Now that Vance is accompanying Trump on the top of the Republican ticket, this paradox has opened Republicans up to fresh criticisms. How populist can Vance really be while cozying up to billionaires in Silicon Valley? What does a Yale-educated attorney and ex-venture capitalist understand about the lives of Trump’s blue-collar voters? Is a guy who owns not one but two million-dollar houses a credible mouthpiece for the GOP’s fledgling economic populism?
But the deeper I’ve dug into the conservative world Vance comes from — often referred to as the “New Right” — the more I’ve come to see Vance’s split identity as a feature rather than a bug for his ideological supporters.
In fact, Vance embodies an archetype that has been theorized about at length in New Right-adjacent books and podcasts (many of which Vance has read and listened to). By forging an alliance between the elite “New Right” and the MAGA masses, Vance, according to this reading, could serve as the leader of a new movement to institute an illiberal and explicitly reactionary political order. Though adopting the rhetoric of conservatism populism, this new order would be a fundamentally elitist one: It would expel America’s current ruling elite in order to replace it with a new, more conservative one, drawn from the ranks of the New Right.
The details of this plan differ between the various writers and thinkers that have influenced Vance — people like the Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen, the internet philosopher Curtis Yarvin and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel. But taken together, their prescriptions amount to a kind of three-step plan for the New Right’s project: Identify a member of the New Right elite who can tap into the energies of an ascendant right-wing populist movement, ride those energies to political power, and then carry out a top-down transformation of American society along illiberal lines. It is, in effect, a plan to accomplish through elite rule what even the MAGA movement has failed to accomplish through democratic control: The creation of a social order built around conservative values, even if those values remain broadly unpopular with the American people.
[….]
“One of the ways in which I’m very much populist is that I think people need to have elected representatives [who] try to channel their frustrations into solutions that will make their lives better,” Vance told me when I interviewed him in his Senate office in December 2023. “One of the ways I’m very much not a populist is that I think every populist movement that has ever existed has failed unless it’s captured some subset of the people who are professionally in government.”
He added: “You can’t just run a political movement purely with voters — you need voters, you need bureaucrats, you need lawyers, you need business leaders, you need the whole thing.”
I don’t think you can call those “conservative values.” It’s a movement built on fascist ideology. But then these days that’s just a small semantic difference.
Vance is a very dangerous fellow as are the techbro elites that support him. They are the likely future of the Republican party and they have a whole lot of money to throw at their project.
Read the whole thing if you can. But pour yourself a good stiff drink first.
As ever, @jbouie is insightful: Springfield dogs & cats is not a meme; it is blood libel: incitement to racist violence. I've been thinking about his recent column: their insane rhetoric is meaningless on the surface, but deadly meaningful underneath. Media are missing this. pic.twitter.com/wKBAKGaZ7a
They are having to shut down elementary schools in Springfield today because of threats. Haitian immigrants are keeping their kids at home and fear going to the store. It’s only a matter of tie before something terrible happens.
Trump said today at his press conference that he specifically plans to deport all the immigrants in Springfield. Of course, they are here legally but that doesn’t matter. Neither does it matter that he said he would deport them all to Venezuela. They are, of course, Haitian but to him all the “shitholoe countries” are the same.
His demagoguery is getting worse and worse. And his partner in crime JD Vance doubled down today:
Those immigrants were invited to fill the jobs that the locals couldn’t fill. The town was dying. losing population by the thousands. They are considered by the local businesses to be their best workers:
Factory owner in Springfield, Ohio says he has 30 Haitian workers and wishes he had 30 more.
He says that unlike Americans in the area, they show up to work on time, stay by their machines, and don’t have a drug problem. pic.twitter.com/GYO9pwrNij
What we are seeing is true fascist demagoguery. And it’s being promulgated as much by the new generation leader JD Vance as it is the elderly psychopath Donald Trump. This is the GOP.
The man at the beginning is close Trump confidante Johnny McEntee, a really sick piece of work, demanding that someone produce for him an example of women bleeding out in parking lots because doctors can’t offer necessary medical care for women who are having miscarriages or other medical emergencies. As you can see from that woman’s horrific story, it happens all the time. And there are plenty more like her.
I was glad to see that after decades of Democrats hemming and hawing and grasping at euphemisms to defend reproductive freedom Kamala Harris finally did it right at the debate:
Well, as I said, you’re going to hear a bunch of lies. And that’s not actually a surprising fact. Let’s understand how we got here. Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade. And they did exactly as he intended.
And now in over 20 states there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state it provides prison for life. Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest.
Which understand what that means. A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral. And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.
I have talked with women around our country. You want to talk about this is what people wanted? Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that.
A 12 or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They don’t want that. And I pledge to you when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.
But understand, if Donald Trump were to be re-elected, he will sign a national abortion ban. Understand in his Project 2025 there would be a national abortion ban.
Understand in his Project 2025 there would be a national abortion — a monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages. I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body, should not be made by the government.
They asked Trump if he would sign an abortion ban and he sputtered, didn’t answer and brought up student loans for some reason. Then the moderator asked Harris if she would support any restrictions on abortion:
I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade. And as you rightly mentioned, nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening. It’s insulting to the women of America.
And understand what has been happening under Donald Trump’s abortion bans. Couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments.
What is happening in our country, working people, working women who are working one or two jobs, who can barely afford childcare as it is, have to travel to another state to get on a plane sitting next to strangers, to go and get the health care she needs. Barely can afford to do it.
And what you are putting her through is unconscionable.
And the people of America have not — the majority of Americans believe in a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. And that is why in every state where this issue has been on the ballot, in red and blue states both, the people of America have voted for freedom.
Bravo.
NEW AD: VP holds Trump accountable for overturning Roe during the debate.
This is where it went bad for Donald. In our dialers, undecided voters said it was his worst answer.
The ad comes before Trump's visit to AZ and NV, both states with abortion referendums in November. pic.twitter.com/Ik0YFAvcI7
As a traveler, I'm both a proud American and a citizen of the world — and I've got a few thoughts on this coming election.
This election is deeper than partisanship. It's far more than Republican versus Democrat. In the future, big challenges like pandemics, refugees, and… pic.twitter.com/ebLJosmAJY
This one’s for the PBS watching older Indies and Republicans:
As a traveler, I’m both a proud American and a citizen of the world — and I’ve got a few thoughts on this coming election. This election is deeper than partisanship. It’s far more than Republican versus Democrat.
In the future, big challenges like pandemics, refugees, and climate change will be blind to borders. They’ll be everyone’s problem and only solved by working together as a family of nations.
The world needs not American isolation, but American leadership. Not the chaos of Trump, but the stability of @KamalaHarris
. Of course, how you vote is your choice. But if you believe, as I do, in the importance of nations working together constructively, the stakes are really high…and the best candidate is clear. Register to vote today at http://vote.gov — and encourage your travelin’ friends to do the same!
I also like his argument very much. If you are a person who has spent any time outside the US you know this is true. This world is a lot smaller than people think and we are facing some huge challenges as a country and as a planet. We need competent people running this very powerful country. Trump has already shown that he is not it.
Despite the ongoing excessive whining in the press about Vice President Kamala Harris not doing interviews and MAGA’s laughable insistence that Trump won the debate (and also that it was rigged), the truth is that Harris is running an exceptional campaign. At every important juncture, she has met the moment and surpassed it.
Personally, I never understood the widely (but not deeply) held belief that she was a mediocre politician. As a Californian I have followed her career pretty closely from the time she made a name for herself as the San Francisco district attorney and then Attorney General. I happily voted for her for the Senate. She always struck me as a talented politician who was very likely headed for higher office if the breaks came her way.
She took a shot for president in 2019 and had a bad primary run, but she’s hardly the first presidential aspirant to flame out in their first run. Joe Biden ran twice before he finally got the nomination. Even the sainted John McCain and Ronald Reagan failed in their first attempts. But even though she ended up being chosen for VP it seemed as though her failure was seen as possibly fatal and that dark cloud followed her through her first couple of years in the job.
Needless to say, a lot of this was fed by the right wing which went to great lengths to demean and demonize her, which is something they do to all Democratic women, particularly the Black ones. As VP they knew she would run when Biden’s term was over and their crusade to degrade her also seeped into the beltway ether.
The last two years were quite a bit better as she was featured more in roles that got a lot of attention and it was clear that she was an effective communicator and advocate, most especially on abortion rights about which the president was notoriously uncomfortable. But even with that, when it became obvious that Joe Biden’s re-election campaign was in trouble there were many Democrats and members of the media who were convinced that she was not up to the job. That frenzy to create a “mini-primary” or some kind of rube goldberg mechanism to pick a candidate was largely based on that knee jerk opinion.
Luckily, Joe Biden knew better and he immediately endorsed her as many of us desperately hoped he would do. And the Democratic establishment relatively quickly fell in line, thank goodness. .
The campaign rollout was simply exceptional, one of the best I’ve ever seen. Harris personally worked to phones to get the party lined up behind her, they figured out a process to secure the nomination without any hiccups and with almost no time to prepare, they smoothly transitioned the Biden campaign apparatus (which was obviously very good itself) into the Harris campaign and they immediately went to work.
Those first few days with her appearance at campaign headquarters taking a call from Joe Biden on camera was perfectly choreographed. The VP search and final choice of Gov. Tim Walz was pitch perfect and their first rally appearances together were raucous, exciting events that radiated optimism and confidence, something we haven’t seen for quite some time in this country. I don’t know where the “joy” meme originated but it felt real and was a breath of fresh air.
And then there was the convention which was hastily retooled from a Joe Biden re-election celebration to a “change” candidate introduction. It was a love fest, with ecstatic receptions for every faction of the sprawling coalition Harris was bringing together. And when the nominee herself took the stage on the final night she looked and sounded like a president which is no mean feat for a woman in American politics.
Since then she has gracefully and graciously accepted the endorsement from some of the most conservative Republicans in the country including none other than former Vice President Dick Cheney. So far she’s doing something that is very difficult to pull of but if she does it will be legendary — she’s trying to excite the base and also expand the coalition all the way from Bernie Sanders to Dick Cheney. (Trump, on the other hand, seems determined to shrink his coalition to the most extreme MAGA fanatics. )
Harris didn’t do it all herself, of course. As NY Magazine’s Rebecca Traister chronicles in this fascinating feature about Harris and her campaign, grassroots organizations, many of them having evolved and matured over the past few years from the women-focused Resistance groups that formed in reaction to Trump’s upset victory in 2016, lurched into gear immediately to help jump start fundraising and organizing on the ground. It started with Black Women for Kamala which has inspired dozens of others. Just this week there was “Paisans for Kamala” featuring Nancy Pelosi and Robert deNiro.
The campaign itself has a kick-ass social media team that’s churning out memes, tik-toks, tweets and Instagram stories that are clever, pointed and tuned in. The outreach to younger voters using these platforms is revolutionary in a presidential campaign. The campaign is wisely allowing them to run unfettered and if the youngs come home to the Democrats and vote in large numbers, this team will deserve a lot of the credit.
And what about this fundraising? The unprecedented massive warchest that’s been assembled by the campaign in such a sort time is simply mind-boggling. The campaign raised more than $310 million in July, driven by a record-breaking $200 million in the first week. In August they raised another $361 million, tripling Trump’s haul. They took in another $47 million in the 24 hours after the debate this week. Most of it has come from small donors which reflects the enthusiasm that’s palpable at the Harris and Walz events.
She absolutely dominated Trump in the debate this week and the campaign (which always stays on offense) immediately challenged him to another one. Trump is refusing, lamely insisting that he won to which Harris adviser David Plouffe tweeted that we’d finally discovered Trump’s spirit animal: the chicken.
They’re not resting on their laurels. They’re hitting the ground running:
New: VP Harris will begin a more aggressive phase of campaigning today in NC as she tries to capitalize on debate, her team says. Big rallies. More interviews, w battleground press in coming days & NABJ next wk. Ads w debate footage. Walz & surrogates traveling widely this wknd.
According to Traister, some of the Democratic “professionals” have descended (Plouffe being one of them) and she worries that they will quash the creativity and spontaneity that’s characterized the campaign so far. I’m actually fairly confident that it won’t happen largely because the candidate herself has already demonstrated that she’s not going to blindly follow their advice. Early on when a pollster suggested that they not use the phrase “we’re not going back” or the term “weird,” Harris said no. I have a sneaking suspicion that’s not the last time she decided to trust her own instincts instead of the stale beltway risk averse habits that take all the life out of a campaign.
It’s a big team with many moving parts, obviously. If things are going well because they are all moving in the same direction without a lot of internal strife, you have to look at the person at the top. Harris was slammed pretty hard for her primary campaign’s dysfunction but it appears that she learns from her mistakes. This one is working as well as any we’ve seen and under very unusual circumstances.
The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell held one of her famous focus groups on the morning after the debate. When asked how they would describe Harris’s performance, the most common response was “presidential.” Kamala Harris knows what she’s doing and it shows.
She looks like a president and that is a miracle since we’ve never had a woman president much less a Black woman president. But she does.
She won.
Longwell focus group: Alpha Harris: four people used the word presidential
Traister article
Let’s see if chicken man excises Hannibal Lecter out of his speech tonight. If he does, demonstrates he was humiliated on that point on Tuesday night. If he doesn’t, well, that would be awesome. Classic win, win.
The New York Times(?) provides readers needed comic relief:
On Tuesday night, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris spent 90 minutes trading blows in a fierce debate. Out of duty to a weary electorate eager for change, we enlisted the musical talents of the Gregory Brothers and a special guest, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, to provide the debate recap you didn’t know you needed.
Take it in, friends. We’ve got a long way yet to go and more work to do.
Just yesterday, I argued that “so much of what Donald Trump does and says is not strategy so much as pathology. And feral instinct. His fanboys handle strategy.” That’s still true this morning. Among the reasons the press and some of the left’s own have trouble coming to grips with his lunacy is, as children of the Enlightenment, we put so much stock in reason. Unreason does not compute.* We all want to make a steak out of hash.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is perhaps the quickest and sharpest Democrats have to carry its message. Yet, here he is attempting to paint Donald Trump’s unhinged cats-and-dogs rant during this week’s debate as a distraction strategy. It may be instinct. Distraction may be someone else’s strategy. But it’s not Trump’s. He doesn’t think with his atrophied frontal lobes.
Buttigieg: This is a strategy to get us talking about the latest crazy thing that he did, whatever urban legend he amplifies right now, it's about people eating cats or geese or whatever because he cannot afford for us to be talking about his record. pic.twitter.com/MLY3PLck0o
Piers Morgan’s guests did the same this week, offering what Trump needs to do differently and how he needs to reconfigure his campaign. He needs to fire his advisors and get new ones who will help him present himself as more presidential in coming days.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R) of Texas argued that the debate was easy for Trump to win, offering Republican counterfactuals that Trump should have (but didn’t) use to his advantage. Convincing independent’s “is very easy to do,” Crenshaw declared in Trumpian fashion. Trump just missed opportunities. Crenshaw might as easily have spun straw into gold as spin madness into rationality.
Podcaster Brian Taylor Cohen was having none of it.
'I've sat here listening to everyone say that Trump has to fire his advisors who steered him wrong on the debate stage. Does anybody ACTUALLY think that Trump took the advice of his advisors? He's so easy to bait, you could dangle a cookie in front of a 4-year-old and they would… pic.twitter.com/UUrx2XYXfT
“I’ve sat here listening to everyone say that Trump has to fire his advisors who steered him wrong on the debate stage. Does anybody ACTUALLY think that Trump took the advice of his advisors? He’s so easy to bait, you could dangle a cookie in front of a 4-year-old and they would have more discipline than Trump. This notion that his ADVISORS are responsible for what happened on that debate stage is a joke.”
Trump has never been more than what he is: a seven year-old in a 70-something body. If the press presented him as he is, if they reported what he said unfiltered, it would make their reporting and their reporters appear incoherent. It’s their job to make sense of the news. What do they do when there’s no sense to be made? You’re watching it live.
* When the New Age movement was in its heyday here, it was head-scratching to watch believers throw around terms like quantum and energies and frequencies to dress up magical thinking and medieval alchemy as cutting-edge science for the late 20th century.
That woman has been travelling around with Trump on his campaign plane. She was with him for the debate on Tuesday and accompanied him to NY for the 9/11 ceremonies (even though she has said that the attacks were an inside job.)
Here are a few more of her comments on Harris, some of which she’s obviously been sharing with Trump who can’t help but use them on the campaign trail. From Media Matters:
Loomer called Harris, Fani Willis, and District Attorney Letitia James “ghetto Black women” and “3 angry Black women who are clearly targeting successful white men.” Loomer’s guest, Peter Brimelow of the white nationalist group VDare, said, “There’s a lot of angry Black women out there in positions of authority. And there’s a real question for whether they can be trusted.” [Rumble, Loomer Unleashed, 3/28/24]
Loomer called Harris “a brain-dead bimbo who sucked so much c**k in order to get to the political position that she’s in today.” Loomer then falsely claimed that “nowhere does she ever identify as a woman of color until, right, until she is then selected as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick, and she wants to drive home this idea that she’s a Black woman.” [Rumble, Loomer Unleashed, 7/23/24]
Loomer used a photo of Harris’ birth certificate to claim that Harris “is NOT black and never has been,” a false claim which was reposted by Trump. Even though the certificate clearly showed that Harris’ father is from Jamaica, Loomer attempted to fault Harris by arguing that she is “the descendent of slave owners.” The Washington Post had previously reported that Harris’ great-grandmother “is thought to be both a descendant of [enslaver Hamilton] Brown and enslaved Jamaicans,” according to The Washington Post. [Twitter/X, 7/31/24; Truth Social, 8/2/24; The Washington Post, 1/17/21]
Loomer: “If Kamala Harris makes it to the White House, Ebonics will replace English as the language of our land.” [Twitter/X, 7/31/24]
Those are just a few of the Kamala Harris quotes. If you click over to Media Matters you will see the full list of sociopathic utterings by this personincluding her latest which claimed that the White House would smell like curry if she wins the election among other things.. She is certifiably evil.
Laura Loomer, the right-wing agitator known for egging on Donald Trump’s most inflammatory instincts, has been regularly popping up around the former president. After a debate in which Trump shouted about false viral rumors of pet-eating Haitians in an Ohio town, her potential influence is drawing more scrutiny from both parties.
One person close to the Trump campaign said they were “100%” concerned about her exacerbating Trump’s weaknesses. “Regardless of any guardrails the Trump campaign has put on her, I don’t think it’s working,” the person said.
Loomer has long been a presence in Trump’s orbit, much to the chagrin of some of his allies inside and outside the campaign. Last year, the New York Times reported Trump ordered his staff to give her a formal campaign role — only to drop the idea urry fierce pushback from Republicans.
[…]
Loomer earned her prominence in the MAGA movement by confronting Democrats on camera with aggressive questions that they usually refused to answer — she called it being “Loomered.” After ambushing several Muslim candidates in Michigan and Minnesota, including longtime target llhan Omar, Democrats began recognizing her and keeping her out of events.
But she’s also proved an extremely polarizing figure among Republicans by using the same tactics against them if she thinks they’re crossing Trump. Loomer traveled to Iowa before this year’s caucuses, confronting Ron DeSantis at the hotel where his campaign team was staying, calling him an “absentee governor” who’d “betrayed President Trump” by running against him. “DeSanctimonious’s soul literally left his cowardly body when he saw me,” she posted on X.
She also has feuded with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who she’s called a “traitor.” On Wednesday, Greene called Loomer’s comments mocking Harris’ Indian heritage “appalling and extremely racist,” adding that it “does not represent President Trump” and that “this type of behavior should not be tolerated ever.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene slams right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who has been recently traveled with Trump:
"Her rhetoric and her tone does not match the base, does not match MAGA, does not match most Republicans I know. And I'm completely denouncing it." pic.twitter.com/ZtTSzg2602
That’s rich coming from her. In any case, Marge needs to take it up with Trump who has Loomer traveling with him.
If you’re wondering, they’ve been fighting for some time:
Flashback: Laura Loomer said Marjorie Taylor Greene “is a bitch” who “says she is spreading all this truth, but …she’s just spreading her legs.” pic.twitter.com/jDHgl2Mj4n
She seems so nice. You can see why Trump wants her with him on the campaign trail. They are two peas in a pod. It was only a matter of time before a toxic monster like Greene was usurped by someone even worse than she is. There is no bottom for MAGA.
Donald Trump loves this person so she’s accepted by most of the GOP establishment even though they all know she is monster. The X account of the National Republican Senate Committee promoted one of her videos on 9/11. She is an insider.
Update:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is urging Donald Trump to stay away from far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who was spotted traveling with the former president on his plane on Wednesday.
“We have policy disagreements but the history of this person is just really toxic,” Graham told HuffPost on Thursday. “I mean, she actually called for Kellyanne Conway’s daughter to hang herself. I don’t know how this all happened, but, no, I don’t think it’s helpful. I don’t think it’s helpful at all.” […]
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is right. I don’t say that a lot,” Graham said.
“I think what [Loomer] said about Kamala Harris and the White House is abhorrent, but it’s deeper than that,” he added. “I mean, you know, some of the things she’s said about Republicans and others is disturbing. I mean, to call for someone’s daughter to hang themselves. Yeah, no, I think that the president would serve himself well to make sure this doesn’t become a bigger story.”
So I thought he was evil but he wasn’t stupid. Now I’m not so sure. This is very dumb:
JD Vance on CNBC says that if immigration was the path to prosperity, then "America would be the most prosperous country in the world." (Who wants to tell him … ) pic.twitter.com/XY9RDUlvjo
The loathing for America among the leaders of the Republican Party continues to be stunning. As long as I can remember, they were the “love it or leave it” crowd, insisting that it was the greatest country in the history of the world and pretty much perfect in every way. Now that they’ve joined a dystopian cult led by a man who clearly hates everything America stands for they’ve all decided that we are little more than poor third world outpost because of all the immigrants. (Also, hippies, gays, feminazis and Black people …)
Because immigration *is* the centuries-long US path to prosperity (and innovation, and rejuvenation, and “soft power” through connections around the world, and most powerful global culture), the US is by far the most productive and wealthy and innovative country.
Inability to handle immigration a major limit for Japan, most of Europe, China as well. A major US strength. Just ask any American who, unlike Vance, has spent a lot of time outside the country. Of the crystal-clear dividing lines in the campaign—hope-vs-resentment, “us” vs “them,” forward vs backward—visceral view on immigration is near the top.
Does it grow and expand the pie? Or divide the pie? US history suggests: GROW.
I always thought that the US had a tremendous advantage in the world because of our immigrant experience and that everyone on some level understood that. Boy was I wrong. Racism and xenophobia remain so strong among a certain group that an opportunistic demagogue like Trump can crank it up to 11 very easily.
Trump has a very small vocabulary for a supposedly educated person and speaks at a 4th grade level according to experts. There’s nothing new in that. And repeating himself is part of his strategy to convince people his lies are the truth. The sheer audacity of lying constantly even in the face of absolute proof seems to be seen by many people as proof that you’re not lying. (I can’t understand it either…)
His “cognitive tests” (which he says he “aced” like nobody’s ever aced them before) notwithstanding, he is getting worse. He can’t seem to keep a single train of thought and that’s actually new. He’s calling this rambling “the weave” and says his English professor friends call it brilliant. (He has no English professor friends.)
The speech Trump excuses as the “weave” is one of many tics that are starting to look less strategic and more uncontrollable. Last week, David A. Graham wrote in The Atlantic that the former president has a penchant for describing objects and events as being “like nobody has ever seen before.” At the debate, true to form, Trump repeatedly fell back on the superlative. Of the economy under his presidency: “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.” Of inflation under the Biden administration: “I’ve never seen a worse period of time.” Of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan: “That was one of the most incompetently handled situations anybody has ever seen.” Harris, for her part, also showed some verbal tics and leaned on tired formulations. For instance, she invited viewers more than 15 times to “understand” things. But Trump’s turns of phrase are so disjointed, so unusual, and so frequently uttered that they’re difficult to pass off as normal speech.
Trump’s speech during the debate was repetitive not only in form but also in content. Politicians regularly return during debates to their strongest topics—that’s just good strategy. Harris twice mentioned Project 2025, which voters widely disapproved of in recent polling, and insisted three times that Americans want to “move forward” or “chart a new way forward.” Trump likewise expounded at every opportunity on immigration, a weak issue for Harris. But plenty of the former president’s repetitions seemed compulsive, not strategic. After praising the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, Trump spoke unprompted, at length, and without clarity about gas pipelines in the United States and Europe, an issue unlikely to connect with many voters. A few minutes later, he brought up the pipelines again. The moderators cut him off for a commercial break. Even in cases where Trump could have reasonably defended himself, he was unable to articulate basic exculpatory evidence. When Harris raised his infamous “very fine people on both sides” remark regarding the 2017 white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump could have pointed out that even at the time, he had specified, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists—because they should be condemned totally.” But he did not.
In psychiatry, the tendency to conspicuously and rigidly repeat a thought beyond the point of relevance, called “perseverance,” is known to be correlated with a variety of clinical disorders, including those involving a loss of cognitive reserve. People tend to stick to familiar topics over and over when they experience an impairment in cognitive functioning—for instance, in short-term memory. Short-term memory is essentially your mental sketch pad: how many different thoughts you can juggle in your mind, keep track of, and use at the same time. Given the complexity of being president, short-term memory is a vital skill.
He says that if he had a patient with the “verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech” that Trump shows, he would definitely refer him for a thorough neuropsychiatric evaluation. Also, those characteristics make him completely unqualified to be president of the United States.
I’m not a psychiatrist but would just add that he’s also a puerile, self-centered asshole who only cares about himself which is also disqualifying.
