Four of Trump’s Most Meandering Remarks This Week
"The former president says that his style is to “weave” from one subject to the next. Others see something more worrisome in his ramblings.
One of the truisms of Trump World is that being viewed as boring is a sin more deadly than being wrong.
On the campaign trail, former President Donald J. Trump often takes that to mean he must go off-script and veer off message. His critics say such detours are a troubling sign of his incoherence and raise questions about his age and cognitive health. Many of his supporters and allies see his circular way of speaking, which he calls “the weave,” as entertaining and not alarming. The partisan debate over the implications of Mr. Trump’s meandering speech has only intensified in the final stage of the race.
Here are four examples of Mr. Trump’s rambling from just this past week.
Schoolchildren asked him about boyhood heroes. He ended up at the border wall.
It was a softball question, from a 10-year-old. Mr. Trump’s response was more of a knuckleball.
A group of children asked Mr. Trump questions on Friday on “Fox & Friends.” Asked to name his favorite president when he was a child, Mr. Trump at first cited one who was elected when he was 34 (Ronald Reagan). Then he ventured onto surprising terrain, including every child’s favorite subject, the revised NAFTA trade deal known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
DANIEL: President Trump, I’m Daniel. And I’m 10. And I’m from Tennessee. What was your favorite president when you were little?
DONALD TRUMP: So I liked Ronald Reagan. I thought he was, um, look — I did not love his trade policy. I’m a very good trade — I have made some great trade deals for us — the U.S.M.C.A. That wasn’t his strength, but he had a great dignity about him, Ronald Reagan. You could say, “There’s our president,” more than any of the others. Really, any of the others. Uh, great presidents — well, Lincoln was probably a great president. Although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled? You know? I’m a guy that — it doesn’t make sense we had a civil war.
BRIAN KILMEADE, “Fox & Friends” co-host: Well, half the country left before he got there.
TRUMP: Yeah, yeah. But you’d almost say, like, why wasn’t that — as an example, Ukraine would have never happened and Russia if I were president. Israel would have never happened. Oct. 7 would have never happened. As you know, Iran was broke, they wanted to make a deal. I told, “Anybody buys any oil from Iran, it’s, you’re, you’re finished, you know, you can’t deal with the United States.” Nobody was buying oil from Iran. They came, they wanted to make a deal — now they have $300 billion in cash. Biden has been — and her, she’s, I don’t know if she was involved in it, but she’s, she’s terrible. Hey, look, remember this, she was the border czar, she never went there.
She was border czar and the Border Patrol, the one thing you have to remember, the Border Patrol gave strongest endorsement that anybody has ever seen: He’s the best there is, there has never been — he’s the greatest president, the greatest at the border, and she’s terrible. That was their policy. And these guys are great, by the way. These are great — you know them well from the show. We got the best endorsement and that really says it all. And I think the border is the bigger thing than inflation and the economy.
You know, I watch your polling where it says the economy and inflation are No. 1, 2. And then it says — always says, like, the three — I think the border is bigger. I got elected in 2016 on the border. I did a great job. I couldn’t even mention it after that because nobody cared because I did — it was fixed. We had a great border. Then they blew it, and I have to do it again. The difference is, it’s much worse this time. Because they are allowing millions of people into the country that shouldn’t be here.
LAWRENCE JONES, “Fox & Friends” co-host: Mr. President, we’ve got a fun one —
TRUMP: But we’ll fix it.
JONES: We’ve got a 6-year-old from Massachusetts and he wants to know about your favorite animal.
Asked about inflation, he roamed to his annoyance with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s college experience.
On Tuesday, John Micklethwait, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News, asked Mr. Trump about the dollar and whether his policies would drive up inflation. Mr. Trump produced a verbal novel, the first chapter of which touched more on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s undergraduate studies than on macroeconomics.
TRUMP: Yeah, I had four years no inflation. I had four years no inflation. I had four years. It’s better than that. And Biden, who has no idea where the hell he is, OK? Biden went two years with no inflation because he inherited from me. And then they started spending money like drunken sailors. They spent so much money. It was so ridiculous, the money they were spending. They were spending on the Green New Scam, a Green New Scam, the Green New Deal. You know, it was conceived of by A.O.C., plus three. She never even studied the environment in college. She went to a nice college. She came out. She just said — the Green New Scam. She just named all these things.
Asked about climate change, he drifted to his golf course and then to World War III.
At a Univision town hall on Wednesday, a voter asked Mr. Trump whether, given the mounting evidence of climate change, he still believed it was a hoax. He started to boast about his administration’s climate record, but then he took a few detours, including to his Doral golf club outside Miami.
TRUMP: We went into rural parts of the country and fixed people’s water. They were drinking such terrible water. We were — it was very important to me. All of that’s important. At the same time, you can’t give up your country. You can’t say that we’re not going to have any jobs anymore. If they said — if they took their ultimate, which is $93 trillion, the Green New Deal, $93 trillion, that’s more money than we would have in 20 years. We wouldn’t be able to survive. We wouldn’t be able to live.
So I always feel that with the climate, and I have been a great — I have been an environmentalist. I built many things. I own Doral right next door, and we did that in a very environment. I get awards, environmental awards for the way I built it, for the water, the way I use the water, the sand, the mixing of the sand and the water. I mean, many different — but I’ve had many awards over the years for environmental, the way I’ve built. Because you know about building, that’s what you do. It’s very important to me. At the same time, we can’t destroy our country and we’re competing against countries that don’t spend anything on climate change, like China and others. And they’re able to make their product for tremendously less than us and we’re not going to let that happen either. We have to have a strong — a strong country and we have to have a nice climate. And there’s nobody better at that, I think, at that combination than me.
I will say this, though, I hear a lot about climate and they talk about global warming, et cetera, et cetera, because they now — they used to call it global warming, now they call it climate change because that covers everything but global warming. The real global warming that we have to worry about is nuclear. The water’s coming up an eighth of an inch, over 300 years, the ocean is going to rise. And, you know, nobody knows if that’s true or not, but they’re worried about the ocean rising an eighth of an inch or a quarter of an inch in 300 years.
What I’m worried about is nuclear weapons tomorrow because the power of nuclear weapons, and we’re going to end up with this administration, if she gets in, we will end up in a Third World War. She’s grossly incompetent. And if she gets in, Kamala, if she gets in, we’re going to end up in a Third World War. And with me, you’ll never end up in even a war. So we have to be very careful. Thank you very much.
He started discussing tax breaks for car loans. He found his way to a nerve-racking rocket landing.
At a rally in Detroit on Friday, Mr. Trump began talking about his plans to make car-loan interest fully tax-deductible but ended up in a long digression about Elon Musk.
TRUMP: I will make interest on car loans fully tax-deductible and we will — they will — so listen to that. What will that do for the cars? Fully tax-deductible interest on a car. You buy a car, you get a deduction. Wall Street called me up. They said, how the hell did you think of that idea? That’s a good one, because affording your car is essential to restoring the American dream, and you can have the American dream finally, you haven’t had it in 50 years.
Working with Elon Musk — is he good or what? I saw that rocket come down three, four days ago, that sucker was coming down. I said, oh my, no, this, like, I never saw anything like it. I was on the phone with a friend. I’m talking about something. I don’t know, something maybe having to do with Detroit. Could that be possible? But I’m talking on the phone, and I see the screen is on and no sound. And I’m saying, wait a minute. I have to put the phone down. I don’t believe what I’m seeing.
And I saw that big monster coming down, that big — it was like a 20-story building or something, coming down, the engine, blowing and they’re firing and spitting, and it’s, I said, it’s going to crash. It’s going to crash into the gantry. Don’t crash! And then you see another engine take it perfectly, and lands right in the spot that it took off. I said, That must be Elon. He’s the only — nobody else. It must be Elon.
So I called up Elon. I said, Elon, was that you? He goes, That was me. I say, Who else can do it? Nobody. I said, Can Russia do it? No. Can the U.S. do it, meaning the U.S. outside of you? He said, No, nobody can do that. I said, You’re the coolest. That’s pretty — and he endorsed me, long time ago, actually, saying it’s the most important election we’ve ever had.
But working with Elon Musk, we will cut trillions of dollars in government waste. He’s very good at that. He knows better than anybody.
Michael Gold contributed reporting.
Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections. More about Michael C. Bender"
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