Donald Trump drifted in and out of coherency during an awkward, weaving speech Thursday at the Detroit Economics Club, where he ranted about tariffs and railed against government mandates on electric vehicles.
During a speech that stretched an hour and 55 minutes, Trump employed his typical “weave,” a catchall phrase the Republican nominee uses to explain scattered rambling so repetitive that it does occasionally reiterate the original point.
But while explaining his fears that Kamala Harris’s policies would cause domestic manufacturing to leave the United States, Trump seemingly got carried away by the tide of his own weave and swept out into a sea of complete nonsense.
“And, it’s so simple, I mean, you know. This isn’t like Elon with his rocket ships that land within 12 inches on the moon where they wanted to land,” Trump said. “Or, he gets the … engines back—that was the first I realized, I said, ‘Who the hell did that?’ I saw engines about three, four years ago. These things were coming—cylinders, no wings, no nothing—and they’re coming down very slowly, landing on a raft in the middle of the ocean someplace, with a circle, boom!”
“Reminded me of the Biden circles that he used to have, right?” Trump said, seemingly referring to President Joe Biden’s campaign events that took precautions for Covid-19, in an awkward non sequitur.
“He’d have eight circles, and he couldn’t fill ’em up. But then I heard he beat us with the popular vote. He couldn’t fill up the eight circles, I always loved those circles, they were so beautiful, so beautiful to look at,” Trump continued.
Trump claimed that Biden “used to have the press stand in those circles, cause they couldn’t get the people. And then I heard we lost, no we’re never gonna let that happen again.”
“But—” he continued. “We’ve been abused by other countries, we’ve been abused by our own politicians, really, more than other countries.”
Trump: These things were coming cylinders, no wings, no nothing, and they’re coming down very slowly, landing on a raft in the middle of the ocean someplace with a circle, reminded me of the Biden circles that he used to have.. then I heard we lost pic.twitter.com/5rtC7wJH00
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 10, 2024
Trump seemed to turn back to the subject at hand after being carried away by his gushing over billionaire technocrat Elon Musk and attacks against someone who is not running for president. As for his actual opponent, Trump quickly devolved into personal attacks that didn’t sound quite right either.
“I think she’s dumber than hell,” Trump sneered.
Trump then appeared to lose his train of thought as he complained about Democrats opposing the SAVE Act, a longshot Republican bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote in a presidential election—something that is already mandated by the federal government.
“Democrats don’t want voter ID, you know why because they want to cheat,” Trump said. “But they don’t wanna—I say, ohhh—they don’t wanna—when I first, I thought, I thought I was seeing things. I thought I was … like … I didn’t hear that when I first started this who—they’d say, ‘The Democrats will not approve voter ID.’ And it’s only gotten worse!”
Despite using a teleprompter, Trump often went off-script, and repeatedly seemed to get caught up in what he was saying. As the Republican nominee careened between subjects, he seemed to recall that he had talking points, but couldn’t quite nail down what they actually were.
“The word grocery—it’s a sort of simple word. It sort of means everything you eat. The stomach is speaking, it always does,” Trump said. “And I have more complaints about bacon, things going up. Double, triple, quadruple.”
Trump repeatedly got caught up over his choice of words. At another point, Trump continued to seem exceedingly insecure about his own incendiary rhetoric, as he attempted to deliver his fire-and-brimstone fearmongering about immigration.
“We allowed them to come in and raid and rape our country,” Trump said. “That’s what they did. ‘Oh, he used the word rape!’ That’s right, I used the word rape. They raped our country.”
Scattered in the drivel was plenty of misinformation. Trump falsely claimed that Harris hoped to “ban” gas-powered vehicles, even though her campaign has been a little less than clear on whether she plans to support Biden’s electric vehicle mandate (which is also not a ban by any means).
Trump did say one thing that rang true, though: “Our biggest threat to democracy is stupid people.”
