A Sad, Deranged, Elderly Man Running For President Yet Again Utters Incomprehensible Nonsense

Donald Trump's pathetic speech at the Economic Club of New York proves yet again the man is mentally unfit to be President. Will our institutions and corporate press catch up?

(Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

If I were a headline writer at a prestigious newspaper or cable news outlet, I’d choose the title of this essay to accurately describe Donald Trump’s latest, embarrassing vomit salad of lies, exaggerations, and idiotic utterances that make us more collectively stupid as a nation.

To be fair, every single speech, interview or panel discussion with Donald Trump can serve as evidence of his moral and mental unfitness to hold any leadership role let alone sit in the Oval Office as the most powerful man on Earth. You wouldn’t trust this man to walk your dog around the block, hold your Amazon package without opening it, or not say something racist in polite company. 

Yet, here we are.

The oldest man to ever run for President, who is also a convicted criminal and a twice-impeached vulgarian, is still within the margin of error according to the latest polls of becoming President again. Earlier today, Judge Tanya Chutkan allowed federal prosecutors to release never-before-seen evidence ahead of the presidential election in the criminal case around Trump’s incitement of the January 6th violent insurrection. His base won’t care. Recently, Trump had an unhinged interview with professional right-wing hack and propagandist Mark Levin in which he openly admitted to interfering in the 2020 election. Again, his base won’t care.

Apparently, the corporate press also doesn’t seem to care too much either.

After all, President Biden is no longer running for re-election so we don’t have wall-to-wall coverage about a President’s health, age, and mental fitness. Maybe if Trump lives to 81 and runs for President then we’ll see the same type of scrutiny and analysis, but I doubt it. Over at The New Republic, Greg Sargent beautifully exposed the media’s hypocrisy in an article where he rewrote 10 Biden headlines around Trump’s mental unfitness. If indeed we were committed to “both sides” fair reporting, one would assume journalists would have run with these headlines but unfortunately they only exist as a thought experiment for a columnist.

Back in reality, Trump continued his reign of stupid at the Economic Club of New York. This rambling, incoherent mess of a speech is definitive proof that this man should never get near public office. It’s also proof that our corporate institutions, especially the media, has been utterly complicit in what Parker Molloy has astutely called “sanewashing.”

She describes it as “a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from - and potentially future - president.” As proof of Molloy’s allegation, I humbly submit to you the worst headline of the year courtesy of Politico reframing Trump’s racist attack on Kamala Harris’s identity as a criticism of Kamala Harris for failing to be forthright. 

Trump’s New York speech gave us more evidence of media complicity. A day after yet another deadly mass shooting in Georgia, Trump said, “They had AK-47s. The ultimate guns. AK-47s. They can blow lots of people away real fast." Imagine if anyone from the Biden-Harris Administration said this after a school shooting - how would our institutions respond? 

When it came to the economy - the number one issue for voters - Trump said, “Four straight years. I took care of our economy like I would take care of my own company.” Well, this was rich coming from a failed businessman who was held liable for fraud and owes New York more than $400 million dollars. In reality, he had the worst job loss record of any President in modern history.

Will the press fact check and expound on this absurd claim that could better inform and sway voters?

We keep hearing about how the overwhelmingly peaceful anti- Gaza war protests are allegedly filled with violent radicals and anti-semites. Well, Trump said, “Hold my Tucker Carlson.” In today’s speech, Trump doubled-down on anti-semitic dual loyalty tropes and again said that American Jews who don’t support him are crazy and disloyal. That’s more than 70% of American Jews.

But the coup de grace was his response to a question of what specific legislation he would support to make child care more affordable. 

Trump: Well, I would do that and we're sitting down, you know, I was, somebody, we had Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka… But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about that because the child care is, child care couldn't, you know, there's something you have to have it in this country, you have to have it... I want to stay with child care… So we'll take care of it. Thank you.”

When President Biden short-circuited a few times during the now infamous debate it garnered a firestorm of criticism and coverage that eventually led to him deciding not to run again.

This is the headline NYT chose to publish for Donald Trump:

Not to be outdone, this is what the AP posted on Twitter:

“Sanewashing,” both sides framing, and performative neutrality is utter complicity in normalizing and elevating “a damaged, delusional, old man,” according to journalist Mike Barnacle, who might become the President again.

Like I’ve written before, the corporate press is broken, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use our voices and platforms to call out the gaslighting and sanewashing happening right before our eyes.