During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday, NBC national affairs analyst John Heilemann focused on Donald Trumps low-key speech in Howell, Michigan on Tuesday and claimed it was a bad sign for the Republican party going into November's elections.
Pointing out that the former president has been accused of "cognitive decline" for months, as evidenced by his "glitch-filled" speeches at rallies, the analyst claimed the GOP has pinned all of its election hopes on a faltering candidate.
"It's going to be a close race in the other direction," he told MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. "And that means that, you know, all of these people who are around Donald Trump trying to desperately over the course of the last five weeks now, since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee saying to Trump we need to be focused and you need to get it together, man."
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"And it's now five solid weeks where he is not able to be disciplined, he is not able to be focused he is not able to be energetic," he added. "My Puck column last week raised this question which is, is it not clear now that Donald Trump's cognitive decline, his mental acuity, the failing mental acuity, age-related diminishment, the lack of energy, the things that, whether you like Donald Trump or not, back in 2016, there were times when he could be a feral beast as a political athlete."
"It's not there anymore," he elaborated. "And I think, you know, it bodes ill for the Republican campaign not on many of the moral and ethical grounds we often rightly raise but just on the level can this candidate who is so central to this campaign — there is no campaign without Donald Trump — if he is not performing at some level of basic disciplined rigor focus, there is no way the republican candidate, given all of the momentum on the Democratic side, no way Donald Trump can win."
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