Trump's speeches, increasingly angry and rambling, reignite the question of age

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

87% : Either way, watching recordings of Trump over the years yields a pretty clear evolution.
59% : With Biden out, Trump, at 78, is now the oldest major party nominee for president in history and would be the oldest president ever if he wins and finishes another term at 82.
58% : Trump has always had a distinctive speaking style that entertained and captivated supporters even as critics called him detached from reality.
52% : The young media-obsessed developer and reality television star who spoke with a degree of sophistication and nuance eventually gave way to the bombastic presidential candidate with the shrunken vocabulary in 2016 and eventually to the aged former president seeking a comeback in 2024.Consider the following: In 2002, Trump was interviewed for an Errol Morris documentary about "Citizen Kane," the iconic Orson Welles film about a media tycoon.
49% : Trump gave a thoughtful analysis of the movie with a degree of introspection that would be hard to imagine today.
48% : "I don't think anyone would ever say that Trump is the most polished speaker, but his more recent speeches do seem to be more incoherent, and he's rambling even more so and he's had some pretty noticeable moments of confusion," she said.
48% : "Trump is never wrong," he said recently in Wisconsin.
47% : Steven Cheung, the campaign communications director, called Trump "the strongest and most capable candidate" and dismissed suggestions that he has diminished with age.
45% : John Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, was so convinced that Trump was psychologically unbalanced that he bought a book called "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," written by 27 mental health professionals, to try to understand his boss better.
43% : The Times analysis found that Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level, lower than rivals such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who speaks at an eighth-grade level, which is roughly average for modern presidents.
40% : "Others who have spent time with Trump in private, however, insist that they notice no difference.
32% : And it was hardly the only time Trump has seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality lately.
32% : "Trump dismisses any concerns and insists that he has passed cognitive tests.
30% : No one "went crazy," as Trump put it, because no one was there.
30% : But his campaign has refused to release medical records, instead simply pointing to a one-page letter released in July by his former White House doctor reporting that Trump was "doing well" after being grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt.
27% : "I never felt that cognitive ability or age was an issue," said James Trusty, an attorney who represented Trump in his classified-documents criminal case until resigning last year.
26% : "In 2011, as he was contemplating a run for the presidency, Trump addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference and sounded more partisan notes.
24% : Roberta Kaplan, who was Carroll's lawyer, said Trump lost control at times during the proceedings, blowing up when he should have remained calm.
22% : The former president has not been hobbled politically by his age as much as Biden was, in part because the incumbent comes across as physically frail while Trump still exudes energy.
17% : Shown a picture of Carroll, Trump confused her with his second wife, Marla Maples.
17% : (A jury later found that Trump sexually abused and defamed Carroll.)
16% : Most notable, perhaps, was his deposition in the defamation lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s.
15% : As late as last month, Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Joe Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.

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