Trump’s Incoherence Seems To Be Getting Worse
Donald Trump’s public speeches often follow a familiar pattern. He usually starts with a clear message and has a teleprompter to keep him on track, but it’s not long before he veers off course, diving into a mix of odd and unrelated topics.
The former president tends to wander from his prepared remarks, delivering a mix of spontaneous and sometimes bizarre commentary.
When the GOP candidate speaks, what might seem like incoherent rambling, he insists, is anything but.
“I do this thing called ‘the weave,’” Trump proudly explained last week. “Do you know what that is? I’ll bring up like nine different topics, and somehow, they all come together brilliantly. Friends of mine who are, like, English professors tell me, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
First of all, the idea that Trump regularly hangs out with “English professors” is pretty amusing. But more importantly, there’s no secret genius in his chaotic rambling. He seems to enjoy tossing out strange ideas, wild theories, and recounting conversations that probably only took place in his own head. There’s nothing remotely “brilliant” about it.
Elaine Godfrey, writing for The Atlantic, highlighted one of Trump’s latest odd statements this week.
While speaking at a Moms for Liberty event recently, Trump said something that even made me—someone who’s gotten used to Trump’s hyperbole—look around, confused, to see if anyone else was as baffled.
“The whole transgender thing is insane,” Trump said. “Imagine this: your kid goes to school, and a few days later, they come home with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”
Let’s be clear: this claim is completely delusional. There’s no epidemic of schools performing gender-related surgeries on kids.
Though his comments were outrageous, they weren’t all that shocking given Trump’s tendency to spout similar rhetoric.
In fact, these bizarre remarks about “the transgender thing” came right after he linked wind power to people eating less bacon.
“Take a look at bacon and some of these other products,” Trump told a crowd in Wisconsin last week. “Some people don’t eat bacon anymore. We’re going to bring energy prices down. You know, this whole energy crisis was caused by their terrible policies — they want wind power everywhere. But when the wind doesn’t blow, we have a problem.”
My colleague at MSNBC, Ja’han Jones, had a hard time responding. “How do you even fact-check something that goes off on such a tangent?” he said.
This wasn’t the only odd remark from Trump. He also went on — multiple times — about his fear of sharks, somehow linking it to electric boat batteries. Author Stephen King commented on Twitter, saying, “Listening to this is like hearing your senile uncle ramble at the dinner table after his third drink.”
The real issue is whether Trump’s speeches are getting harder to follow.
MSNBC’s Zeeshan Aleem made a compelling point this week: “Trump has been such a rule-breaker for so long that it’s easy to forget how far he strays from the basic expectation that a politician should be clear. Lately, his speeches are becoming even more scattered and harder to understand.”
In a recent commentary, The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie argued that the Republican presidential candidate is not only failing to speak truthfully about key issues but also struggling to express any coherent thoughts.
Bouie remarked, “Trump hasn’t just deteriorated; he’s clearly showing signs of cognitive impairment. It’s strange to me that this isn’t being treated as a major news story.”
Throughout the past year, there has been considerable debate, driven by extensive media coverage, about whether President Joe Biden is too old to effectively perform his duties. It might be time to shift some of that focus to the previous president and current challenger.
As Chris Hayes from MSNBC pointed out last week, “It’s odd that concerns about ‘age’ have faded from the campaign conversation, especially considering that the GOP nominee would be the oldest person ever inaugurated and is visibly deteriorating right before our eyes.”