Donald Trump’s recent admission that his speeches and answers to questions are larded with digressions and off-ramps into odd and often irrelevant anecdotes is a sign that he knows that he is slipping mentally, suggests one of his biographers who has known him for years.
In a column for the Guardian, Chris McGreal wrote that Trump’s excuse at a speech that he “weaves” stories together to make a greater point should raise suspicions that he is— as McGreal put it — “losing it.”
Noting the former president, who is making a third bid for the Oval Office, recently proclaimed, “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,’” the Guardian columnist turned to Trump biographer Tim O’Brien for his opinion on what is really at play.
“The reason he’s now offering these convoluted explanations of his speech patterns in his public appearances is because he’s hyper-aware that people have noted that he’s making even less sense than he used to,” O’Brien explained. “What we’re seeing now is a reflection of someone who’s very troubled and very desperate.”
He then added, “He’s a serial liar and a serial fabulist. So much of that comes out that by the time you start to fact-check a statement or a tale, eight others have already landed. I don’t think it’s strategic, I just think it’s Trump being Trump. It protects him from greater accountability because it wears people down trying to keep up with him.”
Jennifer Mercieca, of Texas A&M and author of ‘Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,’ suggested the former president may believe he thinks it’s a good way to connect with his base.
“He sees himself as someone who is unscripted and not teleprompted, and a freewheeling conversationalist. He wants to be able to feed off the crowd. Another part of it is that his brain is not well-disciplined and it might also just be that he’s unable to maintain a thought and carry it through to his logical conclusion,” she stated.
“He’s had a lot of criticism lately for rambling, for being low energy during his rallies, for failing to read the teleprompter properly, mispronouncing words and so his response is to spin it. He says, ‘I have experts, these friends of mine, unnamed others, who are very impressed with my ability to weave,’” she suggested.
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