Trump biographer notices a significant change

Donald Trump's biographer Tim O'Brien said questions about the former president's age and mental state could become increasingly prominent now that he is running against Vice President Kamala Harris instead of President Joe Biden.

“Biden was so clearly weakened and the media was more willing to take him to task for it on a regular basis,” O'Brien told The Guardian. “That allowed Trump to get away with it.”

But faced with a “different, younger, sharper and more dynamic political opponent,” Trump “now often seems ridiculous or crazy, unfocused or very, very old,” he said.

Trump made headlines throughout his campaign with his rambling digressions, his bizarre tirades about sharks and electric boats, and his long-winded non-answers to policy questions.

For example, when asked last week whether he wanted to make child care more affordable, Trump launched into an incoherent remark about tariffs.

Trump now faces the same questions about his age and mental health that Biden did before he left office – and O'Brien said Trump is aware of that, which has led to a noticeable change in his speeches.

“The reason he's now giving these convoluted explanations for his speech patterns in his public appearances is because he's hyper-aware that people have noticed that what he's saying makes even less sense than it used to,” O'Brien told the newspaper. “What we're seeing now is a reflection of a person who is very troubled and very distressed.”

He also warned against reading too much into the matter, noting that Trump freely associates simply because he can get away with it and because his audience loves it.

“You feel like you're being invited into this world through these nonsensical, nonlinear pieces of performance art,” says O'Brien, senior editor of Bloomberg Opinion, author of the 2005 book “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald” and former editor in chief of HuffPost.