“What appalls me is we’re now telling people it’s okay to laugh at stuttering,” a Biden consultant says. Trump’s mocking often elicits laughs from his audience.
By Lauren Weber and Carolyn Y. Johnson, The Washington PostFormer president Donald Trump mocked President Biden’s stutter at a campaign rally in Rome, Ga., on Saturday, the latest in a series of insults he has hurled at his rival but one that disability advocates regard as a demeaning form of bullying.
“He’s saying I’m a threat to democracy,” Trump said earlier this year, segueing into a taunt in which he imitates Biden. “He’s a threat to d-d-democracy.” T. Kenny Fountain, an associate professor at the University of Virginia who studies political rhetoric and had a stutter as a child, argued that Trump was weaponizing Biden’s disability to make a point about his competence while violating social norms to appeal to his supporters.
About 3 million Americans stutter, a communication disorder in which speech is not fluent because syllables or words are repeated or prolonged. The causes of stuttering are not fully known, but genetics can contribute. Stuttering has long been misunderstood and stigmatized. Trump himself has been prone to verbal flubs and gaffes during campaign rallies, but he has defended his mixing up names, for instance, as intentional.
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