After Biden Showed Age's Toll, The Democrats Eased Him Aside
Even if you’ve seen it, it’s worth watching the end of Trump’s appearance at the Economic Club of New York (below), when he was asked about his specific plans to make childcare more affordable. Most coverage— as it was in this segment from Morning Joe— was about how he failed to answer what even he called a “very important issue” and about how he babbled on almost incoherently and tap-danced around the question, not because he wanted to avoid it or because he barely seems to have any understanding of it, but because he's no longer cognitively-equipped to deal with even slightly abstract concepts. Here’s a transcript:
“Well, I would do that and we’re sitting down, you know, I was, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that because the child care is, child care is you couldn’t, you know there’s something you have to have it in this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to— but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care— I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time. Coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country. Because I have to stay with child care, I want to stay with child care but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth. But growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s relatively speaking not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’re going to be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first, it’s about ‘Make America Great Again,’ we have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it.”
My own pet peeve which you can see in the clip above, is how the distinguished members of the panel— serious economist-types?— applauded when their clownish guest said “This is about America first, it’s about ‘Make America Great Again,’ we have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it.” But let’s talk about what RFK, Jr’s brain worms seem to have done to Trump’s mind— through the filter of Psych 101 and Psych 102 classes I took in 1966-67.
If I remember correctly, the failure to stay on topic and the tendency to introduce tangential issues— he dropped Marco Rubio’s and Ivanka’s names and mentioned foreign taxes, economic growth, deficits and waste and fraud, without addressing how any of these are directly connected to child care— is a sign of disorganization in thought. He was, after all, asked a straightforward question about child care legislation, and veered right off into unrelated topics.
Vaguely understanding he was making a hash of it, he said “I want to stay with child care,” but immediately moved away from it again, talking about tariffs and deficits. The statement “child care is expensive, but not expensive” compared to other numbers makes no sense and exposes a lack of clarity in his thought process. His fixation with the focus-group-tested topic of foreign taxation and economic growth don’t answer the specific policy question because he was incapable of connecting the dots, making them seem out of place in this context, suggesting either an inability to grasp the question or an effort to redirect the conversation away from something he can’t clearly answer, a technique all politicians use, although usually more elegantly that Trump seems capable of these days. I don’t think all the repetition and circular reasoning is as much a technique as it is a window into a cognitively deteriorating mind.
Repeating phrases like “child care is important” only spotlighted his inability to ever elaborates on how he'd address the issue. He circles back to his same vague points— foreign taxes, deficits, “America first”— without presenting a coherent argument or plan for child care policy. In the end, there was no actual answer to the original question. He didn’t propose specific legislation or outline a plan and may have hoped the word salad and filibustering would tire out the panel and make them forget the original question. His phrasing was scattered, with sentences that didn’t follow a clear logical structure. For example: “child care is you couldn’t, you know there’s something you have to have it in this country, you have to have it” is a garbled attempt to state a simple idea. Again, this pattern of incoherent speech is not a technique as much as a look at his cognitive decline and the difficulty many people in their 70s and 80s have in articulating thoughts. The inability to stay focused, the lack of coherence and the repetitive nature of his answers indicate cognitive decline, behaviors consistent with someone struggling to process information or form clear responses under pressure.
His speech pattern lacks structure, jumping from point to point without any logical flow, a sign of the mental decline he never tired of savaging Biden for exhibiting. While his “answer” revealed an unfamiliarity with the specifics of child care policy, Trump always relies on broad empty themes like “America first” and “trillions of dollars” to avoid answering detailed questions. This suggests both a lack of knowledge on the issue and a fear of trying to rengage with it in depth. The mix of incoherence, deflection, difficulty in staying on topic, vague and repetitive speech, signals deeper issues with mental clarity and overall serious cognitive decline.
Reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle Friday, Sara Libby noted that “Trump’s comments at an economic forum in New York appeared to break the dam… The New York Times characterized Trump’s remarks as ‘an extended discourse on the glories of William McKinley and the power of tariffs to cure all that ails what Trump called a nation nearing economic collapse.’ Not a glowing review, by any means, but it certainly does not paint a full picture of the incoherence of Trump’s musings on a monumentally important policy issue that impacts millions of families. The Washington Post did not quote Trump’s response in full, but did include substantial portions of it. The story called it a ‘confusing answer.’”
“Here’s my challenge to journalists over the next two months: quote Trump in full,” Max Kennerly, a lawyer and legal commentator, wrote on Twitter Thursday, alongside a video posted by the Harris campaign of Trump’s comments. “Don’t clean him up, don’t reinterpret what he says in a more sensible way, don’t secretly editorialize. Just quote him. Let the voters see how this man’s mind doesn’t work.”
Journalist Parker Malloy posted the same clip, and wrote: “It really is jarring to read Trump’s comments as he actually delivers them vs. how they’re eventually cleaned up in mainstream news outlets.”
Still, liberal columnist Greg Sargeant argued, there’s a difference between highlighting individual speeches or wild comments and taking them seriously as a collective whole.
“What’s really at issue here is whether the media— as an institution, and in a comprehensive sense— is treating Trump’s mental state as an overarching and critically important factor in determining whether he is fit to be president,” Sargent wrote in the New Republic.
But the media appears to be coming far closer to embracing Sargent’s vision for an effective way to cover Trump after this week.
On Friday, an NBC News headline on Trump’s child care answer declared: “'Incoherent word salad': Trump stumbles when asked how he’d tackle child care.”
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