Once upon a time, if the president of the United States stumbled over a sentence, forgot a name, or momentarily glitched mid-speech, it was treated as a national emergency.
“Cognitive decline!” the headlines cried. “Who’s really running the country?” asked Republican attack ads on then-president Joe Biden, implying former vice president Kamala Harris was lurking just offstage with the strings of the puppet in her hands.
Twitter (not X, never X) diagnosed poor Joe with dementia. There was talk about invoking the 25th Amendment. Biden’s enemies — and then even some of his friends — painted him as a husk of a man: barely lucid, tragically unaware, propelled only by hubris toward a second term.
But now Donald Trump is back, and aren’t things different? Or wait, are they?
During a speech in Pittsburgh Tuesday afternoon for the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, the 47th president certainly had his faculties on full display.
To start, the president claimed, without blinking, that he had already secured $16 trillion in investments into the U.S. economy. For reference, the entire GDP of the United States is under $30 trillion. Now, we all know that Donald is prone to exaggeration. We’ve all heard that his latest idea/bill/haircut is the greatest thing ever, and that some people are saying it’s the most incredible idea/bill/haircut the world has ever seen.
But this was clearly not delivered for melodramatic effect. This was the president of the United States claiming that he had single-handedly funded half of capitalism, in six months.
Moments later, Trump attempted to introduce Republican Rep. Dan Meuser.
“Where’s Dan?” he asked, scanning the crowd. Dave McCormick, seated beside him, had to quietly inform him that all the representatives had stayed in Washington.
“Oh, they’re in Washington working on our next bill? Good!” Trump replied. “Now I don’t have to mention their names, although they’re watching on television, I guarantee.”
He laughed nervously as he said it, in quite an uncharacteristic way, and then trailed off while muttering, again, that it was “good” that “they” are working on something in D.C. It was oddly difficult to watch.
The 79-year-old president then struggled to pronounce the name of one of his own White House aides, before saying, “They tell me you’re doing great.” And, as the spicy dressing on the word salad, he added a bizarre aside about Unabomber Ted Kaczynski being a great student (“It didn’t work out too well for him” in the end, however, according to Trump, a conclusion that clearly demands intellectual rigor beyond the everyday man or woman.)
If Biden had said any of this, Fox News would have launched a live countdown to impeachment. But it’s unlikely we’ll see these gaffes dominate the news cycle — even though President Donald J. Trump, supposedly the sparkiest 79-year-old who ever damn lived, began to visibly struggle to stay awake while seated behind the microphone.
There’s something to be said here about gerontocracy, and the fact that the last election felt like watching two bald grandpas fighting over a comb, and the awfulness of having people on both sides of the aisle (the late Dianne Feinstein and the clearly struggling Mitch McConnell as two examples) hold on to power rather than relinquish it to people who have the mental and physical capacity to wield it.
There’s something to be said about Republicans sticking together, even in the face of clear dereliction of duty, and Democrats routinely turning on their own. There’s even, perhaps, something to be said about how one can sleepwalk (quite literally) into stupid-sounding lies if one is accustomed to just saying whatever one wants all the time, until eventually it becomes clear that the emperor has no clothes.
Trump is vulnerable at this moment, writing as he has on Truth Social that he’s disappointed in his “boys” and “gals” for not letting themselves be gaslit into believing there was no Epstein list after all. Elon Musk is calling for a new party, as Laura Loomer and Tucker Carlson are being periodically, and loudly, more disloyal. Vice President J.D. Vance isn’t exactly coming to a resounding defense of his running mate each time controversy rears its head, either.
So it really might’ve been a good idea for Trump to bring his A-game to events right now. Instead, he showed, in a few short remarks, that he has very little knowledge of the reality of the American economy; is incapable of remembering where his own representatives are, to the point that he’ll invite one onstage who is literal states away; doesn’t appear to have heard of his aide; and cannot stay awake during an early afternoon public appearance.
It’s hard to sell “disruptor” and “firebrand” when you’re falling asleep at the table and muttering people’s names semi-coherently.
But of course, as we know, all of this will simply be absorbed into the MAGA mythos: just another quirk of the ever-evolving, benevolent Trumpian character. The Republicans will carry him, even if they saw ten times less from Biden and called it reprehensible. And they won’t do it because they truly think he’s sharp. They’ll do it because, in the end, they no longer think that matters.
