Donald Trump has become known, after what feels like a century on the political stage, for his weird antics. His rambling answers, strange rally behavior, and boundlessly circular logic have become defining attributes, and even then he commonly outdoes himself.
Take the presidential candidate’s Oct. 14 town hall, which quickly spiraled into cartoonish nonsense. The former president spent the first half of his Colonizer Day (aka Columbus Day) appearance in classic style, ranting and raving about our country going to hell without him at its helm, but things took a turn in the second half. After two separate attendees experienced medical issues during the Q&A portion of the evening, Trump just decided to ditch the format entirely.
Rather than answer pressing questions posed by voters less than one month ahead of the election, Trump decided he was done speaking. But, since his event still had a planned 30 minutes left, he didn’t depart the stage or announce to his supporters that the town hall was over — he just turned the whole shebang into the worst concert since the Red Hot Chili Peppers bungled their 1992 SNL appearance.
Rather than do anything a logical brain could think up, Trump went with the weirdest, most off-putting alternative to actually answering voter questions. He simply played himself out, over an excruciating 30 minutes, delivering a jilted, stiff, awkward dance from the stage, while watching his baffled followers slowly trickle out. A bulk of the event’s attendees were gone by the time the last song played, but a few stuck around to the very end, no doubt curious as to what the hell Trump was doing.
They didn’t get any answers, and neither did we, but the event did produce one of the strangest clips of election season so far. Various moments from the event’s conclusion, as Trump stood alongside a wild-eyed and squirming Kristi Noem, have since made their way to social media, where viewers have drawn their own conclusions about the presidential candidate’s mental state.
Several new phrases and hashtags quickly found their foothold on X, in the wake of damning clips, proclaiming that #TrumpIsNotWell, informing his followers that its #TimeToSayGoodbye to a man who truly appears to be grappling with dementia, and pondering the stark potential of a President JD Vance.
The baffling decision to pivot from an informative town hall to a cringe-inducing concert is certainly weird, which also makes it perfectly on-brand for Trump. He doesn’t have answers to voter questions anyway, so why not transform a planned event into something no one would ever pay to attend? The choice of music was disjointed and clashing — “YMCA” simply doesn’t belong on a playlist with “Nothing Compares 2 U” and “Hallelujah”— Trump’s “dancing” was as laughable as always, and even his own team — Noem included — looked confused and concerned as they worked to support the former president’s apparent episode.
Trump, for his part, genuinely seems to be losing a little bit more control over his faculties with each passing day. His appearances are getting stranger, his speeches are getting harder to understand — a massive feat unto itself — and his own supporters are starting to see through the brainrot to the meandering old man beneath. Trump’s team can try to conceal it all they want, but his diminishing mental state gets clearer by the day, and voters can’t help but notice.