These days, every Trump rally is a striking reminder of how confused the former president has gotten.
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When historians look back on this presidential race, age and senility will be major themes. First, President Joe Biden was done in by his advancing age and a dismal debate performance that put it on full display.
Then, when he announced that he would not seek reelection, the spotlight shifted to Donald Trump, who has also shown signs of a rapid physical and mental decline.
The former president proved once again how confused he has become at a rally in North Carolina on Sunday.
First, he had no idea where he was.
That became evident when he told the crowd that he just “left another great place in North Carolina” even though he had arrived from Pennsylvania minutes earlier.
Of course, that could just be a case of misspeaking. However, Trump also praised Senate candidate David McCormick.
“You have one of the best of all right here. David McCormick,” the former president said. “Where is David? Is he around someplace?”
As it turns out, David was not around.
That’s because he is the GOP’s Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, not North Carolina.
Throughout his speech, the former president also slurred or mispronounced words and, at one point, forgot the term “goal line” when fumbling his way through a football analogy.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Trump made it obvious that he was unable to recall major events that happened a mere four years ago.
“Just this week, we had the worst jobs report in modern history,” he said, noting that only 12,000 jobs were created in October. “This is the worst job… and jobs report that I have ever seen.”
Well, if that’s the case, then his senility has advanced to an alarming level.
That’s because the worst jobs report anybody had ever seen was released when he was in office.
In March of 2020, the US economy shed 1.4 million jobs, a figure that was unheard of at the time.
Of course, that jobs report only remained the worst one in modern history precisely for one month because in April of that year, the US economy lost more than 20 million jobs. That’s the kind of thing that only the most demented people would forget.
Now, you might say that this was the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that’s fair. However, it still happened, and a president has to be able to weather highs and lows.
In addition, after the economy recovered millions of these jobs later in 2020, Trump’s penultimate jobs report once again featured a reduction in payrolls of 243,000.
So much for “worst ever.”
In fact, the current administration is the only one in modern history that never had a month with negative job growth.
Trump also seemed to be confused about the schedule on which these reports are released (it happens on the first Friday of every month).
“They thought it was going to come out after the election,” he told his supporters in North Carolina.
That’s not the only thing he made up.
The former president also insisted that a “whistleblower” had leaked information showing that the number of jobs created in 2023 and early 2024 had to be revised downwards by 818,000 when new data became available.
In reality, it was a routine revision that occurs all the time, and it was announced by the Biden administration itself.
Finally, in an effort to diminish the record job creation under Biden, Trump suggested that a growth of 250,000 jobs per month was “almost automatic.”
So, how many times did his own administration reach that threshold in his first three years in office? A mere seven times.
All of these facts seem to have slipped Trump’s mind.
Of course, there is another explanation.
Maybe he was just lying… because he does a lot of that as well.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
