Back when President Joe Biden was still in the race, former President Donald Trump certainly didn’t hold back his thoughts on the aging president, calling Biden incapable of remaining in the White House due to his mental decline.
But while Biden’s age concerns were so prominent they have their own Wikipedia page, Trump’s similarly advanced age and increasing incoherence haven’t become much of an issue for his campaign.
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent at the New York Times, recently co-wrote an article about the 78-year-old former president’s age. He joined Countdown 2024 to discuss his analysis.
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“A lot of people have gotten used to Trump's rather unusual and discursive speaking patterns over the years,” Baker said. “What's interesting is that if you watch the rallies as extensively as we have now for this story, what you notice is that that has changed, that it is no longer just what it was in 2015, 2016 when he first came on the stage.”
The New York Times analyzed Trump’s rally speeches and found that, compared to eight years ago, his speeches today have grown darker, longer, less focused, and use more negative and profane words, which doctors say could be a sign of aging. He also has an increasing tendency to veer off in digressions without ever finishing a thought.
“In the medical field, they call this tangentiality, as in heading off on tangents,” Baker said. “And some of them can be kind of odd, you know, in talking about illegal immigrants, he gets off on a rant about how today’s Hollywood stars don’t have enough muscle mass.”
He said that while Trump’s rants can be hard to follow, the people at his rallies find them entertaining and even captivating. And unlike the visibly frail Biden, Trump has an energy that covers up some of his incoherence.
“If you were to not listen to the volume, but were actually to sit there and to diagram the sentences, you probably have a hard time coming up with, you know, a noun and a verb and an object,” Baker said. “But because he seems so energetic, a lot of people haven't asked the same questions that they asked about President Biden.”
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Listen to the full episode above to hear from House candidate Alex Balekian, and catch new episodes of Countdown 2024 live at 2:30 p.m. every weekday through Election Day.
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