On Karoline Leavitt’s final day as White House press secretary on Aug. 27, her last words were advice to her yet-to-be-named successor: “It’s most important in this job to understand that President Trump is his own best spokesperson.” She said it is an inside “joke … that he is the true communications director and press secretary here at the White House.” Forty-seven days later, when Katie Zacharia took the job oh-so-briefly, among her first words were: “My goal is to be able to communicate … in complete tandem with the president, as he is his own best spokesperson.”
Zacharia’s abrupt firing only five days after moving into her White House office confirmed that reality. Her departure leaves Trump as the unchallenged voice of the White House as voters start casting their ballots in a midterm election with enormous consequences for his presidency.
It falls on him to give the closing message.
So, what is that message? Unfortunately for his party’s hopes, it is increasingly difficult to find one that speaks to voters’ concerns.
He has gushingly admired Sen. Jon Husted’s posterior, downplayed high gas prices, and attacked Democrats as “communist lunatics.”
But there is so much else tucked into the 22 hours and 18 minutes of speeches he has delivered at the 15 rallies he has held in 14 states over the first 20 days of October. One of the oddest topics is his fascination with the tests he has taken to assess his cognitive abilities. Many seniors take such tests, but few boast about having done so. Trump is one 80-year-old who can’t stop talking about the experience.
At three of his rallies in the past week, the president veered off on lengthy tangents about how he had “aced” the tests. He repeatedly—and erroneously—contended they measure IQ instead of screening for signs of dementia.
In Arizona on Oct. 14, he went on for nine full minutes. There, he was triggered by talking about Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, whom he called “stupid” and “low-IQ.” What followed was a 1,300-word stream-of-consciousness rant about the tests, a jeremiad that can best be understood in its entirety. Here is just a sampling of what he said:
"I took the aptitude test or whatever the hell they call it. I took it. When I do—every time I do a physical, I take a mental test, and I've aced it. Where's my doctor? Is he around? I travel with more doctors than any human being. If people get sick in the audience, they don't—they leave them alone.
"You know what they call them? Collateral damage. If that person right over there, a friend of mine—he looks like sh*t, actually. He looks—he looks like he's ready to have a heart attack. If he actually had a heart attack, you know what my doctors would do that follow the president, all presidents?
"They would leave him alone. I'd say, 'Please help him.' 'No, sir, we can't leave your side.' I said, ‘But he's dying of a heart attack.’ ‘Sir, he's collateral damage.’
"Can you believe it? They've got, like, six ambulances and they won't use one for anybody else. Anyway—but let's hope we never have that problem. But Katie Hobbs is somebody that could not pass the test. ...
"They give you five words, and you don't know what they're doing. They say, ‘Sir, we're going to give you five words. We would like you to repeat those words, preferably in order.’ And what they don't say is, at the end of the test a half hour later they do it again. So you don't know that. ‘Five words, sir: hat, hair, logo, white, black. Sir, would you please repeat those words?’ ...
"Go 'hat, hair, logo, white, black,’ and they go, ‘Holy sh*t. Nobody—no, nobody can do that.’ When I told the fake news about that—‘Oh, that's so easy.’ Nobody can do that. Very few people can do that. And very few—they say very few people can do it, but almost none can do them in order like that, but I can. You know why? Because I'm a freaking genius, that's why."
That was only the most striking example of the president's flights of rhetorical fancy. At his rally in San Antonio, he went off on an 11-minute tangent on baseball, veering from what it’s like to golf with retired pitcher Roger Clemens to the injustice of Clemens not being in the Hall of Fame. He announced he is giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Clemens, then digressed to the subject of why he thinks Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame: “He maybe gambled. … But he always betted on his own team. So I'm not saying right or wrong, but you're betting on your own—now, if he bets on the other team, that's not a good thing. But he bet on his own team. He's a highly competitive guy.”
At his rally in Kansas, he cast himself as an unappreciated victim: “I say to myself sadly as I sit in the most magnificent office in the world, the most powerful, 3,000 feet, 3,000 square feet, most powerful by hundreds and hundreds of times, I'd say, 'Nobody appreciates how great a president I am.' I say it.”
In Arizona, he went into great detail about why he had solicited a free replacement Air Force One from Qatar and why he changed the color scheme of the plane.
And on it went. His MAGA audience wasn’t always sure how to react through these stream-of-consciousness journeys. Mostly, they laughed. To them, he may always be a “freaking genius.” The rest of the voting public isn't so sure.
