What To Know
- CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Donald Trump’s rambling speeches have become increasingly common.
- Tapper aired clips of Trump telling the same story twice within 30 minutes at an October rally.
- NYT reporter Dylan Freedman also noted Trump uses swear words nearly three times more frequent than in 2016.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Donald Trump‘s “head-scratching moments and long, rambling speeches” have become “increasingly common” in recent years, especially during the current midterms campaign.
Tapper opened Monday’s (November 2) episode of The Lead by focusing on Trump’s 23-minute speech on his Washington, D.C., renovations when he was supposed to be giving his final remarks ahead of midterms voting. He said this kind of behavior has become all too common in Trump’s second presidency.
The host then cited a New York Times report from journalists Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman, who found that Trump has become “more profane, more absolutist, longer-winded, and less coherent than he was in 2016.”
Tapper spoke with Freedman about his findings, highlighting an October 20 rally in Greenville, North Carolina, where Trump told the same story twice within a span of 30 minutes.
“It was the story of Willie Horton and an infamous ad from the 1988 presidential election,” Tapper explained, per Mediaite. “It started about one minute into the speech.”
He then played a clip from the rally, where Trump told the crowd, “Michael Dukakis, years ago, let out one murderer — Willie Horton — and he went out to kill three women, rape and kill three women.”
“I mean, he got his facts wrong, but even more bizarre than getting the facts wrong is that fewer than 30 minutes later, he told the exact same crowd the exact same story,” Tapper noted before playing another clip from the North Carolina rally.
Trump told the audience, “There was a governor of Massachusetts, years ago, not that long ago, but years ago, and he was running, and he released a man named Willie Horton.”
“Look, I get it… he’s 80, and campaigning is hard and all that, but how much in your analyses did you find the president repeating himself?” Tapper asked Freedman.
Freedman said they used AI-assisted analysis to compare Trump’s remarks from 2015 to the present day and found that he “is going into these rambling, digressive passages about two and a half times more often than he used to.”
“You also wrote about how much more profane, rude, crass… the president is in public remarks,” Tapper added before showing a clip of Trump insulting Reuters reporter Jacob Bogage last week.
Freedman explained, “We found that [Trump’s] using swear words almost three times as much as he was [back in 2016]. We’re not doctors, but some medical experts point to that as a sign of age-related disinhibition.”
You can watch the segment here.
The Lead With Jake Tapper, Weekdays, 4/3c, CNN