Former President Donald Trump is — often frivolously — accused of a long and varied list of things.
One critique you don’t hear nearly as often from the peanut gallery, however, is that Trump is not a good performative speaker.
(The man is in the WWE Hall of Fame, and professional wrestling is a modern-day vaudeville act, after all.)
That’s no longer the case after acclaimed actor Sir Ian McKellen, perhaps best known to worldwide audiences for his portrayal of the wizard Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings” movies, took a random potshot at the 45th President of the United States in an interview.
Speaking about a wide range of topics with The Times of London, McKellen blasted the oratory skills of Trump.
“Trump is an absolute bewilderment,” McKellen said, with The Times noting that the thespian likes to watch CNN.
That proclivity toward CNN does explain a bit of why McKellen is so inclined to blast Trump, but that’s hardly unique to the British actor.
“I haven’t seen him live,” McKellen continued. “But he’s one of the worst public speakers there has ever been. Whether he’s reading a script or not, it’s so patent what he is.”
McKellen levied one last potshot at Trump by recounting his personal childhood: “I remember leaving my school [in Bolton] in the sixth form and cycling down to the town square to see [Welsh Labor Party leader] Aneurin Bevan on the hustings without a microphone.
Do you think Trump is a good orator?
Yes: 87% (13 Votes)
No: 13% (2 Votes)
“There aren’t any great orators like that around, are there?”
The 85-year-old actor discussed a great number of other topics with The Times, including the inevitable end of his acting career looming. But the shots against Trump stick out in the interview like a sore thumb, simply due to comparative optics.
Whatever one may think of Trump’s oratory skills, it’s virtually inarguable that Trump is a better speaker — by a rather large margin, mind you — than incumbent President Joe Biden.
Trump and Biden will be inextricably linked to each other as they go head-to-head in the November general election, and all manner of comparison between the two will be inevitable.
When it comes to matters of the economy, world relations or fundraising, Trump pretty easily clears Biden — hence why every critique you hear about the former president these days is about the bogus 34 charges he’s been convicted of in a so-called hush money trial in New York.
And that’s what makes McKellen’s comments so odd.
If you concede the actor’s point and accept his premise that Trump’s a terrible orator … what does that make the highly correctable Biden?
Unintelligible? Incoherent? Undecipherable?
Given that every American (even Democrats, deep down inside) knows the answer to the above question, critics of Donald Trump would do best to steer away from any mention of oratory skills, at least until November.
