One of the truisms of Trump World is that being viewed as boring is a sin more deadly than being wrong.
On the campaign trail, former President Donald J. Trump often takes that to mean he must go off-script and veer off message. His critics say such detours are a troubling sign of his incoherence and raise questions about his age and cognitive health. Many of his supporters and allies see his circular way of speaking, which he calls “the weave,” as entertaining and not alarming. The partisan debate over the implications of Mr. Trump’s meandering speech has only intensified in the final stage of the race.
Here are four examples of Mr. Trump’s rambling from just this past week.
Schoolchildren asked him about boyhood heroes. He ended up at the border wall.
It was a softball question, from a 10-year-old. Mr. Trump’s response was more of a knuckleball.
A group of children asked Mr. Trump questions on Friday on “Fox & Friends.” Asked to name his favorite president when he was a child, Mr. Trump at first cited one who was elected when he was 34 (Ronald Reagan). Then he ventured onto surprising terrain, including every child’s favorite subject, the revised NAFTA trade deal known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Asked about inflation, he roamed to his annoyance with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s college experience.
On Tuesday, John Micklethwait, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News, asked Mr. Trump about the dollar and whether his policies would drive up inflation. Mr. Trump produced a verbal novel, the first chapter of which touched more on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s undergraduate studies than on macroeconomics.
