Former President Donald Trump’s speeches in recent days have been littered with odd gaffes, bouts of confusion and verbal trip-ups. At a time when President Joe Biden is rightfully being scrutinized for his mental acuity, Trump’s missteps should raise similar questions. But due to his political style as a clownish demagogue, Trump's garbled attempts at communication tend to get relatively little attention.
In just the past few days, Trump once again confused Biden with former President Barack Obama: “Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word. You heard that. Nuclear. He’s starting to talk nuclear weapons today.” At another point, Trump strangely struggled to say Venezuela. He also seemed at an awkward loss for words when complaining about retiring Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, declaring that “we want to get Romneys and those out.” At one rally Trump claimed that “82% of the country understands that it was a rigged election.” That isn’t true — but the number tracks with what very similar proportions of Republicans have reported in past polls. To top it all off he claimed, as he's done with other mix-ups, that his repeated recent mix-ups of Republican former Gov. Nikki Haley and Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California were done “purposely.” (The video footage suggests otherwise.)
The primary reason Trump gets a pass on mental acuity is that his whole persona entails disdain for speaking precisely or truthfully.
These are exactly the kinds of errors which, if Biden had committed them, would’ve resulted in a series of segments and news articles pointing out the president’s advanced age and questioning his fitness for office. But when Trump makes them, they go largely unnoticed or are shrugged off.
The primary reason Trump gets a pass on mental acuity is that his whole persona entails disdain for speaking precisely or truthfully. If Trump says something factually incorrect — say, attributes a poll result among Republicans to Americans as a whole — it’s impossible to definitively say whether he’s misremembering a claim or fabricating it. When Trump struggles with the name of a country, it’s impossible to definitely say whether it’s a symptom of declining focus or his proud provincialism. When Trump uses awkward syntax, it’s impossible to say whether he’s struggling to articulate himself or whether he’s just tumbling through a run-on sentence that he has no intention of using to convey a clear point.
But Trump’s rhetorical brand shouldn’t shield him from scrutiny on questions of aging.
First, his speeches are reportedly becoming strikingly more disjointed and more rambling. Campaign reporters are noticing that Trump’s confusing rhetoric has increased since his first campaign in 2015. This is a matter of not just volume but of the nature of his linguistic errors. Trump seems to forget about major global events, makes statements about voting that literally don’t make sense — forcing his aides to step in and clarify — and gets confused about which of his political opponents he's disparaging. What’s notable is that in many of these instances there aren’t clear political advantages reaped from the misinformation, which is an additional reason to hold skepticism that he’s cognizant of all of them.
Second, if we agree to grant Trump an exceedingly charitable attitude toward his verbal missteps because of the history of his political persona, then that charity should be extended to Biden, as well. Biden has famously produced gaffes his entire political career due to his own, and he has had a lifelong stutter.
But it’s not the job of the press to hold the hands of any presidential candidates or to extend them excessive generosity, given the stakes for the nation. And the reality is that if this were anyone other than Trump, the press would be raising questions about a 77-year-old politician’s mental fitness for office and age based on his behavior. There are many more urgent reasons to oppose Trump — his promises of dictatorship or his frighteningly racist rhetoric about immigrants, to give just two examples. But Trump's age and possibly declining mental acuity are substantive issues unto themselves, raising questions of whether his authoritarian gambits could be particularly reckless or immune to pushback from aides or the public. In any case, what's clear is that the narrative that only Biden’s age is a concern in this race holds no water.
