by Donald Trump, now the oldest candidate to run for president, faces intense scrutiny over his age and mental acuity – and his biographers think Trump is “hyper-aware” that he is slipping cognitively and trying to make up for it with “complicated explanations. ,” according to a report.
President Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 race after a dismal debate performance that had voters questioning his mental acuity. Now Trump is facing similar questions and is trying to explain his frequent references to Hannibal Lecter, rough words, incomplete thoughts, consolidating the names of prominent figures, and his penchant for rambling.
But the explanations led one Trump biographer to believe that the GOP nominee is well aware that he is losing his mental footing.
Timothy O’Brien, author TrumpNation: The Art of Being Donaldit was said The Guardian that he believes that the former president, who once called himself “a very persistent genius”, fully understands that he is saying more obscene things than ever and that he wants to make up for it.
“The reason he is now offering these convoluted explanations for his speech patterns in his public appearances is because he knows people have noticed that he makes less sense than he used to,” said O’Brien. “What we are seeing now is a reflection of a very troubled and very desperate person.”
On Saturday afternoon, Trump also tried to explain his frequent, seemingly random references to the “great and late Hannibal Lecter,” a fictional cannibalistic serial killer from books and movies including. Silence of the Lambs. As it turned out, he was making a statement about immigrants, claiming that the killer was “representative of the people who are coming into our country.”
This type of explanation from Trump is not isolated.
Last week, the former president addressed his tendency to fight the subject. He was bragging to a crowd from Johnstown, Pennsylvania about his “weave,” or what he calls his tendency to wander in and out — often nonsensically — of multiple conversation threads before circling back to his original point.
“When I do the weave… I’ll talk about nine different things and they all come back together great,” Trump told the crowd before criticizing the “fake” media for “rambling ” on him.
He also defended himself: “My friends who are English professors, they say: ‘That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,'” Trump said, referring to the “weave”.
Other biographies, written by Jennifer Mercieca Demagogue for President: Rhetorical Genius Donald Trump, he offered another reason behind his enthusiasm explaining: “It’s very good at putting a marketing spin on anything that could be seen as negative.
She told The Guardian: “He has been criticized a lot recently for wandering, for being low energy during his rallies, for failing to read the telecommunications properly, for mispronouncing words so his response is to turn him. He says, ‘I have experts, these friends of mine, other anonymous people, who are very impressed with my weaving ability.’”
Although Trump claims the “weave” is strategic, many rally-goers may find his rhetoric confusing because he tends to jump from topic to topic with no clear connection.
Take the Wisconsin rally last month, when Trump jumped from bacon to wind turbines in one minute.
“You look at bacon and some of these products and some people don’t eat bacon anymore. We are going to lower the energy prices. When energy goes down, you know, their terrible energy was – the wind. They want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow we have a little problem,” he told the La Crosse, Wisconsin, crowd.
In another infamous, eyebrow-raising moment, Trump’s July statement about electric boats shifted gears to a possible shark attack. He ended the tangent with a series of unusual questions: “Do I get electricity if the boat is sinking? Water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over the shark and not get electrocuted?”
The incident prompted thriller novelist Stephen King to equate Trump’s speech to “listening to your senile uncle at the dinner table after he’s had that third drink.”
In addition to the mental steps, Trump also often confuses elected officials. He confused former presidents Barack Obama and Biden, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and California governor Jerry Brown, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley. He accidentally called Elon Musk a “Lion” at the Wisconsin Rally on Saturday.
He often tries to explain these mistakes by “joking” or being “sarcastic”. After mixing up the two women, Trump tried to write off the gaffe as a purposeful move: “When I comment – I’m not a fan of Nikki and I’m not a fan of Pelosi. When I put names together on purpose, they say ‘He didn’t know Pelosi from Nikki.’….They have something in common: they both cry.”
In light of his recent slip-ups, Trump has paid attention to his cognitive tests. In one memory evaluation, taken while in office, he noted his ability to recall the phrase: “person, woman, man, camera, television.” He claimed that the test was considered quite difficult for others – but not for him: “If you get it so you get extra points. [The doctor] who said that no one is in order, it’s actually not that easy, but for me, it was easy.”
Later, after struggling to pronounce the word “climate” at a rally, the former president defended himself by saying he had recently had a “business” with a cognitive test.
