WASHINGTON – In his final sprint to Election Day, Donald Trump mused about the shootings of former Rep. Liz Cheney and journalists covering his rally and confirmed he would entrust government health care to an anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist. He explained that talking about fictional serial killers proves his genius.
And that was before he declared at a rally on Sunday that he should have simply stayed in office despite his 2020 election loss and failed January 6, 2021, coup attempt.
“I should never have left the day I left,” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania. “To be honest, it’s because we played so well.”
Trump did not elaborate on exactly how that would have worked. At noon on January 20, 2021, Joe Biden became the new President and Commander-in-Chief. At that moment, Trump would have been a trespasser had he chosen to remain in the White House and be subject to arrest.
Trump’s critics cite his advancing age (now 78) and apparent mental decline as reasons for his inability to deliver a succinct closing message about why voters should return him to the presidency despite everything.
“Age and cognitive decline?” suggested one veteran Republican consultant, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“It’s a psychological decompensation,” said George Conway, whose ex-wife Kellyanne Conway worked during the final months of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. George Conway supported the election before quickly concluding that Trump had made a terrible mistake.
The Trump campaign rejected the idea that Trump was losing focus.
“President Trump is the greatest orator in political history, and his patented ‘weaving’ is a great way to tell important stories and explain policies,” said spokesman Stephen Cheng. “The media is too stupid and ignorant to understand or comprehend what is going on in this country. Therefore, we cannot accurately report on President Trump’s achievements while in office and the pro-American agenda he will implement in his second term.”
Wiebe refers to the claim that President Trump’s rambling style of speaking, jumping from one topic to another and eventually returning to his original thought, shows off his superior intellect.
Vice President Kamala Harris had a much more typical day while campaigning in Michigan. From there, she spent her mornings attending black church services in Detroit, visiting local restaurants and barbershops, and holding meetings at Michigan State University.
“We have momentum. It’s on our side. Can you feel it?” Harris spoke to cheers from the crowd at the rally. “Our campaign taps into the ambitions, aspirations and dreams of the American people.”
The Harris campaign is showing growing confidence with each passing day, as internal data shows late-deciding voters are having their way. On a conference call with reporters Sunday, campaign officials boasted that they had kicked off 57,000 door-knocking and phone banking shifts on Saturday.
“It’s a really big deal,” a campaign official said of Harris’ ground operation.
Opinion polls for the race remain tight, with both candidates within striking distance in seven swing states.
but, Trump’s increasingly erratic campaign rhetoric in the 2024 presidential runoff stands in stark contrast to his performance eight years ago, when he stuck to robotically reading poll topics from a teleprompter several times a day.
Evan Vucci via Associated Press
Kellyanne Conway has often spoken about how she convinced him to stay on message in the final weeks following the release of the Access Hollywood tape in which he bragged that he had allowed his celebrities to grab women by their genitals.
Trump took that advice and made the same point over and over again every night. The latest Hillary Clinton emails stolen by Russia and released by Wikileaks; Build a southern border wall and have Mexico pay for it. bringing back jobs from overseas; fighting radical Islam; It’s another unfair trade deal.
In his final months, Trump has given fewer interviews, sticking mostly to scripts written for him by others and mostly avoiding meandering detours. At one point he even reminded himself out loud about staying focused.
“We’re supposed to be nice and cool, we’re supposed to be nice and cool, right?” Trump said this at a rally on November 2, 2016. “Do it right, Donald. There are no side streets, Donald. “It’s nice and comfortable.”
Eight years later, Trump spends most of his hour-and-a-half speech on that front.
“If I say mental hospital and then say Dr. Hannibal Lecter, will anyone know? they are crazy People say oh, he came up with this name… well, that’s really genius. right. Dr. Hannibal Lecter. There is no one worse than him. The Silence of the Lambs. Who the hell would remember that? I have a good memory, but they always beat me. I don’t mention it too much because they have to do that. He mentioned Hannibal Lecter. What does that have to do with this? What is it? “It’s all related, right?” He said this at a rally in North Carolina on Saturday.
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“So I have done for you what I could not do in 20 speeches. I raised Dr. Hannibal Lecter and we are allowing these fake people to tell us again that he had absolutely nothing to do with raising Hannibal Lecter. You know I do knitting, right? Weaving. It’s genius. When bringing up the story of Hannibal Lecter, you mentioned a mental hospital. Hannibal Lecter. You go out, no. There will be times in life when something you’ve worked out to the bottom doesn’t end well, and that’s when we can talk. But now it’s pure genius. Hello, I have an uncle, uncle, uncle John, my father’s older brother. After 41 years at MIT, our longest-serving professor had so many degrees that he didn’t know what to do with them all on the most complex problems. I understand a lot of this stuff. I believe it. I mean, Jack Nicklaus wouldn’t produce a bad golfer. right. You see, that’s how it works. It’s just one of those things, it’s about family and whatever.”
Kevin Robillard contributed reporting.
