--- title: Harris Is Trolling Trump Over His Weird Dance Party description: Harris' campaign has called Trump "lost" and "confused" over his weird rally. But that could backfire with a key voter bloc. canonical: https://time.com/7093857/donald-trump-mental-kamala-harris/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-10-16T19:33:51.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T18:26:07.051Z article:section: Politics og:title: The Perils Of Trolling Trump On His Weird Dance Party og:description: Trump’s mental acuity is drawing more attention after a bizarre rally performance. But pushing that issue too much presents a risk for Harris og:url: https://time.com/7093857/donald-trump-mental-kamala-harris/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1ae2f375739c7a0e/698a89ef929fad2cafc019ab/GettyImages-2177752701.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: US-VOTE-POLITICS-TRUMP og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Perils Of Trolling Trump On His Weird Dance Party twitter:description: Trump’s mental acuity is drawing more attention after a bizarre rally performance. But pushing that issue too much presents a risk for Harris twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1ae2f375739c7a0e/698a89ef929fad2cafc019ab/GettyImages-2177752701.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Perils of Trolling Trump on His Weird Dance Party > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=5057aa08-b42b-4c9e-82e4-81c27a66c332&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1)  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Oct 16, 2024 7:33 PM UTC  Former President Donald Trump, with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, at a town hall in Oaks, Penn., on Oct. 14, 2024. Former President Donald Trump, with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, at a town hall in Oaks, Penn., on Oct. 14, 2024. Jim Watson—AFP via Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Oct 16, 2024 7:33 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ The almost 40 minutes of Donald Trump [standing](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trumps-bizarre-music-session-reignites-questions-mental-acuity-rcna175464) on a stage near Philadelphia, calling out a playlist and dancing like a bozo uncle at a wedding became easy fodder for meme-makers, late-night hosts, and the former President’s avowed haters. But it also provided an opportunity—albeit a potentially perilous one—for his rival looking to keep him out of the White House. Kamala Harris and her campaign [seized](https://time.com/7093649/donald-trump-town-hall-mental-fitness-harris/) on the oddball incident. “Trump appears lost, confused, and frozen,” the @KamalaHQ account posted on X with a clip from the event. Harris piled on, [sharing](https://x.com/kamalaharris) that post from her own account with the added jab, “Hope he’s okay.” Trump’s mental acuity has long been one of those persistent [unknowns](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/trump-cognitive-test-what-montreal-cognitive-assessment-exam-n1234762)—particularly given his refusal to release his medical records. Monday’s event, which started as a policy-based Q&A session with North Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and became a dance party after two attendees required medical attention, was the latest moment in which those murmurs grew into a roar that could not be [ignored](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/15/trump-rally-dance-music-taiwan-taliban-ukraine/). But there’s a risk here, and one Democrats would do well to take seriously. Yes, if the 78-year-old Trump wins a second term, he would eventually become the oldest person ever to be President. But also worth remembering is this: Close to two-thirds of voters are [expected](https://www.cookpolitical.com/swingometer/2024) to be over the age of 45 this fall, and one-in-four are slated to be 65 or over. It’s one thing to go after someone’s potential capacity to do the job and it’s quite another if it looks like straight-up ageism. And, at the moment, Harris’ approach could alienate some voters who view it as more like the latter. Once 81-year-old Joe Biden [decided](https://time.com/7001153/joe-biden-drop-out-announcement/) in July that he would not [seek](https://time.com/7001028/why-joe-biden-stepped-down/) another term as President, Democrats clearly found potential advantage here. With 59-year-old Harris leading the party, Democrats were no longer [dragging](https://time.com/6993760/joe-biden-debate-disaster-democratic-panic/) around the past-the-prime skepticism. Instead, what had been one of Biden’s most persistent slags suddenly got shifted to Trump, who is just three years his junior. By contrast, Harris cuts a vigorous figure who stands to make history, [clearly](https://time.com/7019747/harris-trump-debate-cover/) has an [ability](https://time.com/7019832/harris-trump-debate-analysis/) to get under Trump’s skin, and has performed exceptional CPR on what had been a languishing Democratic Party. The risk here, though, is one that is not entirely new to Harris’ campaign team in Wilmington, Del. [Some](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/13/kamala-harris-barack-obama-advisers-campaign/) of them were hands on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign against a 71-year-old John McCain. The top Obama strategists in 2008 were crystal clear in their edict: _erratic_ and _confused_ were acceptable ways for the campaign to describe McCain, but _ancient_ and _expired_ were not. The cryptic effort was a constant grind on the McCain team, which openly [accused](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/05/salter-obama-attacked-mccains-age/53054/) Obama’s orbit of ageism. Obama’s campaign nevertheless continued with coded terms; both John Kerry and Susan Rice [deployed](https://www.politico.com/story/2008/06/are-dems-talking-about-mccains-age-in-code-011122) “confused” to describe McCain. To Obama’s circle, they were not going to set aside what they saw as legitimate questions about McCain’s capacity to do the job just to appease those crying foul. (Harris’ team also includes [pros](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/kamala-harris-is-rerunning-hillary-clintons-campaign/679614/) from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid, in which age was a double-edged sword, as Trump was 70 and she was 69, and she faced more hushed [whispers](https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/62016/) about her abilities.) Obama, of course, came out on top. In that election, 53% of that electorate was over the age of 45\. The 45-to-59 cohort split evenly, [according](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/elections/2008/results/president/national-exit-polls.html?ref=quillette.com) to exit polls. The only age-based group that favored McCain was the 60-and-up crowd, which he won 51% to 47%. (Obama saw negligible improvement over Kerry, the 2004 nominee, in both groups.) The balancing act is a tough one, and one that Harris’ team and her supporters need to be exceedingly careful about. In the latest CBS News [poll](https://www.scribd.com/document/779428302/cbsnews-20241013-SUN#fullscreen&from%5Fembed), voters ages 45-64 are siding with Trump, 53% to 46%. Among voters ages 65 and up, that grows to 57% to 42%. Maybe voters have grown numb to Trump’s stream of norm-breaking, head-scratching conduct. Maybe their assessment of him is cemented in place, no matter his behavior in the final weeks of the campaign. Maybe Trump actually _is_ the candidate most Americans want to see lead the country and his decision to play tunes for a night instead of delivering the same rambling speech matches where voters are. And just maybe, a lot of voters are having their own introductions to ageism and see latent signs of it everywhere they look—including maybe in a hard-fought presidential campaign. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7093857/donald-trump-mental-kamala-harris/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7093857/donald-trump-mental-kamala-harris/"},"headline":"The Perils of Trolling Trump on His Weird Dance Party","datePublished":"2024-10-16T19:33:51.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T18:26:07.051Z","description":"“Hope he’s okay,” Harris posted after Trump's bizarre rally","url":"https://time.com/7093857/donald-trump-mental-kamala-harris/","keywords":["The D.C. 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