'Stop participating in the gaslighting': Columnist calls on GOP to address Trump’s decline

The next president ought to "be sharp and nimble in confronting" the economy, "the ongoing domestic threat of home-grown radicalized terrorism," the increase "in racist, antisemitic, and Islamophobic hate crimes and bias incidents across the nation," war "in the Middle East and Ukraine," and more — and that person is not Trump, Boston Globe columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr argued in a column on Wednesday.

"He may not be able to get a grip, but it’s long past time the news media and Republicans stop participating in the gaslighting," Stohr submits, adding that neither shown the same type of "urgency" they showed President Joe Biden before he ended his reelection bid in July.

"Trump has repeatedly shown himself to be, to put it kindly, unwell. That is not only unfair and irresponsible, it is dangerous for the future of our country," the Globe columnist emphasizes.

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Stohr points to when the former president was asked last month "what specific legislation he would back to make child care more affordable." Trump "rambled incomprehensibly for nearly two minutes without answering the question," she recalls.

"Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down," the GOP nominee said at an economic forum in New York. "You know, I was somebody — we had, Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka, was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about — that, because look, child care is child care, couldn’t — you know, there’s something — you have to have it in this country. You have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to."

From this, Stohr argues that while Trump's answers to any question tend to be unclear, "what was crystal clear was the decline in the former president’s ability to hold a train of thought, speak coherently, or demonstrate a command of the English language, to say nothing of policy."

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Stohr's full column is available here.