Donald Trump had a gathering in Dayton, Ohio, this past weekend, and many think his speech confirmed that the expected GOP presidential candidate has been descending further into insanity.
People have criticized Trump for starting his speech by calling the January 6th Capitol rioters “hostages” of the U.S. prison system.
“You see the spirit from the hostages, and that’s what they are, is hostages,” Trump said after the rally opened with a song by The J6 Prison Choir, with whom Trump collaborated.
“They’ve been treated terribly and very unfairly, and you know that, and everybody knows that,” Trump continued. He then called them “unbelievable patriots” as he promised to begin helping them on his first day in office.
Robert Reich, a professor at Berkeley and the labor secretary under Bill Clinton, labeled Trump as “out of his mind” for these statements, among others, such as when he referred to migrants as “animals” and “not people.”
“Trump is clearly desperate,” Reich wrote. “He knows that his future freedom and his fortune both depend on winning in November. He has no qualms about turning Americans against Americans to achieve this goal. Apparently he is even willing to fuel violence, a second civil war.”
Reich called Trump a “monster” and also commended his former Vice President Mike Pence for showing “enough integrity to refuse to endorse” him. “If other current and former Republican officials had an ounce of integrity, they would do the same,” Reich said.
In response to Trump’s Ohio speech, Pence called it “unacceptable” to refer to the Capitol rioters as hostages.
“I think it’s very unfortunate at a time that there are American hostages being held in Gaza,” Pence told Margaret Brennan while appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, “that the president or any other leaders would refer to people that are moving through our justice system as hostages.”
“I was there on January 6th,” Pence continued. “I’ve no doubt in my mind, Margaret, that some people were caught up in the moment and that entered the Capitol, and they’re certainly entitled to due process of law for any non-violent activities that day, but the assaults on police officers, ultimately an environment that claimed lives is something that I think was tragic that day, and I’ll never diminish it.”
David Corn, DC bureau chief of Mother Jones and an analyst for MSNBC, stated on X of Trump’s praise of the rioters: “That this doesn’t disqualify him within the GOP or among the tens of millions of voters who have voted for him shows how deep the rot goes.”
Popular X account “Spiro’s Ghost” made similar points, writing that “In a sane America not overrun by millions of lunatic cult members who worship a completely deranged conman, this single insane utterance would be TOTALLY disqualifying.”
Trump has also been criticized for continuing his pattern of mixing up and mispronouncing his words, leaving many to question his mental fitness for office.
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann said Trump is “seeing things that are not there and on the verge of complete cognitive collapse.”
