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   Trump’s bizarre, vindictive incoherence has to be heard in full to be   
   believed   
      
      
   Excerpts from his speeches do not do justice to Trump’s smorgasbord of   
   vendettas, non sequiturs and comparisons to famous people   
      
      
   Donald Trump’s speeches on the 2024 campaign trail so far have been focused   
   on a laundry list of complaints, largely personal, and an increasingly   
   menacing tone.   
      
   He’s on the campaign trail less these days than he was in previous cycles –   
   and less than you’d expect from a guy with dedicated superfans who brags   
   about the size of his crowds every chance he gets. But when he has held   
   rallies, he speaks in dark, dehumanizing terms about migrants, promising to   
   vanquish people crossing the border. He rails about the legal battles he   
   faces and how they’re a sign he’s winning, actually. He tells lies and   
   invents fictions. He calls his opponent a threat to democracy and claims this   
   election could be the last one.   
      
      
   Trump’s tone, as many have noted, is decidedly more vengeful this time   
   around, as he seeks to reclaim the White House after a bruising loss that he   
   insists was a steal. This alone is a cause for concern, foreshadowing what   
   the Trump presidency redux could look like. But he’s also, quite frequently,   
   rambling and incoherent, running off on tangents that would grab headlines   
   for their oddness should any other candidate say them.   
      
   Journalists rightly chose not to broadcast Trump’s entire speeches after   
   2016, believing that the free coverage helped boost the former president and   
   spread lies unchecked. But now there’s the possibility that stories about his   
   speeches often make his ideas appear more cogent than they are – making the   
   case that, this time around, people should hear the full speeches to   
   understand how Trump would govern again.   
      
   Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head:   
   a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent   
   comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy   
   ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories.   
      
   Curiously, Trump tucks the most tangible policy implications in at the end.   
   His speeches often finish with a rundown of what his second term in office   
   could bring, in a meditation-like recitation the New York Times recently   
   compared to a sermon. Since these policies could become reality, here’s a few   
   of those ideas:   
      
       Instituting the death penalty for drug dealers.   
      
       Creating the “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act”: “If China or any other country   
   makes us pay 100% or 200% tariff, which they do, we will make them pay a   
   reciprocal tariff of 100% or 200%. In other words, you screw us and we’ll   
   screw you.”   
      
       Indemnifying all police officers and law enforcement officials.   
      
       Rebuilding cities and taking over Washington DC, where, he said in a   
   recent speech, there are “beautiful columns” put together “through force of   
   will” because there were no “Caterpillar tractors” and now those columns have   
   graffiti on them.   
      
       Issuing an executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing   
   critical race theory, transgender and other inappropriate racial, sexual or   
   political content.   
      
       Moving to one-day voting with paper ballots and voter ID.   
      
   This conclusion is the most straightforward part of a Trump speech and is   
   typically the extent of what a candidate for office would say on the campaign   
   trail, perhaps with some personal storytelling or mild joking added in.   
      
   But it’s also often the shortest part.   
      
   Trump’s tangents aren’t new, nor is Trump’s penchant for elevating baseless   
   ideas that most other presidential candidates wouldn’t, like his promotion of   
   injecting bleach during the pandemic.   
      
   But in a presidential race among two old men that’s often focused on the age   
   of the one who’s slightly older, these campaign trail antics shed light on   
   Trump’s mental acuity, even if people tend to characterize them differently   
   than Joe Biden’s. While Biden’s gaffes elicit serious scrutiny, as writers in   
   the New Yorker and the New York Times recently noted, we’ve seemingly become   
   inured to Trump’s brand of speaking, either skimming over it or giving him   
   leeway because this has always been his shtick.   
      
   Trump, like Biden, has confused names of world leaders (but then claims it’s   
   on purpose). He has also stumbled and slurred his words. But beyond that,   
   Trump’s can take a different turn. Trump has described using an “iron dome”   
   missile defense system as “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only   
   got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch.   
   Whoosh. Boom.”   
      
   These tangents can be part of a tirade, or they can be what one can only   
   describe as complete nonsense.   
      
   During this week’s Wisconsin speech, which was more coherent than usual,   
   Trump pulled out a few frequent refrains: comparing himself, incorrectly, to   
   Al Capone, saying he was indicted more than the notorious gangster; making   
   fun of the Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’s first name (“It’s spelled fanny   
   like your ass, right? Fanny. But when she became DA, she decided to add a   
   little French, a little fancy”).   
   Trump attends a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on 2 April.   
   Trump attends a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on 2 April, at which   
   he mocked the name of the Fulton county district attorney. Photograph: Brian   
   Snyder/Reuters   
      
   He made fun of Biden’s golfing game, miming how Biden golfs, perhaps a ding   
   back at Biden for poking Trump about his golf game. Later, he called Biden a   
   “lost soul” and lamented that he gets to sit at the president’s desk. “Can   
   you imagine him sitting at the Resolute Desk? What a great desk,” Trump said.   
      
   One muddled addition in Wisconsin involved squatters’ rights, a hot topic   
   related to immigration now: “If you have illegal aliens invading your home,   
   we will deport you,” presumably meaning the migrant would be deported instead   
   of the homeowner. He wanted to create a federal taskforce to end squatting,   
   he said.   
      
   “Sounds like a little bit of a weird topic but it’s not, it’s a very bad   
   thing,” he said.   
      
   These half-cocked remarks aren’t new; they are a feature of who Trump is and   
   how he communicates that to the public, and that’s key to understanding how   
   he is as a leader.   
      
   The New York Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie described it as “something   
   akin to the soft bigotry of low expectations”, whereby no one expected him to   
   behave in an orderly fashion or communicate well.   
      
   Some of these bizarre asides are best seen in full, like this one about Biden   
   at the beach in Trump’s Georgia response to the State of the Union:   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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