Uh, Jefferson
Speaking of incoherent incontinent babbling…
The words below were taken verbatim from a campaign speech former President Donald Trump delivered in Potterville, Michigan, Thursday when he was attempting, at least initially, to criticize Kamala Harris’ record in San Francisco, presumably referring to her tenure as district attorney there:
She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s — and I own a big building there — it’s no — I shouldn’t talk about this but that’s OK I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world — sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson they say was the worst of all, that he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?
Wut?
Trump’s deteriorating ability to clearly communicate is a consequential feature of his 2024 candidacy. That deterioration may not have been as salient when Trump, 78, had 81-year-old President Joe Biden as an opponent. But it’s all the more clear as he now faces off against 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris.
Well, yes. This was always going to be the case. Once Harris replaced Biden, it was impossible to ignore the coherence gap between the two candidates.
The incoherence of the Potterville speech is just one of countless examples. During a recent event in Wisconsin, Trump’s response to a question from the audience about reducing inflation entailed darting from his belief that Americans don’t eat bacon anymore to his assertion that wind energy doesn’t work. During remarks this spring, he stumbled from an attack on Biden’s age into a nonsensical reverie about the actor Cary Grant, which then spun off into an anecdote about a conversation he had with Michael Jackson. Compared even to his first term in office, Trump’s inability to focus on one train of thought appears to be growing significantly worse.
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Trump’s qualities as an entertainer, as an agent of disinformation and as a proud policy illiterate have made it easier for him to mask his apparent decline and to identify its precise significance.
Yet I’m still obstinate enough to wonder why people want an entertainer and proud policy illiterate as president.
The more I think about it the more I’m inclined to the view that Biden was never interested in a second term and that the idea that he was simply a brilliant campaign strategy to shift the focus of the debate to Trump’s (increasing) incompetence. If so, it was executed to perfection.
(I don’t know – maybe there’s something about the way the US system works that would make it untenable but from the outside it looks like politics as usual.)
The thing is, when Biden was in the running, despite his obvious failings, I was totally committed to voting for him, solely because he isn’t Trump. Anybody, anything but Trump! And I consider that to be a perfectly reasonable, defensible position.
But I’m sure the pro-Trump people feel exactly the same about any Democrat, given the deep polarization of the country, and all the lies they’ve been fed. They may be alarmed to witness Trump’s deteriorating faculties, but they can comfort themselves with the thought that as president, he would have a competent team that would quietly do the work and make the decisions for him — as I was with Biden. Trump’s mental failings are unlikely to change anyone’s mind.
So, Lincoln was treated badly but Trump got shot? Wow. Just…wow. This sort of ramble would fail third grade history.
Also, there is something Jefferson and Lincoln had that Trump doesn’t; actually a lot of things, but two stand out. They were both intelligent and educated (Lincoln self-educated for the most part). They were both quite excellent at stringing words together to make coherent, even eloquent, sentences. For all their flaws, they are so far ahead of Trump he can’t even see them.
His habit of calling opponents ‘low IQ’ becomes more laughable every day. I wonder why the whole thing makes me cry instead? Rhetorical – I don’t need an answer.
By his own witness, Trump is a ‘stable genius,’ whatever that means. The ‘stable’ part I suppose is there to assure the world that he can have the nuclear button always within easy reach, and not confuse it with a chocolate cookie or some such. And the ‘genius’ part lies in the fact that only he, and he alone has an understanding of that Potterville speech, subtly concocted so as the appear to be the ravings of a blithering idiot, and so to fool his opponents, and with the greatest of ease..
Peter, granted it’s hard to understand how anyone could be undecided at this point, but the fact is swing voters exist and I don’t think the polls give any indication that they have made up their minds yet. It’s a sad fact for those of us who pay attention to politics that elections are decided by people almost entirely unlike us. Call them low information voters, call them apathetic, but they exist and they can be made to respond, even in the US system, usually by means of fear campaigns but also by other techniques. I gather that the Democratic party likes to think it’s above such things (“going high”) but it’s possible to play politics without heading straight for the bottom – you just have to fight tactically. And forcing your opponent to fight where they’re weakest is one of the most proven tactics. You can’t fight the Trump bullshit by arguments or information – the undecideds like the Trumpists care about neither – but make him look weak and you undermine his entire schtick for those who have no face to lose.
Yeah, I know it feels wrong to say Trump is a bad strongman rather than a bad person but maybe you can do both.
I have at least one voter in my family who went from not voting for Biden because he’s “a war criminal” (re: Israel) to reluctantly voting for Harris. He wouldn’t ever vote for Trump, but now he’s another vote for Harris. I suspect he’s not alone.
And then there are all the RFK Jr. voters. Not clear who will benefit more from him dropping out.
Francis — I agree with you. Maybe the best we can do is to get some Trumpists simply to give up on Trump and not vote at all. I’ll take it.
Well Sam Kahn’s got me worried… seems like Trump is going for the “convert non-voters to voters” strategy again and that certainly worked for him in 2016. He’s been going on video game streams, Joe Rogan, hard-backing crypto while Harris seems to be going all (if I understand the term correctly) “Ming Vase” with only a three point lead. Letting Trump doing the screwing up is a good strategy but why not hammer stuff like his 50% tariff on Chinese goods in relevant spaces? My $500 Steam Deck becomes $750 in Trump’s ‘Murica, and that’s relatable to these tuned out young men…
A couple days ago this gem appeared The Hill: RFK Jr. rips Harris, says president should be able to ‘put together’ sentence in English.
And after that, he supports Trump, of all people? You can’t make this shit up. But I guess it says everything we ever need to know about RFK.
H/T my wife. She follows US politics so I don’t have to.
Harald, I love the irony in that the second half of the quote itself descends into a confused, disjointed babble.