Trump can talk nonsense in any language

I may as well admit it. I have been unfair to Donald Trump. He has a skill I didn’t know he had. He’s bilingual, fluent in a foreign language. He speaks Gibberish. I don’t know where Gibber is, and it doesn’t seem like a place I want to visit or whose national literature is one I need to read voraciously or even just peek at. But gibberish can tell us a lot about the speaker that we, and I mean all of us, need to consider before we vote.

Here’s what I read recently. The words below were taken verbatim from a campaign speech former President Donald Trump delivered in Potterville, Michigan, … when he was attempting, at least initially, to criticize Kamala Harris’s record in San Francisco. presumably referring to her tenure as district attorney there:

“She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s — and I own a big building there — it’s no — I shouldn’t talk about this but that’s OK I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world — sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson they say was the worst of all, that he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?’’

This is impossible to follow. Trump’s asides stack atop each other with such density it’s dizzying.

This is my favorite Trumpism of the past week: “Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it?” He really said that.

Language matters, as we choose a president. When President Biden goofed up a word or two, many Democrats, including me, thought he ought to step down. I feared a stumble might put Trump back in the White House. Others worried about an impaired presidency if he won.

Under the unrelenting pressure and scrutiny of the coming weeks, Trump may well show more signs of confusion. What will Republicans do if Trump verbally falls off the stage?

Elevating JD Vance doesn’t seem an attractive option. I suppose a second convention is possible and a more -centrist Republican could be substituted, but none of that is likely. They, and we, are stuck with what is there.

If Trump avoids his Gibberish, and speaks in his native tongue, Slander English, the Republicans are still in trouble. An internal memo leaked as I write says they have given up on carrying New Hampshire, once safely in their column. That spells disaster in any language for Donald Trump and the party he will drag along to defeat.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.