Conservatives wanted “mental acuity” to be a top 2024 election issue. It’s blowing up in their face.

In what’s looking like one of the most bizarre choices of the 2024 election season, Republicans decided to make “mental acuity” a key issue in the presidential race – despite their likely candidate’s inability to form coherent thoughts anymore.

It’s hard to remember, but just a year ago conservatives’ attempts to paint President Joe Biden as a doddering old fool – and Trump as, at least, fairly competent – were just gaining traction. But that was before the GOP primary season started. It was before Trump was being forced to speak with local and, at times, unfriendly media. It was before more Americans were paying all that much attention to any of the campaigns.

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Just last week, an ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that 28% of Americans believed that Biden has the mental sharpness necessary “to serve effectively as president.” 47% said that Trump had it. That is, perceptions of the mental sharpness of both candidates dropped since a similar poll was conducted in May 2023.

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Biden, who has a lifelong stutter, has been the subject of numerous videos on social media that exploit the handicap to convince voters he is undergoing “cognitive decline.” While that attack was used in the 2020 election, it has intensified this past year as a result of a ruthless online campaign that used doctored videos to make it look like Biden sleeps during interviews or that he can’t say a single sentence coherently.

That is, someone who has watched terrible TikTok videos about Biden this past year might be genuinely surprised to watch him give a fairly normal speech without passing out 10 seconds into it.

So Biden’s issue is an online disinformation campaign set up to exploit his stutter. What’s Trump’s excuse?

More people are seeing him speak in public, and they’re realizing he’s not the same person who ran for president in 2016.

And it’s not just Democrats.

It’s also something his primary challengers have been sounding the alarm for. Ron DeSantis noticed and said that Trump “lost the zip on his fastball.” In the leadup to the New Hampshire primary this week, Nikki Haley – who Trump mixed up with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) – refused to play along like many Republicans do and called him out as well.

“When you’re dealing with the pressures of the presidency, we can’t have someone else that we question whether they’re mentally fit to do this — we can’t,” she said at a campaign event.

Then there’s the rambling. The Biden campaign is now releasing snippets of Trump’s speeches where he seems to be saying words without much concern for how they go together to form sentences or arguments.

Then there was this moment from New Hampshire.

Trump: Gas, it's very high. Coming down because they're throwing everything that they can to get it—. Right after the election, if that ever happened. You better hope to god it doesn't happen where he gets in because he's destroying this country. pic.twitter.com/Yn5OsGjJzK

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 22, 2024

And this.

The former president provides an elaborate description of missile defense technology: Ding ding ding ding boom whoosh boom pic.twitter.com/PgWRVJh8xI

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 23, 2024

As well as this.

Trump on why he should have total immunity: A rogue cop.. you have bad people, no matter where, no matter what. In the church, you have some people that aren’t so good. pic.twitter.com/TADRzEZBsr

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 22, 2024

And those examples are just from the past seven days, all after the ABC News/Ipsos poll – which was already showing people losing confidence in Trump’s cognition – was conducted.

As the primary season heats up – Super Tuesday will be in early March – and then the general election season starts, Trump is going to be required to spend even more time speaking in front of televised audiences, not just the diehard supporters who are willing to slog to his rallies in the middle of winter.

While the fact that Trump is definitely not as coherent as he used to be has been noticeable since at least 2022, it’s starting to get some media attention now.

“His mind is scrambled eggs when he gets up there and gets tired,” Joe Scarborough said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe about the series of gaffes earlier this week. “He really thinks that he is running against Barack Obama. Just like he thought Nikki Haley was speaker of the House on January 6th.”

Co-host Mika Brzezinski suggested that it might be Trump’s age – he’s 77 – or “it also could just be the mountain of legal actions against this man, just crushing him and making him so stressed that he’s literally confused. Because no one person could handle all the cases that he has against him, all the lawyers he has to deal with, all the lawyers he can’t get. I mean, some of these cases can put him away in prison for the rest of his life.”

The irony is that it was his supporters who chose to make mental acuity a major issue in this election without first considering if it was something that would paint their candidate in the best light.