No Trump's not evolving

2:09 p.m. — Trump begins with a reference to his election victory: “What a group. Remember, you can’t win unless you win the state of Ohio, right?”

2:13 p.m. — Trump says of Democrats: “They want people to come in from the border, and they want, I guess, want, I can’t imagine they want, but certainly drugs are flowing across borders. We need walls.”

2:14 p.m. — Trump falsely claims that a California project to replace a section of existing border wall — a project proposed in 2009 and entirely separate from his own proposed new wall — is indeed his own wall project. And then he brags about how this wall is a high-quality wall because of his own talents as a builder.

“We started building our wall. I’m so proud of it. We started. We started. We have $1.6 billion. And we’ve already started. You saw the pictures yesterday, and I said what a thing of beauty. And on September 28 we go further. And we’re gettin’ that sucker built. And you think that’s easy? People said, ‘Oh, has he given up on the wall?’ Nah, I never give up. I never … And you saw those beautiful pictures, and the wall looks good. It’s properly designed. That’s what I do is I build. I was always very good at building. It was always my best thing.”

2:16 p.m. — Trump says the U.S. has been treated better on trade by its enemies than its allies: “Frankly our friends did more damage to us than our enemies. Because we didn’t deal with our enemies, we dealt with our friends, and we dealt incompetently.”

2:16 p.m. — “That was a Hillary Clinton special, I hate to say it,” Trump says of the existing free trade agreement with South Korea, which was negotiated by the George W. Bush administration and then revised by the Obama administration.

2:18 p.m. — One day after his administration boasted of the successful completion of a revised trade agreement with South Korea, Trump says, “I may hold it up ’til after a deal is made with North Korea.”

“Does everybody understand that? You know why, right? You know why? Because it’s a very strong card, and I want to make sure everyone is treated fairly and we’re moving along very nicely with North Korea. We’ll see what happens.”

2:19 p.m. — Trump says the media — “the fake news” — would have accused him of “exaggerating” if he had claimed three million jobs would be created between Election Day and today. In fact, slightly more jobs were created over the previous 16-month period, under Obama.

2:21 p.m. — Trump makes his midterm election pitch, telling voters that they cannot afford to jeopardize the strong economy by voting for Democrats. “You know the expression from, I guess it was, Bill Clinton: ‘it’s the economy, stupid?’ Well, it is the economy.”

2:24 p.m. — Trump falsely claims, “We got rid of the bump stocks. The bump stocks now are under very strict control.” His administration’s proposed ban on the firearm device has not been finalized; it will be accepting public comments on the proposal until June 27. Then he falsely claims, “Nobody reported it. It doesn’t get reported.”

2:25 p.m. — Trump says, “I’ve been in construction and building all my life. I love it. I love the smell of a construction site, right? There’s just something about it.”

2:28 p.m. — Trump brings up Clinton again in boasting of his decision to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Alberta: “Hillary wasn’t gonna approve it. Nobody was. It was a dead project. I got in, almost, like, right at the beginning, I approved that.”

2:29 p.m. — Trump falsely says nobody protested his approval of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines: “Nobody. I approved it, the pickets, they picked up their stuff and they left and it was the end of it.” In fact, the North Dakota protesters were ordered to leave by the governor. About 20 were arrested for refusing to do so.

2:32 p.m. — Trump returns to his prepared text for a moment, saying “nearly 40 per cent of our bridges were built before, think of this, before the first moon landing.” He then laments that another country is currently “building 29 bridges.” He says he will not name this country because it is “friendly to me.”

2:33 p.m. — Trump complains that TransCanada Corp. was not sufficiently grateful for his decision to approve Keystone XL: “And I just say to myself, can you imagine the boss of whatever the hell company it is, who never actually called me to say thank you, but that’s OK. We’ll remember. So this guy’s sitting behind his beautiful chair in a certain place, I know exactly where, nice place, big company, and the consultants march into his office to tell him what a great job they did. They were dead. They had no chance, they failed. I got it approved.”

In fact, TransCanada chief executive Russ Girling thanked Trump twice, in person, in the Oval Office, with cameras rolling.

2:34 — Trump complains that the U.S. spends money “building up foreign countries” while allowing its own infrastructure to fall into disrepair. He specifically complains about U.S. support for South Korea.

“Look at Korea. We have a border at Korea. We have a wall of soldiers. We don’t get paid very much for this, do we? We have, you look at that, nobody comes through. But our own border, we don’t take care of it. Think of it. We spend billions of dollars in other countries maintaining their borders and we can’t maintain our borders in our own country. Is there something a little bit wrong with that? Think of it. We spend billions and billions of dollars. Look: North and SouthKorea. Thirty-two thousand soldiers. The finest equipment. Barbed wire all over the place. We protect that whole thing, nobody comes through. But our country, we don’t do it. Things are changing, folks.”

2:34 p.m. — Trump falsely claims that he was opposed to the Iraq War “from the beginning.” He haltingly supported the war when radio host Howard Stern asked him in 2002, saying, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

2:35 p.m. — Trump appears to ad-lib a major foreign policy declaration that is at odds with his administration’s stated policy — claiming, with no details, that he will withdraw the U.S. military from Syria “very soon.”

“And by the way we’re knockin’ the hell out of ISIS. We’ll be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon. Very soon. We’re coming out. We’re going to have 100 per cent of the caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as land, we’ve taken it all back quickly, quickly. But we’re gonna be coming out of there real soon, we’re gonna get back to our country, where we belong, where we wanna be.”

2:36 p.m. — Trump falsely claims, for the ninth time in office, that the U.S. has spent $7 trillion on Middle East wars. (One Brown University estimate put the current total at $4.3 trillion, and the total including estimated future costs at $5.6 trillion.) Trump then says, “Nobody ever heard of the word trillion until 10 years ago.”

2:38 p.m. — Trump advocates a war crime, saying the U.S. should have seized Iraqi oil for itself: “And you know what we have for it (the war)? Nothing. Remember I used to say keep the oil? ... We never kept the oil. If we kept the oil we would’ve been OK. If we kept the oil we wouldn’t have ISIS … They kept the oil, we didn’t keep the oil. Stupid! Stupid!”

2:39 p.m. — Trump expresses confusion about all of the judicial vacancies that greeted him upon entering office: “I don’t know why Obama left that. It was like a big beautiful present to all of us. Why the hell did he leave it? Maybe he got complacent ….What happened? How did he do that?” What happened was Senate Republicans refused to approve Obama’s judicial nominees.

2:39 p.m. — Trump explains what judges are: “We were left judges! They’re the ones that judge all your disputes! They judge on what’s fair on the environment and what’s not fair!”

2:41 p.m. — Trump complains of an international program in which wealthy countries help developing countries cover the cost of transitioning to cleaner energy. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re developing. Pay us some money. Right? Pay us. We’re developing.”

2:43 p.m. — Trump says of the Department of Veterans Affairs before his presidency: “They had sadists that treated our vets horribly. Horribly. Worse than a movie.”

2:45 p.m. — Trump says he does not know what a community college is. He says community colleges should be called vocational schools, though those are entirely different.

“When I was growing up we had what was called vocational schools. They weren’t called community colleges. ‘Cause I don’t know what that means, a community college. To me, it means a 2-year college. I don’t know what it means. But I know what vocational. And I tell people, call it vocational from now on. It’s a great word. It’s a great word. Call it vocational, and technical, perhaps. But use vocational, because that’s what it’s all about. People know what that means. We don’t know what a community college means.”

2:46 p.m. — Trump gives a rare shout-out to his daughter Tiffany, standing behind her better-known sister Ivanka.

2:49 p.m. — Trump complains about an unnamed road in an unnamed state, which he says has been made too curvy. “Not good if you’re not feeling so good behind the wheel.”

2:51 p.m. — Trump says, “America built the Empire State Building in one year. Think of it, one year. It’s actually like nine months, can you believe that?” It was 13 months.

2:54 p.m. — Trump says America’s infrastructure is “like, in many cases, a Third World country.”

2:56 p.m. — Trump suggests he deserves some credit for the SpaceX rocket launch and landing in February. He also suggests he doesn’t think the government should fund such rocket programs — and, incongruously, takes credit for reviving the government’s space agency, NASA.

“We must recapture the excitement of creation, the spirit of innovation, and the spark of invention. We’re starting. You saw the rocket the other day, you see what’s going on with cars, you see what’s going on with so much, NASA, space agency, all of a sudden it’s back, you notice? It was dormant for many, many years. Now it’s back. And we’re trying to have the private sector invest the money. Why the hell should we do it, right? Let them invest. If they want to send rocket ships up, they’re rich, let ‘em do it.”

2:58 p.m. — Trump tells workers: “You’re restoring pride in this country again. Our country had very little pride. Look back. See what was happening. Our country had very little pride.”

2:59 p.m. — Trump is building up to his big conclusion. But he gets distracted by a thought in his head — about the revival of the sitcom Roseanne, starring Roseanne Barr as a Trump supporter.

“Even look at Roseanne! I called her yesterday! Look at her ratings! Look at her ratings! I got a call from Mark Burnett, he did The Apprentice, he’s a great guy. He said, ‘Donald, I called just to say hello and to tell you, did you see Roseanne’s ratings?’ I said, ‘Mark, how big were they?’ They were unbelievable! Over 18 million people! And it was about us! They haven’t figured it out! The fake news hasn’t quite figured it out yet! They have not figured it out! So that was great. And they haven’t figured it out. But they will. And when they do, they’ll become much less fake. May take a while, but it’s happening.”

3:00 p.m. — Trump hastily pivots to his conclusion.

“But you’re the ones who are truly making America great again. We’re going to work together, we’re going to work with the state of Ohio, we’re going to work with everybody, and we’re going to bring our country to a level of success and prominence and pride like it has never, ever seen before. Thank you, and God bless America.”