‘Undisciplined, unhinged and deranged’: will Trump’s strange behavior hurt him at the polls?

Donald Trump has spent years saying the unsayable to entertain, goad and grab attention.

But his pronouncements over the past few weeks have plumbed new depths of absurdity and incoherence.

Trump , 78 , increasingly slurs or stumbles over his words, raising fears over cognitive decline.

He is slipping in polls against Kamala Harris and knows defeat could lead to criminal trials and even prison.

Trump was the subject of a withering takedown on Comedy Central’s satirical news programme The Daily Show .

He mixed up Iran with North Korea and struggled to pronounce the name of the United Arab Emirates .

He rambled off track into how much Russia had taken from presidents George W Bush , Barack Obama and Joe Biden .

Elaine Kamarck , a former official in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “He has definitely lost a step, as they say’.

Trump reprises one of the worst and oldest stereotypes that has been used to demean and put down Black people throughout American history.

Trump 's running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio , gave a polished debate performance that critics called sanewashing’ The latest national polling averages showed Harris at 48.2% compared with 44.4% for Trump .