Some of these may have been mentioned in other threads, but I’d like to put them in one place to better identify them.
He doesn’t play his tiny according as much when giving speeches.
He doesn’t make as many insults. At least, they aren’t making the sound bites.
He behaves as if a human would behave if told their best friend had just died and he will never see them again. OK, more like a 5th grader being forced to admit in front of the class that it was he who pulled the fire alarm that caused recess to be canceled because he didn’t want to take the spelling test (but, it wasn’t his fault).
I think his campaign advisors have finally convinced him that he can’t win if he doesn’t do what they tell him. No more insults. No more ad-lib rants. Stick to policy. Perhaps they threatened to abandon him if he doesn’t change.
I think Trump really believes that if he does this, he will fail. Miserably. If so, I’d agree. If he stays lukewarm, his base is going to wander off in search of excitement elsewhere. He is not going to gain new apostles since nobody is going to forget the nasty, snarling old cur Trump. Not in two months, anyway.
Finally, I think they have him drugged for his speeches. I am not up on the latest “enhancements” but I wonder what it could be. Thorazine?
My best guess would be that there’s a lot at play here. He probably has had some serious “Come to Jesus” talks with his top campaign people (and family members), but he also:
Is old, not in great shape, and probably flat worn out, and;
To the extent that he’s been brow-beaten into staying on message, that implies sticking to the script on the teleprompter. This puts Trump in the unfortunate position of having to … read – something he genuinely seems to struggle with … mightily.
I don’t think he’s drugged. I think he’s old like Biden. But unlike Biden, he never had any sort of intellectual rigor, and is having trouble pivoting from his long-used routine of Biden-abusing soundbites to attacking Harris, because she’s a lot tougher to land a punch on in general and he’s never really given her any thought.
Plus he’s still facing a number of court cases (and an imminent sentencing hearing) which is likely adding mental stress, especially as his plan to regain office to stymie those cases is looking less likely as Harris/Walz’s polls go up and his go down.
From what we know about him and what can be gleaned inside his camp, he’s the sort to shoot the messenger and is surrounded by people who only give him good news.
Being forced to leave the bubble to campaign and forced to see at least a little of what’s going on out there must be demoralizing after months/years of people blowing smoke up his rear end.
Nothing deep going on here. Watch his eyes. When he’s reading off the teleprompter he’s sad and small. When he goes off script he’s happy and perks up considerably.
Somebody beat into his head that he needs to stay on message, and he hates it. We’ll see how long it lasts.
I was going to mention that, too. He appears to me to have lost a considerable amount of weight over the past months. His hair seems much lighter in color, too.
I’m sure of this. He’s a good 12 years older than I am and years over 60 cost a whole lot more…
I guess I should have used a smiley, as that was meant as a joke,
I knew a guy in college who thought Thorazine was great. I saw him on it, once. The best I could describe it was a passed-out drunk, although he wasn’t fully asleep. He couldn’t stand (or even sit very well), and his eyes were mostly closed, as if keeping them open was just too much trouble. He could speak, sort of, but not so you could understand. As if enunciation was just too much trouble. I asked him, later, why he did it. He just said “It’s a gas!” (this was the 70s).
I often make the mistake others will view my jokes from my perspective. Probably explains why few people find me funny.
I really hope that the judge doesn’t kick the sentencing can down the road again. September 18th can’t come soon enough. As for changes in his demeanor: he’s always come across as a sad, insecure bully to me. He insults people from long distance, knowing full well that any one of them would likely flatten his ass in close quarters.
Sounds like my brother, the pain in the ass. He must have been on something while in college, which changed his speech pattern to resemble a low-key version of Boomhauer and significantly delayed his graduation.
Couldn’t have been him, though; he graduated high school in '76 but spent a few years bumming around the Pacific coast then in Europe.
Absolutely this. He hates to stay on message and on topic, and it shows. I’m not sure if he’s reading in a slow monotone as a show of defiance because he < stomps feet >doesn’t want to do it or if it’s taking all of his attention and energy to read stuff he doesn’t understand.
I also think he’s having trouble attacking Harris because his go-to insults would be racist, sexist, or some combination of the two, which he knows deep in his lizard brain would hurt him with voters he needs to keep on his side until November 6th. Sometimes he can’t help himself, but it’s obvious he’s really trying to rein in his propensity for attacking her as woman of color. It must give him terrible stress to hold in all that vicious invective that’s just itching to explode.
Has he? In the clips I’ve seen, he’s ad-libbing about how his advisors have been telling him to stop the insults and stick to policy. When he does that, he is not talking about policy; he’s talking about talking about policy. That’s not the same thing.
The power of suggestion is powerful. People may leave his rallies thinking Trump talked about policy. What actual policies has Trump been putting forward lately?
The clips of him riffing and acting out get circulated because they’re entertaining/terrifying. But if you can catch the “boring” bits you’ll see him speaking in a blank-faced slow monotone without animation or inflection. Because I can’t bring myself to watch full speeches I don’t know what the ratio of crazy to “composed” is.
