Donald Trump's unhinged North Dakota speech showed a man in steep decline

[0:00] At 3.13 yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump walked onto the stage in Medora, North Dakota, having arrived in the small western town after flying into Bismarck on his inaugural ride aboard the $400 million retrofitted Qatari jet that now serves as Air Force One. [0:17] His signature song, Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA, blasted through the speakers as he fist pumped to the crowd, taking breaks every few steps before continuing towards the podium. [0:28] Behind him stood men dressed up in Rough Rider reenactment costumes with matching glue, chambray shirts, and cowboy hats. [0:39] The presidential seal hung from the podium. An American flag waved nearby. [0:43] Just beyond the stage sat the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, a new museum near the entrance to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, set to officially open to the public on July 4th, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. [0:59] As the song came to an end, he began speaking, pausing often as he continued struggling to catch his breath before launching into a, what can only be described as, troubling and increasingly incoherent speech that lasted over an hour. [1:14] During it, he told the crowd he had a conversation with Theodore Roosevelt, of course, Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919, Trump was born in 1946, and one can only imagine that he was talking about an AI chatbot he interacted with inside the museum, but he described the exchange to the crowd as though it had been a real conversation with a living, real human being. [1:37] In another shocking moment, one where he didn't seem to realize what he was saying, after describing how Theodore Roosevelt and his son were one of only two father-son pairs to receive the Medal of Honor, Trump looked over at it, Don Jr., and Eric sitting in the audience, his two sons, and the crowd audibly gasped after what he said. [1:58] Now, as I see my two beautiful sons sitting there, I think, I'm going to give one to myself, one to them, and we'll have a threesome. [2:06] Okay, I'll pick out one of the two. I'll give them the Congressional Medal of Honor, or something, for their genius in hunting, and I'll get one for taking on Russia, Russia, Russia, or something. [2:20] He then added, but I actually said a few times that I've seriously thought of giving myself the Congressional Medal of Honor. [2:28] And I'm not going to point out specifically what was wrong with all of that, but I think we all agree there were quite a few things that were troubling and embarrassing. [2:36] He was there for the dedication and the ribbon-cutting of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, a ceremony meant to honor one of America's most consequential presidents and reflect on the role Theodore Roosevelt played in shaping our country's history, both the good and bad. [2:52] Instead, it became something much different, less a celebration of Theodore Roosevelt's legacy than another campaign-style rally built around the current president and his recycled talking points, ones he says over and over again every single time he has a microphone. [3:09] But what most Americans won't remember is the ribbon-cutting, the museum, or even the speeches about Theodore Roosevelt. [3:15] They'll remember watching a president whose mental struggles appear to be accelerating at an alarming pace, because the rest of what he said and did over that hour was just as alarming, and in some cases, far more dangerous. [3:28] When the teleprompters broke early in the speech, he announced it himself, [3:31] I have two teleprompters that aren't working, and here I stand. [3:36] And then later, without realizing what he was admitting, he turned the malfunctioning into a political metaphor. [3:42] He said, [3:43] He set up the comparison himself, the left is a waste of time, and the right is only a 2 out of 10. [4:05] He was so deep in that he did not hear what he had just said about his own party. [4:09] He gave the Republican Party a 2 out of 10. [4:14] Even without a working teleprompter, he spoke for over an hour, struggling to hold a single thought. [4:19] He pivoted from a story about Roosevelt chasing criminals to attacking the Biden administration's border policy, [4:26] from Roosevelt fighting the Spanish in Cuba in 1898 to threatening present-day Spain over the Iran War. [4:34] He went from the Panama Canal to Venezuela to Iran in three sentences. [4:38] He called Roosevelt a great he-man. [4:41] He told a long story again about a police officer whose wife thought he was an idiot until his 401k went up 84%. [4:48] We've heard that one so many times. [4:49] He said he knew more about the museum than the people who built it after he took a two-hour tour. [4:54] He promised to give a really long speech on July 4th in 107-degree heat just to show that I can do anything. [5:03] This is an 80-year-old man, and a lot of his people are also elderly. [5:07] Heat is no joke for people like that. [5:09] I don't even know what to say. [5:10] It's dangerous talk. [5:12] Most likely his people are telling him, sir, you're 80. [5:16] You can't be out there like that. [5:17] You'll become dehydrated and have health problems. [5:20] And hopefully they're also pointing out that a lot of his followers could also face those hate problems. [5:26] But I don't know where we're going with that. [5:28] I mean, it's just, this is what's coming out of the president of the United States mind at a dedication for a presidential library. [5:38] After that, he attacked Biden's cognitive fitness in the sentence that itself collapsed mid-thought. [5:44] He said this, [5:45] He also lied about the UFC fight at the White House, an event that took place, we remember this, three weeks ago, on his own birthday. [6:07] This was one of the highest rated fights in history, as if that's something to boast about. [6:13] I don't know. [6:14] Normally presidents care about ratings for things that actually matter. [6:16] He went out and said it was on CBS National on a Sunday night, not a Saturday night. [6:23] Saturday nights are called Death Valley for television. [6:26] I know a lot about ratings, but Sunday nights, very good. [6:29] And it was broadcast on CBS, a network, and it got among the highest ratings any fight has ever gotten. [6:35] The problem is it was not broadcast on CBS. [6:39] Dana White himself announced on June 9th that the event would not be televised on CBS and would exclusively be airing on Paramount+. [6:46] That's a paid streaming service. [6:49] He either can't remember how his own event was broadcast just three weeks ago, or he is fabricating it on purpose. [6:56] Neither possibility is reassuring from the man who holds the nuclear codes. [7:00] He closed the presidential library dedication by singing along to YMCA on stage. [7:05] And dancing to it, too. [7:08] But here's the thing about the rambling and the lies. [7:11] What they revealed was not just confusion. [7:13] And that is where this stops being absurd and starts being terrifying because he was consistent with them. [7:19] And at times what he said was profoundly racist. [7:22] Talking about how Roosevelt's son also received the Medal of Honor, Trump said this. [7:27] His son was brave. [7:29] It's genetics, you know. [7:30] It's like the racehorse theory, right? [7:32] Fast horses, that phrase, racehorse theory, is not something most people say by accident. [7:40] It is not a figure of speech. [7:42] It is a term rooted in the eugenics movement, the pseudoscientific belief that some human bloodlines are genetically superior to others. [7:51] Trump's father, Fred Trump, raised him on this idea. [7:53] Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio has said the Trump family has a very deep attraction to eugenics, including what he called the racehorse theory of human development. [8:04] And Trump has invoked it publicly for years. [8:07] In 2020, he told a nearly all white crowd in Minnesota, you have good genes. [8:12] You know that, right? [8:13] You have good genes. [8:14] A lot of it is about genes, isn't it? [8:17] Don't you believe? [8:19] The racehorse theory. [8:19] In 2024, he told another audience, we've got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. [8:25] This is hard for me to even say out loud. [8:28] And here's where the Roosevelt connection cuts deeper than most people realize. [8:32] Theodore Roosevelt himself was one of the most prominent proponents of eugenics in American public life. [8:38] The eugenics movement he championed helped pass the Immigration Act of 1924, [8:42] which prevented immigration from Asia and severely restricted it from Eastern and Southern Europe for 40 years. [8:49] The theory itself was built on the analogy of breeding animals. [8:53] Francis Galton, the man who invented the term eugenics, argued that what breeders do with horses and dogs, society should do with humans, [9:00] writing that it would be quite practical to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations. [9:09] This is the origin of racehorse theory, not a figure of speech, a founding principle. [9:14] And when Trump invoked it at the Roosevelt Library, he was not making an awkward analogy. [9:20] He was standing at the intersection of two men, a century apart, who share the same poison belief that some bloodlines are worth more than others. [9:29] And then there was this, unaffirmative action. [9:31] Our country now is based again on merit. [9:33] So if you're a student with very average marks and you looked a certain way or you acted a certain way or whatever, [9:41] and you get into the finest school in the world, and then you're somebody else that looked a certain way or acted a certain way, [9:49] and you have all A pluses and you have all great marks and board members that are through the roof way above other people, [9:58] but you don't get in, they get in. [10:00] It's all over with. [10:02] He's simplifying something that he doesn't even fully understand, especially when he said looked a certain way. [10:09] That's doing a lot of work saying race without saying race, right? [10:12] I mean, in a speech that also invokes racehorse theory and argues that the 14th Amendment was only for the babies of slaves, [10:19] which I'm not going to include because I just can't do that anymore. [10:22] It's just ridiculous. [10:23] The racial architecture is not subtle. [10:27] It is consistent. [10:28] Throughout the speech, he branded all political opposition as communist. [10:32] They said they're social democrats. [10:35] Doesn't it sound pretty? [10:37] They're actually communists. [10:38] He told the crowd that communism is the biggest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, September 11th. [10:47] Labeling all opposition as communists is not a policy position. [10:51] It is a foundational move on authoritarian regimes. [10:54] And the targets of this label are disproportionately people of color. [10:59] Trump praised Theodore Roosevelt throughout the speech without fully understanding who he really was or what he spent his presidency fighting for. [11:08] Roosevelt believed conservation wasn't just about protecting beautiful places. [11:12] He believed America's public lands belonged to future generations, not corporations looking to profit from them. [11:18] He championed breaking up monopolies, strengthening the federal government's ability to protect ordinary Americans, preserving wildlife, and building institutions that serve the public instead of political patronage. [11:30] Those weren't his side projects either. [11:33] They were principles that defined his presidency. [11:35] They are also principles this administration has spent months dismantling. [11:40] Maybe I guess we could say that they both had those priorities just on opposite sides. [11:44] Roosevelt's own great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt IV, who serves on the Wilderness Society's Governing Council, has publicly opposed what Trump and his Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are doing. [11:56] And he told the Star Tribune, unfortunately, the Republican Party no longer seems to care about conservation, as it did during the time of President's Grant, Lincoln, and the Old Lion. [12:07] The Old Lion. [12:08] That is what Roosevelt's own family calls him. [12:11] And they are watching this administration dismantle his legacy while wrapping itself in his name. [12:17] Now, the Center for Western Priorities put it even more plainly. [12:20] Teddy Roosevelt ended the Gilded Age. [12:22] Donald Trump and Doug Burgum are using their power to do the opposite. [12:26] The irony is almost impossible to miss. [12:29] Trump spent the afternoon celebrating Theodore Roosevelt while championing policies that undermine many of the very institutions Roosevelt helped build. [12:37] He praised Roosevelt's legacy while celebrating a Supreme Court decision that weakens the independence of the federal government Roosevelt believed should serve the people, the public. [12:49] He spoke admirably of Roosevelt's conservation ethics while his administration continues opening public lands to drilling, mining, and private development. [13:00] He invoked Roosevelt's name over and over again, not just Roosevelt's values. [13:04] But history is rarely that simple. [13:06] Theodore Roosevelt was a deeply complicated man and president. [13:09] He was a visionary, conservationist, and trust buster. [13:14] But he also held racist views that reflected and reinforced what some might call the white supremacist thinking of his era. [13:21] He embraced American imperialism, celebrated military conquests, and believed that the United States had a duty to project its power beyond its borders. [13:28] Those parts of his legacy deserve to be remembered, too. [13:32] We don't honor history by sanding off its rough edges. [13:36] And that is what made the next part of Trump's speech so revealing. [13:39] And in some ways, Trump wasn't departing from Roosevelt's legacy at all. [13:42] He was echoing one of its darkest chapters because layered on top of everything else were a series of imperial claims. [13:49] On Cuba, Trump said, after many, many decades, it's coming our way, coming our way. [13:54] I don't want to think about what's coming our way because we all know Cuba's going to be next, right? [13:59] That's what it sounds like. [14:00] And by next, I mean a military action. [14:03] This comes as the United States imposes a fuel blockade on Cuba. [14:07] And Trump has already suggested he would launch a military invasion. [14:10] On Spain, pivoting without a pause from the Spanish-American War of 1898 to a live threat against NATO ally over its refusal to support the Iran war, [14:22] he said the Spanish are not very good members of NATO and added, [14:26] they are not behaving nicely, but they will learn soon. [14:30] What does that even mean? [14:31] On Venezuela, a little bit like Venezuela. [14:34] We did a good job in Venezuela. [14:36] On Iran, I'm prosecuting a war, which we're winning very easily, by the way. [14:44] We're not. [14:44] For countries and threats or claims of conquest, said during a one-hour speech, just keeps doing it. [14:51] It was a reminder that Roosevelt's legacy contains both inspiration and warning. [14:55] Trump seems to admire the parts of Roosevelt's presidency centered on projecting American power [15:00] while ignoring the parts devoted to protecting the nation's land, [15:03] strengthening its institutions, and serving public interest. [15:06] He embraced the empire. [15:08] He discarded the stewardship. [15:10] So two days from now, this country turns 250 years old. [15:14] I've been thinking about that number for months now, a quarter of a millennium. [15:18] And I keep coming back to what it is supposed to feel like. [15:21] It is supposed to feel like something. [15:23] Pride, maybe. [15:24] I don't know. [15:24] Gratitude. [15:25] A moment to stop and look back at how far we have come and how far we still need to go. [15:30] I think about the people who built this country, not the men on the currency, [15:33] but the ones who never got credit. [15:35] The ones who were told over and over again that even though they were American, [15:39] they did not belong here. [15:40] And they stayed anyways. [15:41] The ones who fought to make this place match its promises. [15:44] And I think about how they would feel if they could see the man who will stand on the [15:49] National Mall on Friday and speak on their behalf. [15:53] A man who invoked eugenics at a library, who fantasizes about rewarding himself medals he did [15:59] not earn, who cannot finish a sentence or tell the truth about an event on what he calls his own [16:04] lawn, but what I like to call the lawn of the people's house just weeks ago, who will represent [16:09] all of us, every dream this country ever had about itself in front of the entire world. [16:14] That is the weight of this moment. [16:16] Not just what he is doing to this country, but what he is doing to the meaning of it. [16:21] And as sad as that realization is, we have to keep the faith that better days are coming. [16:25] When Democrats take back Congress, and yes, I believe they will, and I'm not going to give [16:30] that up, every committee hearing an investigation will have his own words and actions as proof. [16:37] We won't have to depend on secondhand accounts or anonymous sources because his own words will [16:43] carry him to the consequences of his own actions. The case is building itself every single time he [16:48] gives a speech or a press conference. And when the reckoning comes, he will have written it himself. [16:54] And that is why I still have hope for America, and you should too. [16:58] Thank you for watching this video. Please make sure that you have notifications turned on that [17:01] you subscribe to the channel. If you want to help it reach more people, leave a comment, [17:06] give it a thumbs up, hype it up. Any of those things help it reach more people. [17:10] For all of my daily posts, you can find me at Substack just by searching Heather Delaney [17:14] Reese, and I've included a link for you below. And remember, no matter how dark the days get, [17:18] I will be here every single day, and together we will always have hope for America. [17:22] I'll see you all tomorrow.