Ex-president tries to fend off criticisms of mental acuity that plagued Biden as he waffles about sharks and batteries

For those baffled by Donald Trump’s forays into meandering discourses about electrocution, bacons sales or cannibal killers at his recent political rallies, the former US president had an explanation.

Trump assured supporters in Pennsylvania on Saturday that what might look like incoherent ramblings as he frequently departed from his scripted speech were instead indicators of his brilliance that impressed other great minds.

“I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like friends of mine that are like English professors, they say: ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen,’” he told a bemused audience.

“But the fake news, you know what they say, ‘He rambled.’ It’s not rambling. What you do is you get off a subject to mention another little tidbit, then you get back on to the subject, and you go through this and you do it for two hours, and you don’t even mispronounce one word.”

But, increasingly, many others are not persuaded, including some of his own supporters.

  • rsuri@lemmy.world
    17·
    4 months ago

    My explanation is:

    1. He gives a lot of speeches
    2. He has almost zero knowledge of government and policy. He likely thinks the US Treasury is responsible for protecting the treasure that’s mapped on the declaration of independence.
    3. He can’t read very well, and given his inability to sound the words out mid-speech he needs to fill in the parts of the teleprompter that has long words with whatever he can come up with on the spot.
    • Fades@lemmy.worldEnglish
      121·
      4 months ago

      … seriously? That’s all you got??

      His father had dementia (thus genetically predisposed), he shows (and has shown for years) every single symptom of frontotemporal dementia.

      …and your explanation is he gives speeched a lot and doesn’t know big words? Are you trying to get a job with the media sane-washing his absurd bullshit?

      • rsuri@lemmy.world
        62·
        4 months ago

        I can certainly see why people point to dementia, and given how dumb Trump is there’s little difference for practical purposes. But I have to lean on the explanation of general stupidity plus poor reading skills simply because his weirdest statements seem to occur when reading from a teleprompter, as opposed to media interviews and debates.

        Look at the video you linked - almost every example is from him giving a teleprompter speech. Trump clearly doesn’t know big words like “rebuttal” “Venezuela” and “anonymous”. So when he sees it on a teleprompter he kinda has to sound it out in real time. Seriously, watch the video again but instead of Trump imagine the dumb kid from your second grade reading class doing a reading assignment. The Hannibal Lecter thing has been pretty well explained by Trump not understanding the difference between “asylum” in the immigration context and an “insane asylum” like the one Hannibal Lecter is in. Again, he’s just very, very unknowledgeable.

        Yeah there’s some other stuff like the weird lean but that’s probably just explained by his weird obsession with height and some sort of lifts. Remember, when Trump got that terrible hair transplant, he was much younger. He’s never been functioning properly at a mental level.

        • Crashumbc@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          They aren’t mutually exclusive, I think you’re describing Trump his entire adult life. The problem is he absolutely DOES have dementia and has for years.

          As such the worse the dementia gets, the more he falls back on his “weave” and the more incoherent it is. This fits the dementia and how people fall back on what they know when their memory fails.