It's Not By Chance That Trump Has Refused To Debate
Trump is an increasingly deranged, ruthless and cruel megalomaniac. His supporters think his undeniable senility is all part of an act and the media has tended to cover up for him. Are swing voters beginning to notice? Washington Post reporters Marisa Iati and Isaac Arnsdorf noted that his rivals are finally beginning to challenge his mental acuity. It’s probably too late to make a difference in the Republican primary. His reduced mental acuity is very different from when he ran in 2016 and 2020.
After his 2016 race Dr. Alison Johnson wrote that “Trump's use of children's language is a deliberate strategy. He knows that it will resonate with his supporters, who are often looking for a strong leader who is not afraid to speak his mind. His use of simple language, repetitive phrases, and exaggerated language makes him seem more relatable and authentic to them. Additionally, his use of insults and name-calling taps into their emotions and makes them feel like they are part of a group.” I was never convinced it was all an act— and less so today. In fact, Trump’s lack of focus and attention to detail and inability to speak to audiences without a telepromter, combined with speech patterns that have become more simplified over time, points to increasing cognitive decline.
Two years later Emily Shugerman made the case that studies of Trump’s speech patterns pointed to that fact that he’s no stable genius. From the time he had been elected, he was speaking “at a third- to seventh-grade reading level– lower than any other President since 1929. Trump’s vocabulary and grammatical structure is ‘significantly more simple, and less diverse’ than any President since Herbert Hoover, the analysis found… Analysts ran the records through eight different tests for vocabulary complexity, diversity, and comprehension level. In every single test, Trump scored the lowest… ‘Compared to the 14 presidents who preceded him, by every measure, [Trump’s] use of words when off script are significantly less diverse, and simpler, than all presidents who preceded him back to Herbert Hoover,’ wrote Factba.se CEO Bill Frischling.
This morning, the Shallow State tweeted that “Psychopathologies as aberrant as Trump's are neither controllable nor curable. He cannot pivot, sit still, shut up, or stop. EVER. He cannot see beyond himself. He has no empathy, no shame, no contrition. Pure id. Pure ‘self.’ You couldn't build a worse person in a laboratory.” They later added in a thread that "Malignant narcissists live in fear. They are insecure; crave respect and legitimacy. Trump can't command that. Obama could (which explains Trump's fixation on Obama, and the Freudian slips of late.) So, he compensates for insecurity with bluster, bravado, and blame. To a malignant narcissist, humiliation means something different than what it means to you and me. It means exposure. Revelation of secret and lies. Destruction of false constructs. An attack on their grandiosity. That's the toppling of their House of Cards... Trump is a malignant narcissist in decline. He's fighting against exposure, to avoid an ultimate humiliation-- complete undermining of narrative and legacy. Only nutrition he sucks from enablers and rallygoers is holding off his collapse."
5 years ago, in his book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Michael Wolff claimed that Señor Trumpanzee’s family, friends and coworkers all regularly questioned his fitness to serve. A year later linguists, psychologists and sociologists were starting to regularly explain how Trump uses the language of children to communicate to his supporters, mostly non-college educated, but also, mostly with below average IQs and limited vocabularies themselves. They noted that he often uses simple sentences, repetitive phrases, and exaggerated language— as well as childish insults and name-calling, tapping into his supporters' emotions and making him seem more relatable and “authentic” to them. He uses simple phrases over and over, like “Deep State,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “Witch Hunt,” “Radical Left,” Enemy of the People,” “Fake News,” “Losers,” “Clowns”… that are easy for his 2-digit IQ fan base to relate to and remember. Some even have some bilingual abilities for which he can dazzle and dazzle them with “Very bad hombres.”
Trump's primary opponents should have been going for it all year. As Dan Pfeiffer noted yesterday, “too many voters have forgotten that Trump is a deranged clown who isn’t up to the job…Trump’s temperament— his erratic behavior— was always his biggest weakness. I remember seeing focus group reactions in 2019 and 2020 where many voters' biggest concerns about Trump were his tweets. I know that sounds ridiculous. I thought so at the time. But Trump spending all of his time airing petty grievances on social media was a metaphor for what concerned voters about his temperament. He was focused on the wrong things at the wrong time.”
And here we are today (yesterday to be precise, when he woke up):
OK, back to Iati and Isaac Arnsdorf, and their report that DeSantis and Haley have finally gotten around— too late— to warn Republican voters that Trump is mentally and psychologically unfit to serve as president. DeSantis posted a thread of more than two dozen clumsy or confusing remarks by Trump and asserted that “this is why his handlers won’t let him debate.” Meanwhile, Haley told GOP fat cats in Las Vegas that Trump is “confused,” by which she was conveying that he is disoriented, that his judgment is poor and his memory failing and that, overall, his cognitive faculties are in decline.
They wrote that “Biden, 80, has faced a relentless spotlight on his verbal and physical stumbles, and polls suggest his age could be a major political vulnerability in 2024. His team is increasingly eager to point out that Trump, 77, is susceptible to similar missteps, which have sometimes been overlooked amid the other chaos surrounding the former president, including the 91 criminal charges he faces. Trump’s freewheeling speeches and improvisational rallies lend themselves easily to mistakes, said Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau. ‘I think it’s smart to also just remind those who are shaping the coverage of this that Hey, Trump says some really ridiculous and crazy things— much more so, by the way, than the president ever does,’ said Mollineau, who serves as an adviser for the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country.”
In recent speeches, Trump has incorrectly described Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as the leader of Turkey and falsely suggested Hungary shares a border with Russia. He has repeatedly referred to the Obama administration when he meant the Biden administration, and at one point he inaccurately suggested he’d beaten Obama— rather than Hillary Clinton— in the 2016 election.
…Because Trump makes so many inflammatory or controversial comments that seize attention, his critics say, his flubs can be eclipsed. The former president has suggested former Joint Chief Chairman Gen. Mark Milley deserves execution, for example, and called special counsel Jack Smith “deranged.”
For the Republican hopefuls, who have been frustrated by their inability to make significant inroads into Trump’s lead, raising questions about his mental acuity lets them distinguish themselves without attacking his record in a way that might alienate GOP primary voters.
Haley, 51, took a swipe at Trump last month when she excoriated him for saying— shortly after Hamas killed more than 1,400 people in Israel— that the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah is “very smart.”
“These are not good or smart people. Along with Iran’s ayatollah, they’re the most evil dictators in the world,” Haley said. “They want us to stay divided, distracted and morally confused… With all due respect, I don’t get confused.”
…DeSantis, who was initially more circumspect, has recently begun suggesting directly that Trump is too old.
“The presidency is not a job for someone that’s 80 years old,” DeSantis told CBS News in September, calling both Trump’s and Biden’s ages a “legitimate concern.” His campaign has launched an online “accident tracker” to highlight Trump’s slip-ups and released a “supercut” of Trump clips to argue that he has “lost the zip on his fastball.”
Speaking to voters in New Hampshire last month, DeSantis argued that Trump has to be glued to a teleprompter to speak coherently. “This is a different Donald Trump than 2015, ’16,” DeSantis said.
…“Biden’s not too old. That’s not his problem,” Trump said. “He’s too incompetent.”
Trump’s long history of being less than forthcoming about his health is also playing into questions about his age and acuity. His medical disclosures during the 2016 campaign were limited to a doctor’s note claiming he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Over the years, Trump has inconsistently reported his height and disclosed weights that would put him just below the threshold for obesity.
Trump also has bragged since 2020 that he aced a cognitive test that typically features questions such as identifying animals and remembering words from earlier in the exam.
Haley, who frequently calls for a “new generation” of leadership, has advocated throughout her campaign for a requirement that candidates over age 75 take competency tests. Trump told reporters in March that he doubted Haley could pass the test.
Many of Trump’s supporters say they appreciate that he does not sound like an ordinary politician and they enjoy his often digressive communication style. But critics say his erratic method of speaking should not be overlooked.
“His verbal skills are limited,” Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, said in a recent appearance at the University of Chicago. “He’s not very disciplined when it comes to what he says.”
