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Just a few short months ago, Joe Biden was suffering from mental decline, not fit for office and a threat to the country.
All the Republicans, especially the ones from Alabama, said so. From our U.S. senators to our U.S. reps to our state lawmakers, they all pounced on every Biden misstep, poked fun at any press conference flub and went absolutely crazy over the president’s debate performance.
They were merely asking fair, reasonable questions, pointing out public gaffes and protecting the American people from a president in decline, possibly suffering from dementia. After all, how else to explain such things as forgetting the word “Medicare” during the debate or mixing up names of prominent world leaders or abruptly switching topics during the midst of a speech?
It has to be a mental issue, right?
Um, pardon, but have any of you neurologists listened to the Republican nominee for president lately?
Try this on: “Your kid goes to school and he comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child. And many of these childs, 15 years later say, what the hell happened? Who did this to me? They say, who did this to me? It’s incredible.”
That was Donald John Trump speaking at a Moms for Liberty event, and apparently explaining his belief that schools are performing gender reassignment surgeries on “childs,” who are also apparently spending multiple days at their schools without returning home. You know, totally possible stuff that could definitely happen.
Or the rantings of a crazy person.
But we’re just getting started here on this trip to Crazy Town, with our chauffeur DJT. Because … have you heard about the bacon and the wind?
“You take a look at bacon and some of these products… Some people don’t eat bacon anymore. And we’re going to get the energy prices down… You know, this was caused by their horrible energy. Wind. They want wind all over the place. When it doesn’t blow, we have a problem.”
I swear to you that this was all stated just as represented above. I have not omitted words or skipped ahead in the conversation. All of this was said within 10 seconds by the same person – Donald Trump. Who is running for president. Of America.
Speaking of presidents … and buildings … and cities … and, you know, stuff:
“She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s – and I own a big building there – it’s no … I shouldn’t talk about this but that’s OK I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world – sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson they say was the worst of all, that he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?”
That was last Thursday at a campaign stop in Michigan. All of this that I’ve cited thus far has occurred just within the last week.
And somehow, there’s no overwhelming outcry about Trump’s mental decline, his odd behavior or his incoherent speeches. Or, hell, just someone noting that even if you clean up the language and grammar, place it in the best, most readable context, what this man – who is apparently still running neck and neck with a sane, well-spoken Democratic nominee – is saying is absolutely, 100 percent bat-guano insane.
Like a few days ago when he claimed that if Jesus had come down to count the votes he would have won in California. He lost by 8 million votes in the state.
Or when he claimed that “you can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread – you’ll get mugged, you’ll get raped.”
Or when he claimed that his Jan. 6 insurrection/rally/coup crowd was larger than the crowd that gathered to hear Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.
Or when he told a crowd that “in four years you won’t have to vote again.”
And how could we forget the genius, MIT-adjacent analysis of the never-before-considered issue of batteries on boats and nearby sharks: “So I said, ‘Let me ask you a question.’ And he said, ‘Nobody ever asked this question,’ and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT,’ very smart.
“I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery’s underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’
“By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of shark… I watched some guys justifying it today: ‘Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy. He said, ‘There’s no problem with sharks. They just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming now who really got decimated and other people too.’ A lot of shark attacks.
“So I said, ‘So there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, and water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?’ Because I will tell you he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘Nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.’ But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark.”
Look, you know that’s insanity. You know that if a person sitting next to you at a bar or at a ballgame started rambling off any of the above, you’d think the cheese had slid off that person’s cracker and you’d get away from them as quickly as possible.
For all of Biden’s faults – which were nothing more than the common regression people experience as they age – he never sounded like this. He never left you wondering if drugs might be a problem. He never, even at his absolute worst moments, left you concerned about his ability to comprehend world events and react accordingly.
Trump, on top of his standard awful, racist, insensitive, misogynistic, weird comments that have accompanied all of his speeches, has now slipped into this alternate reality, where he just makes up increasingly bizarre fantasies that he – and only he – seems to believe.
It would be concerning for anyone, but for a major party nominee, it’s frightening.
