The problem isn't just his age, it's his decrepitude, both physical and mental. I know people in their 90s who are able to speak clearly at any hour of the day...
Speaking clearly has nothing to do with mental fortitude. Tons of things can affect the fluency of speech. We really need to move past the days where we judge people's intelligence and competence based on how well the connections of their brain are able to influence the movement of the vocal cords and the tongue the lips and the jaw.
It is a requirement for the job of being a national politician.
You have to be able to win elections at that level, and there's no participation trophies for feel-good runs by someone with a handicap, you just lose.
That is what parent is challenging. You can of course disagree. I think it's an interesting point. How much damage do we do to ourselves by societally selecting charismatic people who speak eloquently as leaders (importantly: over other qualities)?
We evolved a natural tendency to like charismatic and funny people, because (I'm speculating) you need a high minimum level of broad cognitive competence to pull that off.
Things like empathy, quick thinking, emotional intelligence, a fresh perspective, broad knowledge of the world, a large vocabulary, and the self-confidence to go with your judgement calls are all involved in telling a single good joke to a crowd.
These are all fantastic things to see in a leader.
On an evolutionary scale, it's probably a little simpler than correlation with cognitive competence.
A group united towards a stupid purpose can be more effective than individuals acting towards more reasonable purposes. If this is true, you can select for both following (susceptibility) and leading (charisma).
I feel like the only characteristic needed to be a popular speaker is self-confidence. Have you seen most of the word salad coming out of Trump's mouth?
It’s word salad, but for his demographic, it’s a salad of carefully selected words they love, delivered with great warmth, charm, or aggression, as appropriate.
All of his 'success' is purely derived from charisma as far as I can tell. He isn't particularly adept at his prior career of real estate business given that he has under-performed in the markets he has participated in, and he had to commit felony fraud to do it. His biggest success is making people believe that he is more successful than he is.
What intellectually rigorous activity would you say he has an aptitude in?
Looking at the wildly hostile media coverage of him post-2015, you’d come away thinking he’s a major charlatan.
Looking at the glowing media coverage of him pre-2015, he seems like a unique business genius.
The truth is probably in between.
Business and marketing aren’t rigorous intellectual activities like math, but they are bloody hard in a different way - even with an inheritance (how many born-rich kids die 100x richer? Almost none). The problems are very fuzzy and open-ended, and frequently don’t even look like a problem.
You can’t consistently solve these problems profitably over many years without some skill.
I disagree. I know quite a few people who are incredibly charismatic, but exceptionally narrow in their cognitive competence. In fact, one of the problems that I would highlight about charisma is that it allows you to be get away with a lot more stupid shit than you would if you had to get by on other talents.
I agree with your point, but I think your examples are charming one-on-onenor in small groups only.
To be considered charming to a large group of people, like half the USA, you need to be conversant in things that are relevant to all of them. A narrow person can never have a wide appeal.
One has to be practical. Some handicaps are seen by the majority as a negative for the job. You can’t tell them they are wrong for making it a requirement (after all, they hire the candidate).
To me, the role seems to be like 95% charisma as it's largely a figurehead position. Foreign relations, domestic relations, commander in chief of the armed forces are all mostly charismatic functions.
The smart but uncharismatic folks seem better suited to institutional roles where they can guide policy in the right direction without being the public face of the policy. It's not all that different from the distinction between sales and the folks that design/make the product; the groups are complementary but divergent.
Winning elections is only a part of why the US President must be an effective communicator. Even with the greatest staff supporting them, poor communication will hamper their ability to do the job, especially in a crisis situation.
The truth we cannot change is that people simply want to follow charismatic leaders. We can sit and lament on how stupid that is, but we aren't magically fixing that anytime soon.
I was using "speak clearly" as a shibboleth for general mental and physical ability.
There is clearly something wrong with him that was not in evidence in 2020. Whether it's Parkinson's, senility, 12-day-old jet lag, I don't know. But it's clear that it's hard for him to carry on a conversation, and that is basically the job of a politician.
His recent debate performance was poor. But he's had trouble speaking for a long time. Go back and watch older debates or speeches and see. It's all classic speech impedement stuff; he's clearly had lots of training and experience, but sometimes he can't use the words he wants and switches to different words.
I'm honestly not sure what we're looking for in a debate, but most presidential debates since I've been a voter are contests to see who can look like they're listening the best while getting back to a rehearsed talking point the fastest. [1] When you combine that with trouble with words, and maybe some over training, it doesn't look good.
Does it mean he has trouble carrying on a conversation in a real setting? I don't know, it's a totally different setting with different expectations. We don't really get a window into that.
[1] Well except that MTV town hall. Pretty sure Bill had no talking points appropriate there.
There are also different kinds of difficulty speaking. When he was younger, Biden would trip over words or say something not quite right, or make gaffes (supporting same sex marriage before it was the admin policy).
But now his difficulty seems to come from difficulty understanding what is happening around him. He seemed confused by his surroundings multiple times during that awful debate.
I've seen a lot of Biden supporters pointing to his stutter and speaking difficulties, but his troubles have qualitatively and quantitatively changed, and definitely for the worse.
The reason there was no coming back from his debate performance is because it wasn't just some verbal slip up or "classic speech impediment" stuff. Anyone who's taken care of an elderly parent or grandparent recognized the clear signs of age-related mental decline. And it obviously wasn't that single debate, e.g. the news about Clooney's fundraiser where pretty much everyone in attendance thought he had markedly declined, or this recent BET interview where Biden got seriously confused and lost his train of thought: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/17/politics/video/biden-youtube-.... To your question "Does it mean he has trouble carrying on a conversation in a real setting?”, that BET interview was just a taped, 2-person, no-audience interview with a friendly interviewer. I just don't understand how anyone who's been paying attention can state that Biden's mental capacity hasn't declined significantly, and more importantly, how anyone could suggest with a straight face that Biden would have the requisite mental capacity in 4 years hence.
But in the last couple of months, it's like his tongue is not moving right. I literally can't understand some of his sentences now, the syllables are so slurred and garbled.
Biden apparently had a speech impediment (basically stutter), for much of his early life, and had to train extremely hard to overcome it. So in general I've always brushed aside criticism of his speaking as it's evident to me that he's generally very articulate and well spoken if you overlook the occassional word salad.
Over the last few months I've generally defending his gaffs to friends even though I don't like Biden as a politician, because I think that kind of discourse is counterproductive politically and stigmatising socially, which I still feel.
However, I have to say, the recent downward spike in his ability to string a sentence together becomes concerning to me, not so much because I think it primary reflects any cognitive decline per se, but it seems to me like a sign that the pressure of the presidency and the campaign are affecting him in _some_ way that is causing his speech impediment to surface at its worst and most frequent yet. So I would still push back on a lot of what you are saying, but yes, at this point, something is clearly off there to a concerning degree.
I agree that mental fortitude is not necessarily correlated with fine grained muscle control, but speaking clearly is a pretty freaking basic requirement for A PRESIDENT
Yes, we shouldn’t confuse verbal fluency with intelligence, or the lack of one with the lack of the other. Perhaps you should go back in time to 2000 and step up to defend George W. Bush.
However, when someone was previously verbally fluent and then the whole world can see that that person’s fluency has deteriorated, it’s completely reasonable to believe that deterioration of other mental functions is happening as well, as seems to be the case with Biden.
Verbal fluency is a job requirement for a president. It doesn't matter if the president is the most intelligent person, it matters that they can communicate effectively, particularly with world leaders in life-or-death situations when a miscommunication can result in a great catastrophe. Personally I would rank intelligence as less important than several other attributes.
I occasionally call my kids by each others' names. My parents would call me by my brothers' names. This is a running joke in large families. I occasionally in large meetings swap the names of two products we're talking about and have to be corrected. It's just a very low-grade "verbal dyslexia" that means nothing except that the brain isn't a perfectly-wired machine.
I don’t beleive he’s actually confusing them, but it’s not a good look for a guy who’s supposed to be a leader in uncertain times. One should never be question if the president meant what they just said.
And it's such a double standard. Trump never pretended to speak clearly and now people can in good faith point out that trump has not shown signs of regression because there was nothing he was curating about his persona in the first place and thus nothing to regress.
Whatever Trump says can be construed as some sort of 4d chess hidden message because of a cult of personality that has developed around him. He can hint that asylum seekers escaped from mental asylums but his base will not suspect that he may be the one confusing the two words and instead they will just cheer at the grotesque image because that's the kind of politically incorrect thing they want somebody to say (regardless of whether Trump did that on purpose or not).
I have the feeling that whatever Trump will say and will do will never ever be scrutinized by his side in a way that even remotely resembles the scrutiny to switch Biden has to be subjected to.
And that double standard speaks a lot on the troubled times we're living through.
This comment triggers Poe's Law for me. Given this comment by itself, I would have guessed this was satire. Unfortunately, from a fuller picture, I guess this is actually fundamentalism.
I agree for the average person, but at the same time the front man for one of the strongest economies in the world should be able to speak at least on an average level. Unfortunately I would define his speech at this point as poor - please correct me if I'm wrong. This factor seems like a running joke not only in the US, but the entire world.
Competency is not a requirement for being a politician. Winning the most votes is. And being elocuent and aggressive helps much more than being coherent
Biden wasn't running for chief scientist somewhere, he was running for President of the United States, and a huge part (probably the primary part) of that job is being able to communicate effectively. If "your brain isn't able to adequately influence the movement of the vocal cords and the tongue the lips and the jaw" then you shouldn't be applying for a job where verbal communication is paramount.
it honestly astounds me that people did not recognize Biden’s cognitive decline in the 2020 debates. it was obvious then, and it was obvious a month ago when all the news outlets were boldly proclaiming that Biden was fully fit for duty.
> it was obvious a month ago when all the news outlets were boldly proclaiming that Biden was fully fit for duty.
Dude, you just completely made that up. Certainly every news outlet I recall, from NY Times, WaPo and CNN to Fox News and the WSJ were all running a ton of articles questioning Biden's fitness for another term. None of them were "boldly proclaiming" anything.
No, it is a sign that both terms occupy close relationships in the brain. I consistently fumble the name of my elder sister with the name of my eldest daughter and I know many people who have similar mixups.
Biden is showing signs of decline, but the name-swapping thing was never (and still isn't) that. It's mental klutzery, nothing more. As the other person pointed out, it is /very/ common when two names are mentally-adjacent, to reach for the wrong one. My parents would call me by my brothers' names all the time, and I just did that with my own kids this morning.
Anyone who thinks that Biden got confused and thought he was in a press conference with Vladimir Putin (!!) is just spouting nonsense.
I've been mixing up names for as long as I can remember. I'm not even 40. Of all the things to judge him on this rates pretty low on my list, especially since Biden has a bit of a history of "gaffes" like this.
That said, it's pretty obvious a lot of energy and fire that Biden previously had is no longer present. Or at least very inconsistently present.
the thing is. i dont remember a single fumbling of words by biden until he appeared back into the public recently. like he was great at speaking and decently quick witted.
the extreme change is worrisome. i mean is this him now? will it keep deteriorating? why would anyone think it wont. how much of a medical concern will be 1 year later. 2 3? this is what people are concerned with
Those were just the top two results in Google for "biden vice president gaffe", limiting the date to before 2016.
I mean, it's probably gotten worse, although I can't really judge that. But it's certainly not a new thing. I'm not saying he's not too old and tired, I'm just saying that merely the mixing up of a name alone really isn't a sign of incompetence.
You've got to be kidding, I must as a non-partisan say. The observations entertain the republican world, but they're there nonetheless for everyone, or this wouldn't have been forced by the democrats.
That said, it's infuriating when you have an opponent that can literally say whatever he wants however unintelligible it may be and his cult-like followers will just find the meaning kn what he said. The double standard is astonishing.
But yeah obviously there certainly are better candidates than Biden to run for president. Why he or she hasn't been found in 2020 eludes me.
> Why he or she hasn't been found in 2020 eludes me
Well we had the 2020 primaries. Bernie and Warren were too left to win a general election. Pete Buttigieg won Iowa, got 2nd in New Hampshire, but only cancelled the campaign after South Carolina, once it dawned that the South has too much of a quiet problem of Buttigieg being gay and preferring Biden simply because he was Obama VP. Without those sad facts, we could've had Buttigieg winning 2020 and 2024.
> That said, it's infuriating when you have an opponent that can literally say whatever he wants however unintelligible it may be and his cult-like followers will just find the meaning kn what he said.
Yeah, just three days ago, praising Hannibal Lecter, or remember "covfefe" from a few years back? Or the QAnon bunch where some people managed to assemble millions of people [1] by essentially doing "tea leaves predictions" on Trump speeches?
There is no equivalent to that level of derangedness on the Democrat side, not even close.
Is this satire? A typo on twitter and something that wasn't Trump?
Meanwhile, early this month, Biden called himself the first black woman to serve with a black president, as well as referred to "vice president Trump" when apparently talking about Harris.
> A typo on twitter and something that wasn't Trump?
That one was a response to "and his cult-like followers will just find the meaning kn what he said", because that is precisely what QAnon was/is: a bunch of people poring over Trump speeches and every tiny utterance of anyone in his circle to find "hidden meanings" like alleged raids on "pedos".
> Meanwhile, early this month, Biden called himself the first black woman to serve with a black president, as well as referred to "vice president Trump" when apparently talking about Harris.
He misspeaks and needs to correct himself. Yes. That's completely undeniable.
But hell, listen to a Trump speech and to a Biden speech. Trump is just a plain stream-of-consciousness braindump all the time, Biden at least generally manages to stick to the prompt.
Unfortunately, Trump has what I call the "entertainer instinct": he knows exactly and most especially instinctively how to entertain masses, how to make pictures and quotes. The best example is him getting shot - 99.999% of people would have fled, he raises his fist and yells "fight".
And in a political climate where it's not facts but pure and utter showmanship that wins an election, that's a problem.
It's not that he's incompetent (I certainly consider him dramatically more competent to do literally anything
(or when the situation calls for it, nothing) than his opponent), it's that he's perceived by some voters to be incompetent, and that may cost the election, and I'd really rather not be dragged along into that universe because his vanity doesn't let him move over.
Yes, but enough prominent Democrats and donors didn't want to support someone with Biden's faltering condition. Thus the pressure for him to step down. It doesn't matter what the Republicans are willing to support. Democrats are trying to win an election and put someone competent in power.
I don't know the quote you're referring to, but sexual assault by siblings is at least 19x more common (2.3%+ of children) than by adult family members (0.12%+ of children), according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Tangential fact to Biden being able to coherently communicate such a fact or not though.
Being ugly is a disqualifying trait for getting a job as a supermodel.
Being unfit is a disqualifying trait for being an Olympic athlete.
Being unable to stay awake and say coherent sentences is a disqualifying trait for being the president of the most powerful nation on earth.
Being black or latino is a disqualifying trait for playing a Roman emperor in a movie — which is why Netlix will surely try, because they’re unable to comprehend what the problem even is, and why their “equality” is groan-inducing.
PS: If I was a US citizen, I would vote for AOC not because of her sex or race but because neither of those influence my decision. Do they influence yours?
Being born in Roman Hispania isn't the same as being "of Spanish origin" or "latinx". Being born in Africa doesn't make you black. Elon Musk is the richest African in the world.
If Shaq had been born in China, would he be a good candidate to portray first sovereign Emperor of China?
A black bear born in the arctic isn't a polar bear.
If historical authenticity is semi-expected then having Samuel L Jackson as Nero isn’t going to fly. If race swap is part of the gimmick like in Hamilton then I don’t think it would matter.
If going for visual realism, then obviously a black man would not look the part, since all roman emperors were caucasian (except possibly Septimius Severus).
> The problem isn't just his age, it's his decrepitude, both physical and mental.
"When Biden stumbles over words, we question his state of mind; when Trump acts like a deranged street preacher, it’s … well, Tuesday. If Biden had suggested setting up migrants in a fight club,[1] he’d be out of the race already; Trump does it, and the country (as well as many in the media) shrugs. "
> “Did anyone ever hear of Dana White?” Trump asked during his speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Washington. “… I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win; that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much.”
Fucking Hell. I need to stop thinking these things are exaggerations or hyperbole. In the past few days, I thought "MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW" and (now) "immigrant fight club" were the stuff of political cartoonists juicing the zeitgeist.
This is the other problem with this election cycle: Trump is saying truly deranged things, but they’re so far outside of what people think would be reasonable for a person to say that he’s not getting the kind of blowback for them he should be because nobody believes he’s actually saying them.
(A contributing factor is that he actually Has been misrepresented a few times by the media - the “bloodbath” comment was very clearly about the auto industry in context, so the right feels rightly aggrieved and the left & media lose credibility.)
Nothing new, sadly. Comedians during Trump's presidency were saying how they can't top the absurdness that was Trump's reality. Welcome to a slice of the madness they needed to parody somehow.
On the one hand, abandoning an incumbent President with the all of the strengths that entails just months from the election because you let the other side control the narrative with their "crippling dementia" meme seems like political suicide, and you can usually trust the American left to do the wrong thing for the right reasons.
On the other hand, American politics is so fickle and vain that even a minor gaffe on camera can doom a political career (see the "Dean Scream.") Although this standard only seems to apply to Democrats, it's still a factor. What really killed Hillary Clinton's chances wasn't systemic misogyny, or the email leaks, but her expression. She had a memeable crazy face, and that became her entire identity for many Americans. Now "Sleepy Joe" is the identity of Joe Biden.
The only question now is, what will be the meme that they deploy against Kamala Harris? I don't think the tried and true "probably a pedophile" or "crippling dementia" options are going to work, and "blood drinking satanic priestess" has probably worn out its welcome. They'll probably go "crypto-muslim" like they did with Obama.
edit: looks like they're going with "all of this is an attempted coup." A bold strategy by the insurrectionist party, going back to the "stolen election" well, but it seems to be a perennial favorite. Let's see if it works for them.
Biden was never the quickest guy (or tongue) in the room. During Obama's term, he was legendary for putting rooms to sleep with plodding, off-topic monologues where he set up irrelevant straw-men and then knocked them down. Obama was, by far, the quicker of the two. Time has probably not improved matters, but it's going a bit far to say Biden's declining sharply. Even in his prime, Biden might have stuttered and stumbled through a debate with somebody as consistently unpredictable and utterly unhinged as Trump.
Is a younger leader better? Possibly. Speaking as a non-American, I have to note that, when Americans vote for a President, they're not just voting for one guy. They're voting for a guy who will select the entire white house staff. Biden surrounded himself with highly competent people with good ideas and they're why he's been an effective President. Obama could have easily done worse if he'd been less lucky with his staff selection. An old president who selects good staff can be effective.
Trump did worse during his previous term and would be objectively worse in his next precisely because he'll surround himself with family and yes-men. When staffing, a good leader tries to make himself the dumbest person in the room. Biden did that. Trump never will.
Case in point: The VP. In a Biden vs Trump contest, it was a very real possibility that either of their VP's would have to take over during their terms. Biden had Harris as his VP, and she's clearly ready to do the job. Trump chose a rookie senator yes-man with a profound lack of principles for his VP. The thought of Vance becoming President in 2026 or 2027 should terrify people.
VP's are frequently ghosts - we only really remember Mike Pence as the guy who called his wife Mother and who Trump and his supporters wanted to hang when they were cosplaying insurrection.
Harris has at least been a formidable prosecuter and brings bone fide proven legal talent to the role, not to mention the $8,000 US plus Trump and his family have donated towards her election since 2011.
if decrepitude had anything to do with voter confidence, we would have booted both candidates out after that charade that we called the "presidential debate"
I say this as someone that agrees that Biden should have stepped down earlier (for the 2nd election I mean).
But please, people, do not compare the average person in their 80's to what this man has to do daily.
Just alone entering a war room and giving an order to bomb a place, or watching the raw videos of war (which we luckily don't get access to) is something you don't come back from. This is not an average person, and he was doing OK after all.
However, he objectively got older. That's it. No coming back from that either...
many people that age have been in actual wars. not saying which is more intense or which causes more stress on your body it definitely matters context of what you went through. although id say most vets that went through vietnam or korea probably been through a lot.
at least i know my korean gpa has. man is crippled and vocal cords basically non existent due to his job there. but man is so sharp and smart mentally its actually shocking.
but bidens has had serious brain surgeries. that alone should have disqualified him from even running imo regardless of how his term went
The point is not that Biden has been through an extraordinarily stressful experience at one point in his life but that Biden has been going through an extraordinarily stressful experience for the past four years while already being very old. With the greatest respect to your grandfather, I think it would take a similar toll on him.
And 8 years with Obama as VP in 2009-2017 (in his late 60's and early 70's). Obama got visibly older in 8 years, and he was way younger than Biden was at the time. And yet, Biden challenged Trump that had previously won against Clinton, not the new guy in the neighborhood. And he won.
Seriously, the stress he went through in the last 15-20 years, that's some s*. He even lost his son in 2015.
This guy has crazy good genes. And it sucks that people make fun of him. He should not go as a "joke". People should have some respect and understanding for him.
It’s weird that an incoherent Trump never gets called out for his ramblings that run on and on in circles. Yet Biden’s gaffes are blown out of proportion. I wish someone just called out Trump directly and told him to stop the ramblings. But nobody in his circle could do it when he was president, nobody could get him off twitter and so on.
Trumps been called out for his ramblings for 8 years now. Its not news anymore. Hes mastered the post truth tactic of overwhelming people with bullshit so much that they dont care about it anymore.
Am I wrong to think that whoever is appointed to Presidency is just a figurehead of the actual administration, and that it really doesn't matter how functional he actually is? I'm not defending or endorsing Biden, but from my eyes we vote for the administration, not for the person.
Compare him from his time as the vice president vs now. It is not even close. He has deteriorated so much in his speech. People can't even understand him which was never a problem back then.
What a person thinks and what a person externally expresses can be two entirely separate things. I'm pretty sure Biden can think entirely well enough to be president.
You seriously think Trump is more physically fit? I'd give you mentally, but avoiding having your head blown off because you gesture so wildly it's hard to get a clear shot does NOT make the man physically fit. He looks like a trash bag full of gelatin when he wears his golf clothes, and golf was Trump's only/best example of a (barely) "physical" challenge he thought he'd beat Biden at....
Sad.
> You seriously think Trump is more physically fit?
Absolutely he’s more physically fit. I don’t think Biden would have survived being tackled by the Secret Service agents. That alone would have broken all kinds of bones.
And as far as stamina goes, Trump regularly gives hour plus standing speeches. Do you really think Biden could stand in the hot sun for an hour?
I think he's experiencing a rapid decline in his health, possibly due to COVID. He had been recorded riding his bike this June [0].
This is anecdotal, but it reminds me of my grandfather before he died. He had always been able to run on a treadmill and lift weights; then, he got cancer, and his health deteriorated to the point that he began to need a walker to get around, until he became bedridden and died.
"Unfit for office" (Esper) "The greatest threat to democracy that we've ever seen." (Cobb) "he failed at being the president when we needed him to be the president" (mulvaney) "doesn't like to read, doesnt read briefing reports." (Tillerson) "absense of leadership, really anti-leadership" (McMaster) "wannabe dictator" (Kelly) "he shouldn't be near the oval office" (Barr) "a person who admires autocrats & murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, the Constitution, and rule of law" (Kelly) "God help us [if we's reelected]." (Kelly)
And simply, "he's an effing moron" (Tillerson).
Biden has always been a little weird with his vocal stutter, but he makes good points. He knows what's going on. He can talk to issues and hold a point. Trump's logic as he gets up on the podium & drunk uncle rambles is terrifying, both mean and vindictive when coherent but often just totally space case weirdo verbal diaherria. He's never been sharp. He's never been interested in the world, has always lived in his own head & it's only gotten worse & less & less intelligible. He's an effing moron and a mean nasty one at that. Biden is aging yes but he's a put together intelligent engaged listening person who reads his damned briefings & is engaged & interested & has ongoingly shown ability to go on talk shows & rallys & be strong, to talk intelligently to issues, to handle deep conversations well, & make sharp cases.
You don't see anything like this insult against character & intelligence against Biden. I think Biden is sharp, but even if you disagree, at least he started with a full deck of cards and some decency & respect for democracy. The other guy?
I think Bob Woodward really sums it up: "the president has the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader."
Someone in Trump's own party attempted to assassinate him last week, and failed. For most people, having someone in your own party try to kill you would be a huge negative, but the person I was responding to attempted to spin it as a positive.
The “who” that pulled the trigger is much less relevant than the reaction of Trump right after it happened. Rising up, the flag waving behind him, with a fist in the air yelling “Fight!”. Followed by a crowd cheering, “USA! USA!”.
That was incredibly iconic and that picture will be in the historic books, and IMHO, alongside a biography of him as our 47th POTUS.
I did hear about Teddy being nearly assassinated and then continuing his speech right then and there. Helped with his image as being this stubborn bull who never backs down and comes in swinging.
looking it up, we haven't had a near assassination since Reagan (how... well, poetic isn't the word I want to use). Probably a bit too recent for history books to record at my time. The other presidents who had near assassinations did eventually become assassinated.
