Fox News Quickly Cuts Sound As Donald Trump Slurs Speech At 1st Rally Since Impeachment Trial Began
Donald Trump held his first campaign rally since the Senate opened its impeachment trial against him, speaking at Wildwood Convention Center in Wildwood, New Jersey, on Tuesday night. But as has happened on several previous occasions, the president was apparently slurring and stumbling over commonly used words during his speech.
During the rally, immediately after he somehow tripped over the word “criminal,” the Fox News broadcast that was carrying Trump’s speech quickly lowered the sound, as an in-studio anchor talked over the president.
But even before the anchor began speaking over the lowered sound, an unidentified person in the Fox News studio was heard audibly laughing as Trump failed to get out the word, as seen in the below video — provided via Twitter by Vox reporter Aaron Rupar. Rupar said on Twitter that he was unable to identify the source of the laughter.
“Democrats decided to shield and shelter crimnik — look,” Trump is seen saying in the video.
“Criminal” was not the only commonly used word that seemingly gave the president trouble on Tuesday evening in New Jersey. At an earlier moment in the speech, he also tried but failed to enunciate the word “witch,” according to another video clip posted by Rupar.
Fox News cut away from Trump's rally immediately after his brain short-circuited pic.twitter.com/0jgKzVLb9E
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 29, 2020
At a Florida rally in November, Trump also looked like he fumbled a frequently used phrase, attempting to say the words “stock market” but saying something that sounded like “sock rocket” instead.
Trump's brain misfires when he tries to say the word "witch" pic.twitter.com/RJ6K4bC4f2
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 29, 2020
The president’s speech-slurring incidents date back more than two years, leading medical journalist James Hamblin — writing for The Atlantic in January 2018 — to wonder, “Is something neurologically wrong with Donald Trump?”
In his Atlantic article, he detailed the president’s history not only of slurring during his public speeches but of “minor abnormalities in his movements.”
Hamblin described two incidents in which Trump paused to drink water during a televised speech. But in both instances, he appeared awkward. In one of the occurrences, the president “grabbed a glass with both hands,” maintaining the two-handed grip as he took a drink of water from the glass.
Trump was compared by some viewers “to a child just learning to handle a cup,” the medical journalist noted.
In a book released last year by an anonymous White House insider, the author described how Trump regularly “stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information.”
In the book A Warning, the anonymous author claims that “normal people” who spend time with Trump are made “uncomfortable by what they witness,” according to an account of the book’s contents published by The Independent.
