11 months ago
39
Donald Trump has a new bit. You may have seen it if you’ve caught footage of a recent rally. He turns away from the podium and lurches stiffly toward the back of the platform, pawing at the backdrop like an exhausted actor unable to find the gap in the stage curtains. It’s supposed to be Trump’s parody of President Joe Biden. But the problem for Trump is that this whole act seems a lot closer to a barely exaggerated take on another aging character: Donald Trump.
Trump’s speeches, especially his lengthy rambles at rallies and other Trump-friendly events, have always been strings of disconnected claims, the impact of which comes more from a tone of snide certainty than any of the actual words. His supporters are left free to generate any impression of Trump they want, buckling together dropped words and phrases to find a message that agrees with their views. In a sense, Trump can’t get much worse—because he was never coherent in the first place.
But this time, the front-runner’s Republican opponents are starting to see an opportunity in Trump’s delirium. They’re throwing at him exactly the kind of insults that Trump has been slinging at Biden. And there’s good evidence that the perception of being old and out of it hurts Trump far worse than it does Biden.
