Trump's Brain is Broken
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Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America. Good night and good luck. What do you call it when your candidate cancels events over and over and over again 18 days before a presidential election? What do you call it when they cancel the 60 Minutes interview? What do you call it when they cancel a CNBC interview?

What do you call it when they cancel a CNN interview? What do you call it when they cancel a debate with their opponent, the Vice President of the United States of America? What do you call it when you cancel a CNN town hall? What do you call it when you cancel an NBC interview? And what do you call it when you cancel an interview as the Republican nominee for president with the National Rifle Association? You know what you call it? You call it a secret. Something's wrong with Donald Trump.

Something's very badly broken about Donald Trump. His team knows it. He knows it. They're desperately trying to play this out for the next 18 days so that no one else finds out. But you know what? It's hard to miss the elephant in the room. We all know what's going on. Donald Trump is mentally and physically collapsing. His moral collapse happened years ago, so don't worry about that part. We saw him for over 30 minutes earlier this week staring into space at an event.

playing music, swaying back and forth. Totally out of it, not present, not mentally there. We are seeing it in every single interview. We saw it this week at the Chicago Economic Forum interview, a friendly place, by the way, should have been a friendly interview. And Donald Trump rambled and wandered

and scrambled his brains like a set of fresh eggs in the morning because nothing was coming out right. When he was asked about specific issues, he would answer with completely other topics. Not in a way to evade a question,

but because his mind does not work. You've got to be able to finish a thought because it's very important. You know, this is big stuff we're talking about. You can't go that quickly. So let me just tell you. So I said, no, I'm just telling you basic. It's called the weave. It's all these different things happening. Donald Trump's brain is broken. Now, this is the dirty little secret of this campaign.

Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance and Chuck Johnson and Steve Bannon and all the rest of these people around Trump and Elon. The second Trump, by some chance, is inaugurated, the clock starts running. They will replace him under the 25th Amendment because right now, no one, not even probably members of his own family,

could sit there and say with an honest, straight face that Donald Trump is mentally acute and aware and able to execute the duties of the President of the United States of America. He is not. What did you see last night? You saw Kamala Harris go on Fox News, Wednesday night, excuse me. You see Kamala Harris go on Fox News, get the biggest ratings the network has ever had for a candidate interview.

blow the doors off Brett Baier's dishonest bullshit. Brett, I'm sorry and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within that he has repeated

when he's speaking about the American people that's not what you just showed he was asked no that's not what you just showed in all fairness and respect to you. No, no, no, I'm telling you that was the question that we asked him. He didn't show that and here's the bottom line he has repeated it many times and you and I both know that and you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people he has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest

He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy and an inner democracy. The president of the United States in the United States of America should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he'd lock people up for doing it. And by the way, all of the MAGAs online losing their minds. She's a terrible, no, no, no, no, no pumpkin.

That was a train wreck for them. That was a disaster for Fox. She understood the game going in and blew the doors off. Amazing performance. She didn't have to hit a home run. She just had to be strong. She went in, she was extremely strong, and she kind of hit a home run. Again, Trump tweeting about this at 1.15 in the morning tells you all you need to know. Donald Trump does a town hall thing.

a Potemkin Village bullshit set up, prearranged town hall with Fox for women. And it was just a disaster. Should have been easy, another disaster. He can't answer questions. He can't focus on an issue. He can't keep his train of thought for longer than 15 seconds. He is metaphorically and perhaps literally crapping himself on stage. From commerce to labor...

This is why they're canceling these events. He's too tired. He's too sick. His brain is too broken and he can't keep doing this. He has lost a fundamental edge. You know, there's an old Fitzgerald phrase about bankruptcy. Ask somebody, how did he go bankrupt? Oh, well, slowly and then all at once. How did Donald Trump go mentally bankrupt? Slowly and then October.

He has, for the last two weeks, displayed an acute, immediate, severe mental decline. His family should frankly have him withdraw from the race and get him some immediate medical attention. This is elder abuse at this point, folks. It's ugly. It's sad. And I don't feel bad for Donald Trump for any reason, but you can't ignore the fact that

that for their own financial and political and personal gain, that family's pretending Donald Trump is okay and he is not okay. He's really, really not okay. And as with everything in the Trump universe, anytime they make an accusation, okay, any accusation you ever hear, corrupt, pedophile, criminal, thief, whatever they say, it's always projection 100% of the time.

So how do you know Trump is scared of this issue? Seven separate tweets this week or communications at these things where he said, oh, my cognitive is better than hers. She needs to take a cognitive test, not me. I have better cognitive skills. She's got cognitive trouble. Let me tell you something, folks. Even if you're a MAGA, even if you're a true Trump believer, you know in your heart,

That that is a line of bullshit so wide and stinky as to defy most zoning laws in every non-rural county in America. It's just garbage and you know it. He's the one who's slipping. He's projecting in a way that is just terrible. Donald Trump may not know who he is part of the time now. I really believe that. I really believe he has lost the ability to focus on anything outside of this greatest hits tape that plays in his head all the time.

He's making stuff up. He's engaging in weirdo conspiracy theories and wistful thinking. And all of it, I think, comes down to a fundamental mental disease or disorder. Of course, I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on TV either. But this guy's broken. And you know it. You know he's broken. You know he's fucked up. You know from the performances that this guy is a fundamentally ill person. And again, I don't have a lot of pity for Donald Trump.

But I don't want to see any elder person abused. I don't want to see any senior get abused like this. But yet they keep putting him on the road. Now, the senior staff is taking them off these campaign events. And they're telling him, oh, Donald, they had to cancel. But they're not. They are canceling these things because they're afraid of what he's going to say. They know every day that he says something, every day that he says something out there, he's hurting his campaign.

He's decreasing his chances of victory. He's breaking one more small parcel here, small parcel there of voters off of the Trump coalition. Because remember, what was the predicate of Trump in 16? Three big things. One was that he was so rich, he was uncorruptible and he could drain the Washington swamp. He would clean it all out. It'd all be better after Trump got there and imposed his two-fisted management on D.C.

The second was that he was aggressive and entertaining and was a strong alpha male.

And there's a cohort of the Republican Party, male and some female, that really like that. They like the whole swaggering act. They like the contradiction of a guy who wears more makeup than RuPaul, higher heels than most women, a girdle, and does his hair for more hours during the day than I spend eating food. And I eat food.

That was always an irony. They loved that sort of like macho character he played. That's gone now. He seems weak and frail and smaller. He seems like an old lost creature now. He doesn't seem like the guy that was dominating the stage in 2016. And you saw it with Harris during their debate where she just owned him. She's much smaller than he is, but she just owned him. Her physicality was much more confident and powerful.

And the number one thing they loved about Trump was he was the avatar of all their anger. And they blamed it on economic anxiety, which is, of course, English for racism and oppositional defiant disorder and hatred and a whole variety of bullshit grievances that they claim are the center of their lives and yet are really meaningless in almost every way.

He can't deliver any of that now. He can't deliver being the angel of their vengeance. He's out there threatening to put his political opponents in jail, but he won't be the president for very long. J.D. Vance will be the president. I'm no fan of J.D. Vance. It's hard to see him pulling off and having the power over so many of the Republican-based voters to insist that elected officials follow his lead on something like that, something that egregious.

He can't pull off the powerful stage figure, the big entertainer, the macho character. Can't do it anymore. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. It is so fundamentally disconnected from who you see now. And finally, you look at this guy's answers. You look at the way he's wandering all over the map. And there are voters now being able to project forward. Remember, one of the great

delusions of MAGA is, I don't like Trump very much, but I do like his policies. It's always been horseshit, of course. But it's harder now to see them, to see Trump executing what they want. You look at Trump today and you think Trump could pull off another deal like he did for his tax bill? No way. You look at Trump today and you think that Donald Trump's going to negotiate with anybody from another country? They're going to go in there and throw gummy bears on the table and they'll sit there licking it for an hour.

This guy is now easily overcome by inanimate objects. He's got the IQ of a toaster oven. So voters aren't able to see that idea that Trump's going to go in and lead or protect America or negotiate good deals or implement much of anything that would benefit them. And a lot of Republican voters, they are slipping from Trump because they feel that way.

He also is saying things that are outrageous and truly off the chain. Like this week, he claimed to be the father of IVF. Oh, I want to talk about IVF. You don't hear that every day. I'm the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question. I miss the part where Donald Trump was a scientific researcher or a gynecologist. He may want to be an amateur gynecologist, but that's a whole grotesque thing about Trump in general.

But as you go forward into the next couple of weeks, and the clock's running down, guys, 18 days, 18 days, and you're going to see a real tension inside the Trump campaign. Kellyanne Conway knew when they pulled Trump off the trail in 2016 that it helped him. When voters imagined who they thought Trump was and didn't get to see him every day, his numbers went up. I don't think that he can do that this time, even though his staff desperately wants him off the road.

They don't want him out talking. They don't want him out doing these shenanigans. But man, he is kind of, he's in a tight wedge right now. It is beautiful. I am thrilled by how painful this is going to be for the Trump team. The other reason, by the way, that this decline is so important, because it is a decline, folks. You can't deny it.

You cannot look inside your heart and say, oh yes, Donald Trump is more spry, smart, verbally acute, mentally present, intellectually ready for the job of president. He's just as good as Kamala Harris is without going back and recognizing what the trap that Trump finds himself in came from. Three years ago, shortly after the election, hang on a second, the spice must flow. Three years ago, shortly after the election, the Trump team,

started saying, Joe Biden's too old. Joe Biden's too old. Joe Biden's not all there. Joe Biden's elderly. Joe Biden forgets things. Joe Biden can't remember to stay on topic. Joe Biden's weak. Joe Biden is not the man he was. The reason this trap was set was brilliant. It was strategically the right thing for the Republicans to try to do. It put Biden in a terrible box where any stumble became a story.

to wit, the debate. But that trap, once Biden left the race, was still laying around out there in the tall grass. Donald Trump walked into it. He walked into it, he put his foot in it and his dick in it, and he rolled around in the trap, and now it sprung. You set a standard, Donald, you and your team. You said someone who was too old to do the things that you claimed were necessary could never be president again. Well, Joe Biden made a great sacrifice and left this race.

Kamala Harris is about 60 years old, a little younger, physically fit, mentally aware and acute, ready to lead, ready to govern, ready to connect with people and know what they're saying, ready to understand what's going on around her, ready to articulate policies that actually exist in the real world, as opposed to your glossolalia of bizarro world economic ideas, your canticles of bullshit, all of it.

She's the exact opposite. She's much more competent, much more capable. It's why she gets better ratings than you do on Fox, Donald. Because even they have to acknowledge it. Even they want the star power. And so that trap that's holding him down so terribly right now is what he built for himself. Couldn't happen to a less deserving person. You're going to see more of the decline in the next 18 days. It is going to be painful to watch.

You're going to see her pressing him harder and harder to engage with her. It's going to be painful to watch. You're going to see him lie and wheel around every idea in the sun and try to throw everything at the wall. He's aware enough that the trouble he's in, that he feels he has to. He's right. He does have to. But it's not going to go easy. It's not going to go well. And that, folks, is going to end up with Donald Trump, I believe, losing this election.

Now, with that, I want to wrap up this episode of The Elephant in the Room and ask you very kindly to do a couple of things for me here at the very end of the campaign season. The Lincoln Project is still trying to fund and round out our final investments in Pennsylvania. You can go to lincolnproject.us slash donate if you want to help with that campaign. You can see the ads there as well that we're running in Pennsylvania to persuade Republican voters right now. That would be amazing.

Secondly, we're going to be putting out a lot of information and a lot of content for you to keep your head clear, your eyes clear, your head up, and your mind engaged with what's really going on in the campaign over the next 18 days. You're going to probably see more of me than you want.

But if you would be so kind, I would love for you to go to our YouTube channel and subscribe to follow us on threads, follow us on the Elon Musk health site. We still fight it out there every day. Um, but, and YouTube especially, that's where a lot of this content is going to pop out. If you want to also follow my, my sub stack at the Rick Wilson dot sub stack.com. I write a lot of stuff there. That's not just Lincoln project, a little beyond that, but all of these things in the last, uh,

Two and a half weeks of this campaign are going to rely on us sticking together, being on message, being disciplined, being focused, being ready to fight every single day. I would be honored if you would do those things. And I will talk to you again next Friday, and we will visit another elephant in the room. The Lincoln Project Podcast is a Lincoln Project production. Executive produced by Whitney Hayes, Finn Howe, and Joseph Werner-Chamberlain. Produced and edited by Whitney Hayes and Jeff Taylor. And good luck.