Donald Trump made a bizarre gaffe during his Fox News town hall earlier this week.
“We’re going to take over Washington, D.C. We’re going to federalize. We’re going to have very powerful crime, and you’re going to be proud of it again,” the former president said.
“This, my friends, is what we call a Freudian slip,” his niece Mary Trump wrote on X of the moment, which attracted online ridicule after the second part of the town hall event aired on Wednesday.
“Why stop at just 91 counts?” wrote conservative attorney George Conway, referring to the number of felonies the former president has been charged with across four criminal indictments.
Rick Wilson, co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, tweeted, “I believe him.”
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” Thursday, Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and author, spoke more generally to host Lawrence O’Donnell about her uncle’s cognitive state.
“It makes perfect sense that somebody who is as [mentally] unhealthy as he is, who is under the extraordinary amount of stress he’s under, would have a harder time holding it together cognitively,” she said.
O’Donnell also called out the media for failing to highlight more of the former president’s verbal flubs, noting the “powerful crime” slip received very little coverage.
“Imagine how many headlines there would be about that story if Joe Biden had said those exact words,” he said. “Donald Trump gets to say we’re going to have very powerful crime and you’re going to be proud of it, and no one in the news media even notices.”
President Joe Biden and Trump both routinely make verbal stumbles, many of which make headlines. Their age and mental fitness have become key issues in the presidential race.
