The New Yorker:

If ever there were a case for age-related diminishment of a candidate, Donald Trump is it.

By Susan B. Glasser

On Thursday, when Donald Trump met with Republicans in Washington, it was the first time he’d visited Capitol Hill in the four years since he pressed Congress to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In a statement, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized him for “returning to the scene of the crime” and warned that he was on a “mission of dismantling our democracy.” Trump’s allies in the Republican Party, meanwhile, suggested that he would be in forward-looking policy mode as he talked about plans for a second term in the White House. Yeah, right.

Trump, it will perhaps not surprise you to learn, has not been reborn as a statesman or a wonk. Reliable accounts suggest that his private remarks before the House Republicans were pretty much in keeping with his public appearances these days—sclerotic, rambling, nasty, and often incomprehensible. Fox News’s senior congressional correspondent reported, rather tactfully, that the ex-President meandered through “lots of tangents”; a small sampling, from the many accounts to emerge of what went on in the room, included Trump sharing his opinion on everything from Taylor Swift’s prospective endorsement of Joe Biden, to the “dirty, no-good bastards” at the Justice Department, to why he is a “big fan” of William McKinley. (Tariffs!) Trump wondered if his close ally Marjorie Taylor Greene was being “nice” to Speaker Mike Johnson these days. He called Biden a “dope” and, in one of those split-screen moments that tells you everything about the stakes of the 2024 election, warned that Ukraine is “never going to be there for us”; Biden, meanwhile, was in Europe, pledging unequivocal support to Ukraine in the form of a ten-year bilateral security agreement. Trump even trashed Milwaukee, where Republicans are soon to meet to nominate him as their Presidential candidate for a third straight election, as “a horrible city.” Once Trump’s comment became public, there were many competing explanations from attendees as to why he might think so; he apparently did not say.

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