Audience laughs at Donald Trump as he tries to explain why he can’t speak coherently anymore

Donald Trump speaks to his supporters during his campaign event in Coachella, Calif., Oct. 12, 2024. Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun / USA TODAY NETWORK / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has shown an inability to answer direct questions over the course of his 2024 campaign, often jumping from one subject to another – and to another and another and another – without finishing a complete sentence on any of them.

When he was called out for this rambling during his appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago yesterday, he explained that it’s a move he calls “The Weave,” and the audience started laughing at him.

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Donald Trump hasn’t faced much criticism for his inability to talk coherently this year, with many larger media organizations often paraphrasing his rants to make it appear like he had a point in a process that has been called “sanewashing.” But live audiences are noticing it.

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He sat down yesterday with Bloomberg News‘ Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait to discuss topics like immigration, tariffs, and corporate policy. Micklethwait repeatedly tried to get Donald Trump to directly answer his questions instead of rambling about the random thoughts in his head, pressing him again and again to bring him back to the topic at hand.

In one notable interaction, Micklethwait tried to ask Donald Trump about the U.S. dollar’s status as the international reserve currency, and Donald Trump started rambling. Micklethwait interrupted him and tried to get him to talk about the dollar.

“You gotta be able to finish a thought because it’s very important,” Donald Trump said. “You know, this is big stuff we’re talking about, you can’t go that quick-“

“You’ve gone from the dollar to [French President Emmanuel] Macron,” Micklethwait responded, exasperated.

“So let me just tell ya, I said, no, I’m just tellin’ ya basic, uh…. It’s called ‘The Weave,’” Donald Trump said. “It’s all these different things happening.”

People in the audience could be heard laughing at him.

“So let me just say, I said to Mnuchin…” he said as he continued to ramble.

Last month, Trump’s out lesbian niece, Mary Trump, wrote about her uncle’s incoherent rants and how some media organizations try to hide them from their audiences after Donald Trump appeared at the Economic Club of New York and rambled about his daughter, tariffs, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) when asked about how he would make childcare affordable in a clip that went viral.

Mary Trump wrote that the corporate media “believe they must translate Donald’s nonsensical ramblings into a version of the English language we can all understand.”

She noted that, while reporting on the event, the Associated Press wrote that Donald Trump had “suggest[ed] tariffs can help solve rising child care costs”; Politico wrote that he had “laid out a sweeping economic vision of lower taxes, higher tariffs, and light-touch regulation”; and The New York Times wrote that Donald Trump had “praised tariffs.”

Several other publications made similar reports, transgender journalist Parker Molloy noted. She and journalist Aaron Rupar called this a “sane-washing” of Donald Trump’s comments.

Weighing in, Mary Trump wrote, “That’s a huge problem because, on the one hand, they’re not really translating his words — they’re imbuing them with a meaning that is not there; on the other hand, they’re doing this without telling us they’re doing it.”

“Surely a political press corps that spent months arguing that President Biden’s age rendered him mentally unfit, wouldn’t look the other way when the Republican candidate, the oldest person to run for president in American history, is not only old but decompensating before our very eyes,” she continued. “The difference of course is that Biden is aging while Donald is dementing.”

“Donald really does seem to have worn down the corporate media’s willingness to cover him properly. It’s too bad—they’re missing a story most people would be interested in,” she added. “American democracy depends upon a thriving fourth estate to function optimally. That’s not what we have right now. Not even close.”

LGBTQ Nation transcribes Donald Trump’s rants fully for readers when appropriate, like in this July article about an interview Donald Trump did with Fox’s Laura Ingraham that discussed gender issues. Ingraham asked Donald Trump about his claim that, if he gets elected, people won’t have to vote again in 2028 and even tried to lead him to a coherent answer, but she was unable to stop “The Weave.”

“I started off by saying, just so you understand, you never vote,” he said. “Christians do not vote. Well, they vote in very small percentages. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they’re disappointed in things that are happening, but for a long time, I say, you don’t vote. I’m saying, go out, you must vote, November 5th is gonna be the most important election in the history of our country. Whether you vote early or not, we should have, by the way, one-day voting, we should have voter ID, we should have proof of citizenship, and we should have paper ballots, OK? That’s what we should- but we don’t have that! But I said to the Christians in the room, thousands of them, I said, typically, Christians do not vote. Why it is, I don’t know, you’re rebellious, something’s going on, don’t worry about the future, vote or- You have to vote on November 5th. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore, I don’t care, because we’re going to fix- The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore because frankly, we will have such love if you don’t want to vote anymore that’s OK.”

“And I think everybody understood it.”

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