Down in Tulsa on Saturday, Trump spent 1,798 words (14 minutes, 15 seconds) of his rambling, nearly incoherent spew discussing his halting walk down a ramp when he was at West Point, New York the week before. Trump addressmemorializing the Battle of West Point is actually 1,526 words longer than Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
It doesn't take a professional psychologist -- or a mind-reader -- to understand what's going on here: The President, ever concerned with looking weak or not entirely in control, is fixated on the ramp incident and doing absolutely everything he can to reshape the narrative to making himself look better in the eyes of the public.
There is a 0% chance that ANY speechwriter put this riff into Trump's prepared remarks for the Tulsa address. Or that anyone in Trump's orbit thought to themselves: You know what would be a good idea? Dedicate a massive chunk of this speech to re-litigating an episode that raised questions about the President's health and capacity!
But because Trump does whatever he wants -- and because so many of his actions are dictated by his own ego rather than any sort of consistent political strategy or message -- you get things like what happened on Saturday night: A man so desperate to avoid being cast as weak or frail that he spends an inordinate amount of time re-telling a story that makes him look bad to a crowd that is, at best, marginally interested.
Maybe it's stuff like this video that result in Trump having to massage his own ego for over 14 minutes at a campaign rally. That and the fact that he has nothing else to say to the American people.
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