On my way home yesterday I finally read The NY Times story that I believe everyone had already read, the one so beautifully headlined, "Trump's Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age." I was no more than a fourth of my way through it when I realized the article was actually one of the finest pieces of hard-hitting oppo research I had ever run across.
The Times story had everything the Harris campaign would be well-advised to blitz during the election season's final weeks. And it stood in favorable contrast to the rather bewildering tv assaults on Trump the nominee is currently running: two ads, one 30 seconds and one 60, about Harris' fitness to be commander in chief, and a hit piece on Trump's awful record as one.
In brief, both Harris ads touch on the one topic American voters care least about in a presidential campaign, foreign affairs. Hence my bewilderment. Not so the Times story, however. To be even briefer, it centered on the specifics of Trump as a crazy old man who's rapidly becoming crazier. Would this not be of greater interest to voters who haven't followed his every lunatic speech? After watching 20 or 30 of these concentrated "message' ads from the Harris campaign about her opponent — each, cramming in several of the items below — it seems to me that most heretofore uniformed voters would be afraid, very afraid, of Donald Trump.
When I arrived home I went through the piece again, plucking from it each frightening or hilarious hit on Trump. They follow, if you've the time. Disclosure: Most of the wording here is that of the Times'.
His speeches and his speech in general have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane, increasingly fixated on the past, confused, forgetful, incoherent, disconnected from reality, he rambles, repeats himself, roams from thought to thought — some factually fantastical.
He voices outlandish claims, digresses into bizarre tangents about golf and sharks, for weeks he spoke as if he were running against President Biden, he's using more all-or-nothing terms like "always" and "never" — which some experts consider a sign of unwell advancing age, he uses 32% more negative words than positive words — another indicator of cognitive "change," he uses swearwords 69% more often than in 2016 — a "disinhibition" of advancing age once again, he cites fictional characters.
He ruminates on how attractive Cary Grant was, asks supporters if they remember Charles Lindbergh's landing in New York City (he landed in Paris in 1927), he seems confused about modern technology, he pines for the 1890s (a decade of America's worst depression yet), heads off into rhetorical cul-de-sacs, he "seem[s] to be more incoherent, and he’s rambling even more so and he’s had some pretty noticeable moments of confusion" — says his former deputy press secretary.
He dismisses any concerns and insists that he has passed cognitive tests, he calls his meandering style intentional and "brilliant" communication strategy, his campaign has refused to release medical records, questions have been raised about his mental fitness for years, his second White House chief of staff was convinced he was psychologically unbalanced, the CoS called Trump’s White House "Crazytown," his cabinet secretaries debated whether he was "crazy-crazy" or merely someone who promoted "crazy ideas," they had multiple conversations about invoking the 25th Amendment disability clause.
His own clinical-psychologist niece has identified disorders she believes he has, there were often discussions about whether he could comprehend or understand a policy, "No one wanted to outright ask if he was mentally fit, a NY Times analysis found Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level, concerns about his age were heightened by his claim about immigrants "eating the pets" in a small town, a majority of Americans believe he is too old to be president, a group of mental health, national security and political experts held a conference last month on his fitness, "If you see a change relative to a person’s base line over the course of just a few years, I think it raises some real red flags" — a Harvard Med School neurologist.
His versions of events were often exaggerated or fabricated — said a biographer, three months after interviewing Trump "he didn’t remember me" — i.e. the biographer, he confused writer E. Jean Carroll with second wife Marla Maples, Carroll’s lawyer said Trump lost control at times during the proceedings and blew up when he should have remained calm, watching recordings of Trump over the years reveals a young media-obsessed developer and reality television star who spoke with a degree of sophistication and eventually gave way to the bombastic presidential candidate with the shrunken vocabulary in 2016 and eventually to the aged former president seeking a comeback.
His speeches in 2015 and 2016 were clearer and more comprehensible [?] than now, his rallies are powered as much by anger as anything else, his distortions and false claims have reached new levels, his adversaries are "lunatics" and "deranged" and "communists" and "fascists," he now lobs four-letter words and other profanities far more freely, recently he suggested unleashing the police to inflict "one really violent day" on criminals to deter crime, he does not stick to a single train of thought for long. Some of what he says is inexplicable except to those who listen to him regularly and understand the shorthand, he throws out assertions without any apparent regard for truth, he mispronounces names and places with some regularity.
During one 10-minute stretch in Wis. last month he ping-ponged from topic to topic: Ms. Harris’ record; the virtues of the merit system; Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement; supposed corruption at the F.D.A., the C.D.C. and the W.H.O.; the Covid-19 pandemic; immigration; back to the W.H.O.; China; Mr. Biden’s age; Ms. Harris again; Mr. Biden again; chronic health problems and childhood diseases; back to Mr. Kennedy; the "Biden crime family"; the president’s State of the Union address; Franklin D. Roosevelt; the 25th Amendment; the "parasitic political class"; Election Day; back to immigration; Senator Tammy Baldwin; back to immigration; energy production; back to immigration; and Ms. Baldwin again.
In Rome, Ga. he went on an extended riff about Mr. Biden in swim trunks on a beach — "Look, at 81 — do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant, he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today. We used to have Cary Grant and Clark Gable and all these people. Today we have — I won’t say names because I don’t need enemies. I don’t need enemies. I got enough enemies. But Cary Grant was like, Michael Jackson once told me, "'The most handsome man, Trump, in the world.' Who? 'Cary Grant.' Well, we don’t have that anymore. But Cary Grant at 81 or 82 — going on 100, this guy, he’s 81 going on 100 — Cary Grant wouldn’t look too good in a bathing suit either, and he was pretty good-looking."
On another occasion about how tough illegal immigrants are, he drifted off into a soliloquy about whether actors could portray them in a movie: "They can’t play the role. They’ll bring in a big actor and you look and you say, 'Look, he’s got no muscle content. He's got no muscle! We need a little muscle!'" he has rather high regard for his own physique: "You have never seen a body so beautiful" he considers himself the master of nearly every subject — e.g., Venezuelan gangs were armed "with MK-47s."
He claims to have been named "man of the year" in Michigan — no such prize exists, he is easily distracted like when he noticed a buzzing insect: "Oh, there’s a fly. Oh. I wonder where the fly came from. See? Two years ago, I wouldn’t have had a fly up here. You’re changing rapidly. But we can’t take it any longer," he is not open to correction: "Trump is never wrong," he said recently in Wisconsin. "I am never, ever wrong" ...
and he would finish a second term at the age of 82.