Former President Donald Trump’s public appearances have grown increasingly disjointed and unfocused, according to a recent observation from CNN commentator and The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
Speaking on CNN’s The Source on Tuesday, Haberman said there was a discernible shift in Trump’s speaking style, describing it as “more rambling” and “more incoherent” than in previous years.
Haberman’s comments followed Trump’s Tuesday interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago, where Trump’s answers often wandered far from the original questions.
At one point, when asked about breaking up Alphabet, Google’s parent company, Trump instead responded with an irrelevant reference to a Department of Justice lawsuit involving voter roll purges in Virginia.
“Should Google be broken up?” Micklethwait said. Trump paused and said, “I just haven’t gotten over something that the Justice Department did yesterday where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes. And the Justice Department sued them, that they should be allowed to put those bad votes and illegal votes back in and let the people vote. So, I haven’t gotten– I haven’t gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that and I can’t believe it.”
Micklethwait replied, “But the question is about Google, President Trump,” to which Trump said, “Yeah, look. Google’s got a lot of power, very bad to me, they are very bad to me. “
Evan Vucci/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Haberman pointed out that while Trump has always had a “discursive speaking style,” it has now “gotten more rambling.”
She said, “It’s gotten longer,” referencing the length of his speeches, which now frequently stretch beyond 75 minutes compared to shorter addresses while he was in office. Trump’s aides, according to Haberman, have reportedly been trying to shorten his speeches, but without much success.
During the Bloomberg interview, Micklethwait had to repeatedly redirect Trump back to the topic at hand. For instance, while Micklethwait asked about tariffs, Trump veered into a discussion about the U.S. military and its strength. Micklethwait interrupted, saying, “With great respect, I was asking about tariffs,” before Trump eventually replied, stating that tariffs help “tremendously” because “China thinks we’re a stupid country.”
The ex-president’s meandering responses during interviews and speeches have reignited debates about the 78-year-old’s cognitive sharpness. If elected, he would be the oldest U.S. president in history at the end of his term.
In September, he was mocked for his answer to a question about what legislation he would advance to make childcare more affordable.
Trump responded: “I would do that and we’re sitting down. I was somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue.
Sound up!
Here’s the 2 minute “childcare is childcare” rambling and incoherent answer with captions Trump gave for how he’s going to make childcare affordable.The audience members at Economic Club of New York that clapped should be ashamed of for enabling Trump’s degraded &… pic.twitter.com/wsk6R1RrBm
— Chris Borkowski (@cborkowski) September 6, 2024
“But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, because child care is child care, you have to have it in this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly.
“And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they will have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about including childcare. I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud.”
A recent New York Times analysis of Trump’s speeches found that they have become increasingly harsh, longer, and less focused than during his earlier years in politics. According to the report, Trump’s speeches now average 82 minutes, compared to 45 minutes during his 2016 campaign, and include more profanity and extreme rhetoric.
Haberman suggested that Trump’s self-described strategy—what he calls “the weave”—may simply be an attempt to rationalize his disjointed communication style. “Calling it ‘the weave’ is PR to try to explain why he’s talking this way,” Haberman said on CNN.
During a Monday town hall event, attendees reportedly began leaving early after Trump decided to stop taking questions from the audience and instead played music and bobbed on stage for 39 minutes.
The former president attended the town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, moderated by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. Proceedings were paused while two attendees received medical attention, at which point Trump jokingly asked whether “anybody else would like to faint?” He then said: “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”
The songs played included ‘An American Trilogy’ by Elvis Presley, ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ by Sinéad O’Connor, the Village People’s ‘YMCA’ and ‘Memory’ from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats.
Trump has dismissed concerns about his mental acuity. In a June rally, he boasted of his ability to speak for two hours without teleprompters, asserting that his long, unstructured speeches are a deliberate tactic. “If I say one word slightly out, they say, ‘He’s cognitively impaired,'” Trump told supporters, defending his speaking style as “brilliant.”
Trump has refused to release full up-to-date medical records.
Newsweek has contacted Trump’s campaign via email for comment.