The handlers of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump keep trying to get him under control. He is currently in the process of participating in a town hall style conversation with veterans in Virginia. The room is filled with generals and admirals and Congresspeople.
Theoretically, the candidate is supposed to be addressing national security.
The conversation was preceded by a speech to the group. As he began to speak, the most notable observation was his, dare we say it, low energy. Mr. Trump spoke slowly and carefully, using short, structured comments.
At first he appeared to use a script, saying that the nation is at risk from ongoing cyberattacks. He mentioned the risk of foreign countries accessing our information.
He quickly reverted to Trump style, however, and went quickly to the topic of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Naturally he began to talk about her use of a private server for her emails.
That’s when the rambling really kicked into gear. Trump talked about Secretary Clinton’s investigation by the FBI. He referenced recent hacks into JC Morgan Chase, EBay, and Target, seeming to imply that Clinton was somehow responsible for those hacks.
Next Trump’s pace picked up as his language broke down. He talked again about the email question and said that some of the missing documents had been “acid washed.” He went on:
“It’s interesting that during her FBI review, which took place on a massive holiday and which wasn’t recorded, and lots of other things, that she went 39 times, she doesn’t remember, she doesn’t remember, she doesn’t remember anything. She remembered practically nothing. But when she has to remember something, she remembers, it’s a very sad situation, I will tell you.”
Trump went back to the topic of cybersecurity, but then took a sudden turn and spoke about how the military has been “depleted” under the current administration. As so often happens, he jumped from topic to topic with no clarity.
After talking about cuts to military spending, Trump inexplicably said this:
“We should not let this be like the history of the Mafia, which was allowed to grow into a nationwide organization, which infiltrated and corrupted so many areas of society for such a long period of time.”
It is unclear to this writer, even after watching the video several times, how Mr. Trump managed to get from Clinton’s server to the Mafia. This certainly looks like further evidence of his language and attentional disorders.
He also announced his plans for “crippling cyberattacks” on our enemies. He said the world must know that the U.S. has plans to launch these attacks. He repeated that our enemies must know what we are planning. In another little spurt of word salad, he said this:
“We must turn cyber warfare into one of our greatest weapons against the terrorists and they have to know it’s coming, cuz right now they know nothing about us. It just seems like they have an open blanket, it’s like an open mark. Do whatever you wanna do, nothing’s gonna happen.”
Although he never did clarify what an “open blanket” or an “open mark” might be, Trump did go on to completely contradict himself later.
In a question and answer session with vets, Trump talked about how wrong it is that the Obama administration keeps publicizing its plans for fighting terrorism. He insisted that he would keep all of his plans secret, only a few minutes after declaring that the world has to know about our plans for cyber counter attacks.
Ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump makes absolutely no sense. He is a rambling, distracted, incoherent buffoon. He must be kept away from the White House.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Drn6YjPdKvE
Featured image via YouTube screengrab.
