I agree he rarely did that in the debate, but he did do it once at a most opportune time. He was talking about his cabinet and he said “well, I had a lot of good people in my cabinet, I had some really bad people there too, and…” but then I don’t remember the rest of the sentence because it was incoherent. So the last comprehensible thing in that sentence is him admitting that a lot of people in his cabinet were no good.
“But I fired them. Biden and Harris never fire anyone.”
He wanted to claim he had the best Cabinet, that he chose the best people. But then he had to justify all the people leaving and complaining about him. But that just makes him undercut his own brag.
But he has to do that a lot. He doesn’t have this planned out, he’s reacting to the moment, so his inclination to self-aggrandize runs into other claims and acts he’s done.
Trump cannot execute a clean statement when he is in conman mode. He starts to make a statement, but has to interject some commentary on a person or event, and he has to say it immediately. He can’t finish his sentence, he has to Mahe make a quick aside.
Except then he has to explain our gloat about his “witty” remark. And then that spawns a new directing and a new complaint statement, and that, in turn, creates more need to interior interrupt with more commentary, ad nauseum.
I haven’t ever watched a full speech. I get too frustrated and angry by all his lies. So I don’t know if he ever manages to close any of those loops; return to the original point he was making to finish his sentences, or at least the theme.
That style of talking is stream of consciousness. He has ideas about what he wants to say and the points he wants to make, and he has a lot of trite phrases and canned insults that he draws on.
That makes it very difficult to tell if he’s getting worse, or just his usual scattershot self.
‘…there was this tall guy, in his seventies; long necktie; kind of an orange complexion…’
That’s possible. Look into the history of his feud with Rosie O’Donnell. He was obsessed with her for years, but would also go for years without talking about her. But then something would trigger him, and he’d go off on her again. So, yes, he could control himself for a long while, but not forever.
More like a short guy with a beard and eyeliner.
Good point.
Of course the question may be irrelevant to his level of support. Voters in 2016 saw plenty of evidence that he was unable to exert self-control–not just over the feuds but over his obsessions with his hand size and his supposed wealth. But they were fine with that.
If he’s more unhinged now, they wouldn’t care. He’s the Savior of the White Race, and nothing else matters to them.
The only conclusion I’ve reached is that Trump supporters like the bad. What we see as flaws they see in a positive light.
Yeah. The marketing genius here (not that I ascribe it to Donald but more to Steve Bannon and his ilk) is the selling of the idea: The MOST fun there is to be had in the universe is ‘making a liberal cry.’
And secondary to that first genius idea is the idea that ANY reaction by a liberal is “crying.” In actual fact the reactions are more along the lines of “contempt,” “disgust,” and “pity”----but the MAGA brainwashing is that any reaction = crying. The crying that they love to picture going on (even though it isn’t going on) lets them feel something they don’t get to feel very often in their lives: powerful.
This is why, I think, in recent weeks when Donald has trotted out his “late great Hannibal Lector” and “electrocution is better than shark” and other ridiculous themes, the crowd, increasingly, reacts with cheers and gleeful pleasure. They are CERTAIN that each time Donald says these things there are Crying Liberals, whose tears are Delicious, and all the rest of the delusion.
What actually happens: we just shake our heads and post in threads about Donald being confused. There’s no fun in that for the MAGA, but there’s plenty of fun in what they imagine we’re doing.
“They call them supreme guns, AK-47 supremes”
“I got the endorsement of the Vice President’s family. And I got the endorsement of the Vice President’s brother.”
“Haitian migrants, nobody knows where they came from”
“She doesn’t work at McDonald’s”
“They kept screaming at me. I said to myself, I always liked him, but I’m not going to watch him anymore. I’m not going to watch him because he’s not legit, what he did. I’m not going to watch him. And his hair’s not as good as it used to be.”
“She talked about the Charlottesville hoax and these people did nothing about it, which has been totally debunked, as they say by snopes and snoops and everybody else. Go look it up. Go to snoops”
Your post actually explains a lot of what I’ve been wondering about for nine years and counting. Seriously – well said, and well reasoned.
“Illegal Haitian migrants taking over a beautiful place… Nobody knows where they come from.” – Donald Trump
“In ancient times,
Hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived a strange race of people, the Druids
No one knows who they were or what they were doing …” – Spinal Tap
Trump totally was owned in that debate. Now he claims he won. You know how you can tell he’s lying? (Groucho) His lips are moving. (/Groucho)
But seriously, it’s whenever he starts his conman spiel. He starts talking in his ridiculous superlatives, you know he’s selling something.
“I totally won that debate. It was the best debate I ever had. It was perfect, the best debate ever. It was so perfect, nobody ever needs to do another debate. Comrade Harris did do poorly, she should be ashamed. She should pull out of the race and go back to Cal-e-for-nia. It’s a disgrace.”
…Is the answer not “Haiti”?
Nobody knows.
Does anyone actually know where Haiti is?
Nobody’s ever heard of it.
Does anybody really care? You know, I can’t imagine why…
I
REALLY
DON’T
CARE,
DO U?
[bs for discourse]
It’s just one of those shithole countries.