Trump Has an Age Problem
Recent blunders by Trump have been made more pronounced by the former president, as he continues to make mistakes in speeches all over the country while mocking Biden for his shortfalls.
Donald Trump has always made a point to mock President Biden on the campaign trail with a series of imitations, in a style more preferred by stand up comics rather than presidential candidates. He has also maintained a speaking style that in the best of terms can be described as “off the cuff” or “freewheeling” which has often made his statements seem nonsensical and incoherent.
None of this is new, but the last few months have shown that Trump’s more recent on-stage antics during rallies, where he mocks Joe Biden for being so old, have mutated into a case of life mimicking supposed art. Just as Trump’s routine of mocking Joe Biden’s age during his campaign stops have gotten a lot more intense, so too have the mistakes Trump has made, that reveal his own deficits and declining mental condition.
In pretending to be an elderly Joe Biden, Trump disperses an image of only himself as the feeble candidate. Each campaign stop is filled with more and more mistakes that are no longer easy to brush off, and the hypocrisy in his performances no longer seems as outrageous, as it does terribly foreboding — as if karma is checking Trump in real-time.
Somehow Trump making himself look weaker, and then making a mistake that showcases that very weakness he is highlighting, is only working against him. There has rarely been a focus or a clarity to anything Donald Trump says or does, especially at his campaign rallies, but some of his latest appearances really emphasize just how off his game the former president has become.
Sept. 15, 2023
During a speech in Washington last month, Donald Trump made a point to emphasize that Joe Biden was “…cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead.” Trump confuses President Biden with President Obama and brags about polls showing him leading “Mr. Obama” who is not even a candidate. He then warned the crowd that America was on the verge of World War II, which already happened and ended in 1945.
Oct. 11, 2023
Days after a brutal terrorist attack that killed hundreds of Israelis, Trump criticizes Benjamin Netanyahu for being unprepared, and gives an inaccurate timeline of events in the Middle East to emphasize Biden’s mis-handling of foreign affairs. Then he praises Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group calling them “very smart.”
Oct. 23, 2023:
Trump holds a rally in New Hampshire, where he tells a crowd of supporters not to vote. Then he claims to have defeated President Barack Obama in an election which never happened. Next, Trump praises Viktor Orban, the strongman prime minister of Hungary, but mistakenly calls him “the leader of Turkey,” a country hundreds of miles away from Hungary.
Oct. 28, 2023
In a speech last Saturday, Donald Trump mispronounced the terrorist group Hamas (huh-maas), the Islamist group that governs the Gaza Strip and carried out one of the largest attacks on Israel in decades, by calling it “hummus.”
Oct. 29, 2023
On Sunday, in Sioux City, Iowa, Trump wrongly thanked supporters of Sioux Falls, a South Dakota town about 75 miles away. He was then corrected by an official of the state who pulled him aside with a live mic to explain the error. It was an eerie scene considering that earlier in the month, Trump pretended to be Joe Biden mistaking Iowa for Idaho and needing help from an aide to get it straight.
Also in Sioux City…Trump mocks Biden saying he is incapable of reading from a teleprompter and then, reading from a teleprompter, Trump mispronounces Canada.
Oct. 29, 2023
In the ultimate exercise of projection at an event in Las Vegas on Sunday, Trump does a long, drawn out impersonation of Joe Biden exiting a stage last week and bragging about his own prowess. He claims that Biden was “incoherent” because his medication had worn off and then with no real explanation, Trump proceeds to wander all over the stage acting befuddled, intending to look like Biden but only emphasizing his own lack of awareness.
Happy Halloween, everyone! When trying to discern how best to cover something topical that was also in keeping with the holiday spirit, these clips were all I could think about, so I decided to lean into it. No doubt these clips will keep you up tonight with nightmares. 🎃
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter, is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and an analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
Paid subscriptions and one-time tributes embedded in each article allow me to keep publishing critical and informative work that is sometimes made available to the public — thank you. If you like this piece and want to support independent journalism further, you can forward this article to others, get a paid subscription or gift subscription, or donate as much as you like today.
Well, TFG's voice can raise my blood pressure so I have to pass listening to all the videos at once. 😄
Unpopular opinion alert: I think people are grasping at straws on this count.
I've been reading about Trumps mental decline for years and have heard several mental health pros on MSNBC stating that he's suffering from this or that clinical condition and have not yet seen any real evidence of dementia or physical decline. In my opinion Trump is simply so deeply disinterested in any of these subjects - Orban's location or who Hamas even is - that he just riffs and mugs for the crowd with zero concern for accuracy which, given that he's speaking to hard-core MAGAt's, is plenty good enough. I do think his perilous legal position is contributing to his lack of focus at these events. He's truly frightened , imo.