Donald Trump appears frozen, confused at Texas speech (Getty)
Donald Trump froze and stopped talking for an estimated two minutes during a speech Saturday night at a National Rifle Association (NRA) event in Dallas, TX. Trump has been plagued by verbal gaffes at campaign rallies in recent weeks, raising concerns that he might have some kind of brain impairment. Was the incident in Dallas another in a growing line of alarming events where Trump has struggled to speak clearly -- or speak at all? That is how it looked according to a report at rawstory.com.
Under the headline "'Glitched out': Internet erupts as Trump 'blacks out for a beautiful 2 minutes' at event," Raw Story's David McAfree reports:
Donald Trump on Saturday made major waves on social media after he stopped talking during his rally speech, and stayed silent for a significant period of time before speaking again.Trump over the weekend gave a speech for the National Rifle Association in Texas, and was criticized for appearing to mess up his words as well as some key facts.
It was at the end of the speech, though, that something strange appeared to happen that made Trump completely stop speaking.
It occurred when Trump was complimenting Texas.
"You have a great governor, you have a great lieutenant governor. You have incredible congress people you have just fantastic people," he said. "The Texas spirit of proud independence was forged by cowboys and cattle hands, ranchers and rangers, oil workers, soldiers and brave, brave, brave, pioneers. Many came here with nothing but the boots on their feet, the clothes on their back, and a gun..."
Trump then repeated a common firearm hobbyist phrase, "Come and take it."
"Come and take it," he said. "Together they helped make America into the single greatest nation in the history of the world."
At that point, the former president remained silent for an extended period of time as music played in the background.
At that point, video of he incident made its way to social media, and political sparks started flying, McAfee writes:
"But now we are a nation in decline.," Trump finally says. "We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has the highest inflation in 58 years. Our banks are collapsing, and interest rates are skyrocketing."
A "Biden's wins" account shared the video online, saying, "Donald Trump just glitched out and froze at his rally tonight. He is clearly unfit for office."
@Leslieannscott then responded.
"Oh my freaking word!!!! Trump totally blacks out for a beautiful 2 minutes. It’s so bizarre set to weird cult music. You have no idea. He’s losing it! He’s at the NRA convention saying he will roll back every gun safety Law [President Joe Biden] put in place."
"He’s shaking his head in disgust as his teleprompter went down."
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From the language Leslie Ann Scott uses, I can't tell if she agrees with the original commenter or disagrees with her. From her use of the word "beautiful" and her apparent distaste for President Biden's efforts to address gun violence, my guess is that Scott is a Trump supporter being sarcastic. But that is just a guess. Perhaps this will serve as a reminder to communicate with clear language, even in the "Wild, Wild West" of social media.
Watch the video at the link above or click the link here.
A number of media outlets have presented conflicting reasons for Trump's odd behavior -- from swatting at flies, to struggling with a malfunctioning teleprompter, to intentionally pausing to allow dramatic music to play.
A Trump campaign spokesperson threw out a number of possible excuses, but I'm not sure anything he says can be believed. It will be interesting to see if Trump takes questions about the incident from the press. My guess is that he won't (and who would believe him anyway?), so confusion likely will continue to swirl about what really happened.