"She stopped every single one of them"
A couple of months ago ("A new Trump speaking style?", 8/10/2024), I gave an example to support my subjective impression that Donald Trump's speech is becoming less fluent. The clip included some cases of word-finding difficulties, as in this characterization of vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz:
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She picked a
radical left
uh
man
that is uh
he's got things done that he's-
he has positions that are just not-
it's not even possible to believe
that they exist.
In a more recent 9/28/2024 rally speech, after another spate of re-starts and pauses, Trump produces a phrase that seems to be the opposite of what he means:
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Putting it in context:
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Earlier this year, while Rachel was out on a run
she was brutally raped and murdered by this
disgusting
illegal alien,
who was let into the United States
by Kamala
and her
lax law. She-
they- they-
every one of my killer-
we had the great-
she would have-
he would have never been able to get in.
She stopped every single one of them.
She was the border czar,
now she doesn't admit that.
In earlier years (see e.g. "Presidential fluency", 10/31/2017), I was struck by the fact that Trump rarely used filled pauses like "uh" and "um", or silent pauses ("dead air"), or rapidly-repeated initial function words like "she- they- they-".
I don't have systematic counts to show that things have changed - maybe later - but I'll register again my subjective impression of a difference.
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=66259&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=she-stopped-every-single-one-of-them
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=66259