How Trump's speeches have 'gone deeper into bizarre tales and vulgarities'
Former President Donald Trump has lost whatever modicum of message discipline he used to have at his campaign rallies and has become a stream of consciousness for his grievances and vendettas, wrote Erin Doherty for Axios.
"Trump's bombastic speeches have always mixed anger, falsehoods, conspiracy theories and vague, sweeping plans. But recently he's gone deeper into bizarre tales and vulgarities," wrote Doherty. For example, "last month in Wildwood, N.J., he was accusing the Biden administration of allowing criminals into the U.S. when he took a rhetorical left turn to praise 'the late, great Hannibal Lecter,' the fictional serial killer played by Anthony Hopkins in 'Silence of the Lambs.'"
Meanwhile, at his recent rally in Racine, Wisconsin, he vehemently denied reports that he had called Milwaukee a "horrible city," and then "said he prefers Lake Michigan to the Atlantic or Pacific oceans because there aren't sharks in the lake," falsely claimed he won Wisconsin in 2020, and "that he'd been 'indicted more' than Al Capone, (if you're scoring, it's Trump 4, Capone at least 6 indictments)."
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He followed this up at his Sunday rally in Philadelphia by claiming Biden would get a "shot in the ass" to get "all jacked up" for his debate performance later this week.
Texas A&M University professor Jennifer Mercieca, who has been studying Trump's rhetoric for years, said of his latest rallies, "He frequently digresses, then digresses from his digression, and never finishes a complete thought. It's hard to know why he does this. Perhaps new ideas occur to him as he is delivering his speech, perhaps he's playing off of the crowd or changing topics when he suspects the audience is bored. Or perhaps his mind is incapable of staying focused long enough on one idea to see it through to its logical conclusion."
This comes amid reporting that the former president is blowing off debate prep, while President Joe Biden is preparing extensively.
Steven Cheung, Trump's bombastic spokesman, responded to questions about his speech digressions by saying, "Of course media elites and Beltway crybabies would be engaging in faux outrage because of their delicate sensibilities. They neither understand hyperbole or humor or anything that might make them laughingly clutch their pearls and run across the street to the other side of the sidewalk."