In Donald Trump's far-fetched rally-speak, which he uses to entertain loyalists, President Biden will be "jacked up" on drugs for Thursday night's debate. Fictional killer Hannibal Lecter is "a wonderful man." Sharks are bad.

• And Trump won the 2020 election.
• Decide for yourself about sharks. The rest are false.

Why it matters: Trump's bombastic speeches have always mixed anger, falsehoods, conspiracy theories and vague, sweeping plans. But recently he's gone deeper into bizarre tales and vulgarities, Axios' Erin Doherty writes.

🔎 Zoom in: We often tell you to listen when Trump says the quiet part out loud. But it's also worth paying attention to the loud parts that get lost in the noise:

1. Last month in Wildwood, N.J., he was accusing the Biden administration of allowing criminals into the U.S. when he took a rhetorical left turn to praise "the late, great Hannibal Lecter."

• "He's a wonderful man," Trump said.

2. The same rally featured what amounted to a vulgar call-and-response in which Trump prompted the crowd to chant "bullsh*t."

• He also led the crowd in a chant directed at Biden's administration: "Everything they touch turns to what," Trump said. "Sh*t!" the crowd responded.

3. Last week in Racine, Wis., Trump attempted to recover from reports he called Milwaukee — the host of next month's Republican convention — "horrible."

• He said he prefers Lake Michigan to the oceans — because there aren't sharks.

4. Saturday in Philadelphia, Trump — who frequently attacks Biden's fitness for office — claimed the president will get a "shot in the ass" before Thursday's debate and that he'll "come out all jacked up."

🔭 Zoom out: Biden's campaign has hit back by circulating videos and posts on social media highlighting Trump's rants, and his incendiary rhetoric.

• Trump appeared to address those criticisms this weekend: "The fake news will say: 'Trump is rambling.' No, it's genius what I'm doing up here, but nobody understands."
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⚖️ Breaking: CNN senior political commentator David Urban, one of the most prominent pro-Trump voices on cable news, is becoming of counsel to Torridon Law, started by former Trump officials William Barr and Pat Cipollone. Urban remains a managing director at BGR Group.

Former President Trump ran up the national debt by about twice as much as President Biden, Axios' Neil Irwin writes from an analysis of their fiscal track records released this morning.

• Why it matters: The winner of November's election faces a gloomy fiscal outlook. Debt levels are rapidly rising at a time when interest rates are already high and demographic pressure on retirement programs is rising.

Both candidates added trillions to the tally.

• But Trump's contribution was significantly higher, thanks to tax cuts and spending deals struck in his four years in the White House, according to the fiscal watchdogs at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

🧮 By the numbers: Trump added $8.4 trillion in borrowing over a 10-year window.

• Biden's figure clocks in at $4.3 trillion with seven months remaining in his term.
• If you exclude COVID relief spending from the tally, the numbers are $4.8 trillion for Trump and $2.2 trillion for Biden.

Between the lines: Deficit politics may return to the forefront of U.S. policy debates with much of Trump's tax law set to expire at the end of next year.

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A new Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in classrooms is drawing new scrutiny to Christian nationalism, a once-fringe movement steadily gaining political power in the U.S., Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

• Why it matters: Christian nationalism seeks to establish a country governed by a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Adherents and allies of the movement have aligned themselves with Donald Trump.

State of play: Key figures in the Republican Party have openly espoused Christian nationalist beliefs, challenging long-held ideas about the separation of church and state.

• Trump's former budget director Russ Vought, a potential candidate for White House chief of staff in a Trump 2, has led efforts to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into planning for a second Trump administration, according to Politico.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said last fall on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that the separation of church and state is "a misnomer": "Of course, it comes from ... a letter that Jefferson wrote. It's not in the Constitution. And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church — not that they didn't want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It's exactly the opposite."
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has referred to herself as a "proud Christian nationalist."

Axios Explains: How we got here.

State abortion bans enacted since Roe v. Wade was overturned — two years ago today — have left residents of nearly a quarter of U.S. counties more than 200 miles from an abortion provider, Axios' Adriel Bettelheim writes.

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Workers are increasingly zoning out in Zoom meetings, Axios' Emily Peck writes from new research published in the Harvard Business Review.

• Why it matters: A lack of participation could be a sign that a worker is on her way out, or that there didn't need to be a meeting at all.

What they found: More workers are staying on mute and turning the camera off, according to research from analytics firm Vyopta.

💨 1. Less retention: Workers who wound up leaving their company within a year had cameras on 18.4% of the time in small group meetings. Those who remained longer were on camera 32.5% of the time.

📉 2. Falling participation: The share of workers who stayed muted for the entirety of a meeting increased to 7.2% in 2023 from 4.8% in 2022.

📈 3. More meetings: Workers attended 10.1 virtual meetings a week last year — higher than 8.3 meetings in 2021, when more employees were working from home.

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Fifty years after publication of "All the President's Men," co-authors Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein met ABC's Jonathan Karl for a "This Week" interview in the Presidential Suite of the Watergate Hotel — part of the complex where a break-in wound up sinking President Nixon.

• Woodward, 81, told Karl that the book — which hit the streets on June 15, 1974 — was written out of necessity after Bernstein had the idea ("we'd written these stories that no one believed") and they signed a contract.
• Bernstein, 80, jumped in: "A little bit more than that. We didn't think the truth about Watergate was going to ever come out."

Why it matters: The interview captures the first-person backstory of the most famous book in journalism history.

How it happened: Woodward was 29 and Bernstein was 28 in 1972, when they had their first co-byline on a Watergate story.

• Woodward said they were "living in a world where even our colleagues at The Washington Post were saying, you know: 'Those two young kids ... are off on some sort of bender.'"

"My mother had a house in Naples, Florida," Woodward said. We went down there with our boxes of data. Carl sat out by the swimming pool in the most awful pair of green shorts you've ever seen — let alone his body — and ... had a little table and his typewriter there."

• "I sat in the kitchen. And we said: To get this done, we're going to have to each do 10 pages a day, and then we can go out to dinner. And so that's what we did."

Watch the interview ... Watch the movie trailer.

A lightning bolt strikes One World Trade Center during a thunderstorm in Manhattan on Saturday.

• The stormy scene was snapped from Jersey City — just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

More stunning NYC shots.

Alex Trebek — the legendary "Jeopardy!" host who died four years ago — is getting his own U.S. stamp next month to honor the show's 60th anniversary.

• The stamp's clue: "This naturalized U.S. citizen hosted the quiz show 'Jeopardy!' for 37 seasons."

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