Think of it as fascism infused with the WWE. The would-be strongman, with a white bandage over his bullet-nicked ear, stood like an emperor in his viewing box at the Fiserv Forum, as Hulk Hogan stormed the stage to celebrate Trump as a “gladiator.” The iconic wrestler, sporting his trademark bandana and blond fu manchu mustache, bounded to the mic amid chants of “U-S-A!” Shouting through his speech, Hogan began to disrobe, discarding a blazer to reveal his bare arms and a black tank top, with a small notch at the neckline. “When they took a shot at my hero, and they tried to kill the next president of the United States, I said ‘Enough is enough!’” he roared, pawing at his shirt, and tearing it apart to reveal a Trump-Vance logo on a red shirt beneath. “I said let Trump-a-mania run wild brother. Let Trump-a-mania rule.” The speech included a call “to bring America back together,” but closed on a message of MAGA menace: “So all you criminals, you drug dealers, and all you crooked politicians need to answer one question,” Hogan said. “What are you going to do when Donald Trump and all the Trump-a-maniacs run wild on you, brother?”

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 campaign will be most remembered for its abundance of conspiracies, its capitulation to Trump, and the morbid menagerie of dead animals that seemed to trail — or live inside — the candidate. 

In May, The New York Times obtained records showing that doctors had found a tiny worm in his brain that had gorged itself and died in a little pocket of gray matter. The literal brain worm was just the first of a series of bizarre stories involving Kennedy and a dead critter. Over the course of the campaign stories emerged of Kennedy once eating a dog, beheading a dead whale with a chainsaw, and keeping a giant freezer full of roadkill. 

The bloody cherry on top of the carcass pile was Kennedy’s admission that more than a decade ago, he had dumped the body of a dead bear cub in Central Park and attempted to stage the scene to look like an accident.

Concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity exploded into public view as he struggled in a late June debate against Trump, sounding confused, frail, and unable to follow a train of thought. Republicans rejoiced at the prospect of running against a diminished incumbent; Democrats panicked, believing it was too late to pivot to a different nominee. Biden insisted that he wasn’t going anywhere, and was the only one who could beat Trump, as he had in 2020.

But word of Biden’s apparent lapses and cognitive decline began to leak out of the White House. One by one, Democratic politicians and donors called on him to drop out for the good of the party and the country. Even George Clooney penned an op-ed arguing that it was time for him to step aside. Biden attempted to assure his base in interviews and pressers, never quite inspiring the public confidence he needed to get the campaign back on track.         

Then the impossible happened. Less than a month after the debate, Biden announced that he would no longer seek reelection, choosing instead “to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.” He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee, and though there was some bitterness from those who felt he had been pushed out, Democrats soon rallied behind Harris as a replacement.

Summer 2024 felt like a politically induced hallucinogenic nightmare. Within the span of a few weeks, Biden bombed at the debate, Trump got shot, and the Republican National Convention provided a weeklong display of blood-and-soil American nationalism. Biden dropped out of the race a few days later. By the time Kamala Harris had solidified her position as the president’s replacement on the 2024 ticket, someone needed to open the pressure valve on the Democrats’ psyche. 

Maybe it was pent up frenetic energy, maybe it was a stroke of genius by Harris’ media team, but the vice president rolled into her candidacy on a wave of memes and viral trends that served to soften the panicked chaos that had dictated Biden’s exit from the race — and hit the reset button on her public image. 

Highlights included absurdist philosophical musings over falling out of the coconut tree, living in the context, and assertions that Kamala is Brat. Harris’ campaign was able to skillfully translate organic engagement into an effective digital media strategy that leaned heavily into TikTok trends, hyper-online references, and skillful trolling of the former president. Her social media strategy was the starkest display of the generational divide between her campaign and Trump’s.

No, JD Vance did not have sexual relations with his grandmothers couch, but who could forget the funniest piece of viral misinformation of the campaign cycle? 

In July, shortly after Trump publicly named Vance his running mate, X user @rickrudescalves wrote that they “can’t say for sure but [Vance] might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to f***ing an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181).”

No such thing was ever written by Vance in his bestselling book, but it was the tweet that launched a thousand jokes. The barbs against Vance’s alleged furniture fixation culminated in a public challenge from his VP opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who told Harris supporters that he couldn’t “wait to debate the guy—that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

Democrats were riding high headed into the Democratic National Convention in August, rejuvenated by Biden dropping out of the race and the new wave of youthful enthusiasm Harris was generating. Chicago’s United Center was rocking throughout the week of the convention, and as Harris’ Thursday-night speech approached, rumors began to swirl that Beyoncé was going to make a surprise appearance. The rumors were so prevalent that DNC showrunner Ricky Kirshner later told The Hollywood Reporter that even people on his staff believed them. They were only rumors, though, and Beyoncé never materialized. “We have the biggest star, the Democratic nominee for president,” Kirshner said. “Why would we overshadow that?”

Beyoncé would ultimately stump for Harris, showing up to endorse her at a late-October rally in Houston. “We are at the precipice of an enormous shift. I’m not here as a celebrity. I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said. “A mother who cares about the world our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we are not divided, our past or present or future.”

In one of the most racist subplots of an election brimming with them, unsubstantiated, social media-fueled rumors about Haitian immigrants catching and eating housepets turned a small Midwest town upside-down.

Early September saw right-wing influencers spreading uncorroborated claims on Facebook, alongside misleading photos and videos stripped of context, purporting to show that Springfield, Ohio, was experiencing a wave of animal murders — including ducks and geese in local ponds — by a sizable community of Haitian residents. Statements to the contrary from police and other municipal authorities did little to stem the viral smear campaign, which also included false claims that the thousands of Haitians drawn to the region by a boom in manufacturing and warehouse jobs were there illegally. (The vast majority have legal status and work authorizations.)

Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio encouraged a wave of hateful, xenophobic memes despite the story being debunked over and over, helping to endanger his own constituents as Springfield became the target of bomb threats, while Haitian residents feared for their safety. At the height of the panic, Trump squared off against Harris in their lone debate and used the bogus story to rail against migrants. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs — the people that came in — they’re eating the cats,” he insisted, as moderators told him there were “no credible reports” of such incidents. Days later, it came to light that a Trump supporter in Springfield who had accused Haitian neighbors of stealing her cat then found it alive and well in her basement. Trump kept pushing the lie anyway.  

Harris earned the coveted Taylor Swift endorsement immediately after the vice president’s one and only debate with Trump in September, setting off a flurry of speculation about how the pop star’s outsized influence could change the race. The Eras Tour singer wrote on Instagram that evening that she’s backing Harris “because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.” She also praised Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for his stance on LGBTQ issues and abortion rights. She signed off as a “Childless Cat Lady,” a shot at Trump’s running mate Sen. J.D. Vance, who made disparaging comments about women who don’t have kids. The post sent hundreds of thousands of people to a voter registration site.

Trump, who had previously shared AI-generated images meant to falsely suggest that Swift and her fans supported him, initially played her announcement off as predictable: “I was not a Taylor Swift fan,” he said in one interview. “It was just a question of time.” He even implied that Swift’s ticket and record sales could suffer because of her decision. But over time, Trump’s famous temper got the better of him, and his anger exploded into public view. “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” the former president posted to his social network, Truth Social, nearly a week after she backed Harris.

The endorsement also rankled Trump surrogate Elon Musk, who responded by offering to impregnate Swift. “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life,” he wrote in a post widely condemned as disgusting and weird. Swift, who is in a long-term relationship with three-time Super Bowl champion Travis Kelce, never responded.    

Months before his former top generals made it politically correct to call Trump a fascist, he deployed the language of Hitler and other foul authoritarians on the campaign trail, insisting that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation, or that the country had been “infested” by “vermin.” Trump continued to use such fascist rhetoric through the end of the campaign, using a blood libel against Haitians about them eating family pets, and citing recent arrivals from Congo and other racially coded parts of the globe to insist that America has become the world’s “garbage can.” In addition to racism and dehumanization, Trump has demonstrated clear authoritarian impulses, repeatedly claiming he is going to criminally prosecute his political enemies, or even use the military against him, should he return to office. “We know what Donald Trump wants,” Kamala Harris said in late October. “He wants unchecked power.”

By 2024, it was no secret that Elon Musk had grown fiercely right-wing in his political worldview. But it wasn’t until a gunman fired at Trump during a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, that the billionaire made his endorsement of the former president official. In the months to come, Musk would donate well over $100 million to America PAC, a new pro-Trump Super PAC he had launched to put the MAGA movement back in the White House.

Musk’s transition from tech CEO to outright oligarch and would-be kingmaker was striking, yet it came as part of a trend of Silicon Valley giants rejecting the supposed orthodoxy of California liberalism to put their money on the polarizing Republican nominee. In the wake of the attempted assassination, a slew of wealthy venture capitalists, hedge funders, and startup founders climbed aboard the Trump train, encouraged by peers who had already gone public with their support. Cryptocurrency titans looking for influence in Washington also funneled their assets into the campaign, with Trump then wooing attendees at a Bitcoin convention and launching his own crypto token.

The union of Trumpism and big tech money — further solidified by the selection of former VC investor J.D. Vance as running mate — culminated in Musk’s first public appearance with Trump in October, when the candidate returned to Butler. Musk, known for sharing extremist misinformation online, took a stab at in-person demagoguery, but it was his cringeworthy jumping around the stage that made more of an impression. 

Arlington National Cemetery, hallowed ground maintained by the U.S. Army in Virginia, is a place that demands solemnity from politicians, though that didn’t stop Trump staffers from allegedly scuffling with an official trying to enforce an important rule.

In the aftermath of the contested incident, cemetery officials said they had previously communicated with the chief of staff for Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who had accompanied Trump on an August visit to pay respects to 13 service members killed in an attack as U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan. They had explained that campaign events and election-related activities were prohibited, and that in Section 60, an area reserved for the burial of recent U.S. casualties, only an official Arlington National Cemetery photographer would be allowed to take pictures or video. The congressional staffer said Trump’s team was aware of these conditions for entry.

Despite this assurance, deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and staffer Michel Picard reportedly verbally abused an Arlington employee when she tried to prevent the Trump gaggle from bringing in their own cameraperson. Then, according to Pentagon officials, Picard pushed her out of the way. Trump’s spokesman denied the allegations and vowed to release footage proving them false, but never did, while the employee declined to press charges. Trump’s social media team did post a TikTok with footage of the candidate touring Arlington that, according to NPR, “likely violates a federal law against using military cemeteries for campaigning purposes.” Part of the clip shows Trump at gravesites in Section 60 with Gold Star families.

At 78, Trump is the oldest presidential nominee in American history, and he frequently looked like it. Never was Trump’s fitness to serve more in doubt than during a mid-October rally in Oaks, Pennsylvania, where Trump cut short an audience Q&A session and just vibed, vacantly, to music videos. The Q&A session had not been going well, with a couple of audience members requiring medical attention. But Trump himself soon began to look as if he might need an intervention, ordering his sound man to put on “Ave Maria.”

“Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” Trump barked.

South Dakota governor Kristi Noem was on stage with Trump, and began speaking to him as if he were a sundowning uncle. “Sir, do you want to play your song and then greet a few people?” she said. Trump stared back in silence. “Well, you had said you wanted to close with a specific song…” Noem said, coaxing the septuagenarian. Trump then called out to his sound man: “Justin, how about a couple of really beauties,” he said, “and we’ll sit down relax.” But the rally didn’t wrap up. It went on for another extremely awkward half hour as Trump stood and swayed or aimlessly strolled the stage, with Justin playing a setlist ranging from the disco anthem “YMCA,” to Rufus Wainwright’s rendition of “Hallelujah,” and Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2U.” 

Trump’s campaign spokesperson tried to play it off like a unique moment of Americana. “Something very special is happening in Pennsylvania right now at the Trump town hall,” Stephen Cheung wrote. “@realDonaldTrump is unlike any politician in history, and it’s great.”

Stops at eateries are retail campaigning 101. But somehow J.D. Vance turned a quick donut run into a viral cringefest. It was late August and Vance dropped by a pastry place in Valdosta, Georgia, called Holt’s Sweet Shop. “The zoo has come to town,” Vance announced bursting into the store, as a shy cashier tried to duck out of the way of a tailing camera crew. Trump’s choice for VP, who made millions off a memoir portraying himself as a hardscrabble member of the working class, immediately revealed he has no common touch. “I’m J.D. Vance, I’m running for vice president, nice to see you,” he said, to which the cashier replied, “OK.” Vance then amped up the awkwardness by requesting a “random assortment of stuff” before peppering other crew members with a barrage of dead-end questions about how long they’d been working there, but showing no followup interest, ending each exchange with his own cold “OK.” The exchange was roasted for weeks on the internet, as well as on late night TV.

It’s unclear whether Trump really believes, as he often bizarrely asserted on the campaign trail in 2024, that Harris has lied about having a job at McDonald’s in her college years. He certainly can’t point to any evidence of résumé fraud on her part. But the non-issue provided a convenient excuse to visit his favorite fast-food chain — this time to cosplay as a working-class everyman at the fryer and drive-thru window.

Trump’s stunt photo-op took place in a McDonald’s in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, which had been closed to the public so the Republican nominee could serve five pre-selected supporters who proceeded around the restaurant in their cars. While much of MAGA world saw it as a PR masterstroke, others doubted that images of Trump clumsily shoveling fries into a carton while wearing a necktie and apron would move the needle. Asked by a reporter during his “shift” whether he supported raising the minimum wage, Trump ducked the question.

His fanciful performance of labor triggered a barrage of negative, anti-Trump reviews for the McDonald’s location, causing Yelp to temporarily disable further comments. McDonald’s Corp. had previously said in a statement that despite agreeing to host the former president, the event should not be construed as an endorsement. In the end, it felt like a not-so-successful attempt to recapture the all-American magic of the fast-food feast Trump served a champion college football team at the White House in 2019, when a government shutdown deprived him of catering staff.    

Trump famously defended the size of his manhood while sparring with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) during his first presidential campaign in 2016. Rubio had been making fun of the size of Trump’s hands, the implication being another part of Trump’s anatomy was also lacking in size. Former President Barack Obama made a similar implication while speaking at this summer’s Democratic National Convention.

“Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago … There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” Obama said before motioning with his hands, as if measuring something rather slight.

The joke was somehow not the only manhood-related moment of the campaign season. While rallying in mid-October, Trump felt the need to remark upon what golfing legend Arnold Palmer was working with below the belt. “Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that with all due respect to women, and I love women,” Trump said. “But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’ I had to say it.”

It’s probably not a great sign for a presidential campaign when several officials who served under the candidate when he was in office previously have warned that he’s a danger to the nation. One of those officials is retired Gen. John Kelly, who was Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff. Kelly has spoken about Trump’s lack of respect for Americans who were injured or died in battle in the past, but in October he went on the record in interviews with The Atlantic and The New York Times, going into detail about his previous comments while noting that Trump said he wished he had generals like Hitler did. Kelly also described Trump as meeting the definition of a fascist. Trump’s camp trashed Kelly in response, but a group of other former administration officials released a letter backing the general. The warnings came as dozens of Republicans — from former Trump administration staffers to members of Congress and beyond — have endorsed Kamala Harris.

One of the most jarring aspects of Trump’s latest presidential campaign is the juxtaposition of his doom-and-gloom rhetoric about the historical urgency of this election with how he is constantly trying to hawk cheap merchandise to his supporters for personal gain. Trump has capitalized particularly on the assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania, selling a book, sneakers, and even a line of cologne featuring the image of him pumping his fist and yelling after the attempt. He’s also launched a crypto endeavor with his sons, which is more than a little problematic given his power to influence how the industry is regulated should he retake the White House.

The tonal whiplash between Trump spending a night reiterating his belief that the United States will be destroyed forever if Harris wins, and then the next morning releasing an infomercial for a new set of digital trading cards or $100,000 watches is maybe the clearest indication that when it comes down to it, Trump is focused on himself and his own personal enrichment. He’s not running for president to lift up his supporters; he’s doing it so he can take advantage of them.