Former President Donald Trump insisted he’s not “cognitively impaired” during a wandering, stream-of-consciousness spiel at a rally in Arizona on Sunday that if anything, raised further questions about his mental acuity.
The Republican nominee started out his rambling thought by criticizing the “fake news” media at the Prescott Valley event, observing, “that’s a lot of cameras.”
“Who the hell can do this two three times a day?” he continued, pivoting abruptly to talk, apparently, about the number of public appearances he makes. “One little mistake if I pronounce a word slightly wrong, and I tend not to go back, because I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to say, ‘Uh, Excuse me, let me go.’”
“So I speak for hours, mostly without a teleprompter, really, mostly. One mispronunciation of a word — ‘He’s cognitively impaired. He’s getting old, he’s getting old. He mispronounced a word like the name of the gang.’ If I did, I think I got it perfectly, didn’t I?” he went on.
“But if they see any, they watch for weeks and weeks, for weeks and weeks. I’m up here, ranting and raving. Last night, 100,000 people. Flawless. Ranting and raving. I’m ranting and raving. Not a mistake.”
Trump held a campaign rally in Coachella, California, on Saturday, which almost certainly did not have 100,000 attendees. While the exact figure is unclear, the a permit issued for the event reportedly capped it at 15,000.
“And then I’ll be at a little thing, and I’ll say something a little bit like, ‘the,’ I’ll say ‘duh,’ they’ll say he’s cognitively impaired,” Trump went on. “No, I’ll let you know when I will be. I will be someday. We all will be someday, but I’ll be the first to let you know.”
He added that President Joe Biden was “obviously cognitively repaired,” apparently mixing up “repaired” with “impaired.”
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“She should have reported him, because that puts our nation in danger. We’ve never been so close to being in World War III,” he added, not explaining who the “she” he was referring to is.
The former president’s erratic, hard-to-follow ramblings have prompted increased alarm from critics in recent days.
During a three-hour address in Detroit on Thursday, Trump trashed the very city he was speaking in and jumped bizarrely from tangent to tangent.
When he was running against Biden, he made the president’s mental acuity one of his key lines of attack, repeatedly challenging him to take a cognitive test. Trump, now the oldest presidential nominee in history, has since faced similar questions about his own cognitive capacity.