Trump’s Biden Spot Upsets People Who Stutter: ‘We’ve Heard This Before’

Róisín McManus has stuttered all her life. When she saw the video circulating Saturday of former President Donald J. Trump imitating President Biden’s stutter during a rally, she had two conflicting reactions.

The first was: Naturally. Mr. Trump had previously mocked Mr. Biden’s stutter, and part of Ms. McManus thought he would do it again. But as she watched and rewatched the clip, the different reaction was painful.

“I think it’s a very visceral feeling for all the people who stutter,” said Ms. McManus, 35, a palliative care nurse in Providence, R.I., who said she was an unaffiliated former Democrat. “Most of us have been mocked in some way during our childhood. We’ve heard this before. And so when you watch a video, you get that familiar humiliating feeling.”

John Moore, 53, a marketing consultant who heads a group for people who stutter in Greenville, S.C., said the clip had brought back memories of bullies making fun of him. Heather Grossman, a speech therapist who works with people who stutter, burst into tears thinking of her patients as she watched them.

The moment came during Mr. Trump’s rally in Rome, Georgia, when he criticized Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address. “Didn’t it bring us together?” Mr. Trump said. Then he turned to mocking Mr. Biden, muttering unintelligibly and saying, “Bring the country together.”

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said Monday that “President Trump was clear about the declining mental state of Crooked Joe Biden, which the world can see, and that he is unfit to be president any longer.”

Stuttering has nothing to do with intelligence or understanding: “I know exactly what I want to say, but sometimes it doesn’t come out that smoothly,” said Moore, who described herself as an unaffiliated voter who leans libertarian.

It wasn’t the first time Trump demeaned people with disabilities. During his 2015 presidential campaign, he imitated New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski by waving his arms back and forth in an imitation of arthrogryposis, a condition that limits joint function. He faced backlash saying he did not know who Mr. Kovaleski was or if he had a disability.

A spokesman for Biden, TJ Ducklo, dismissed the spot, saying it “just shows how weak and insecure” Mr. Trump is. Many adults who stutter, after years of enduring cruel comments, have a similarly thick skin, a resilience that Ms. McManus said was important to emphasize.

But she and others who spoke to The New York Times on Monday said it still hurts to see those comments coming from someone as prominent and powerful as Mr. Trump — and especially to hear his audience laugh in response .

Caryn Herring, executive director of Friends: The National Association of Young People Who Stutter and who themselves stutter, said that a big part of learning to live with stuttering is being able to “convince yourself that stuttering means more to you than just but stuttering. someone else, and that it won’t be a problem – people won’t laugh, you’re still qualified for the job.

Mockery from a former president will be interpreted as ‘proof that this is a big problem and that this is something to be ashamed of and it means you are not qualified,” Ms. Herring said. “All those thoughts we know are not true, but when they are said in such a way by a bully and then approved by such a large audience, it can make a person feel very small and set him back so many steps in his or her to live. journey to acceptance.”

Dr. Grossman, the speech pathologist, is also executive director of the American Institute for Stuttering. She said the goal of therapy is not to eliminate stuttering, but to enable patients to communicate effectively, and to accept and cope with stuttering when it happens. Ridicule like Trump’s, she said, could undermine that by reinforcing the feeling that “I can’t stutter openly or the world will reject me.”

Advocates have long been concerned about rhetoric that stigmatizes disabilities and falsely implies that certain disabilities are incompatible with demanding jobs. Maria Town, the president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, sent a letter to both national parties this year, asking them to “condemn such language in campaigns and call on your party’s candidates to do better.”

Rebecca Cokley, program officer for the U.S. disability rights portfolio at the Ford Foundation, said she had seen people in both parties “weaponize” disability or the appearance of disability.

For example, during the last presidential campaign, some commentators mocked Mr. Trump for walking slowly down a ramp and using both hands to drink a glass of water.

“It may be said in a moment, but the long-term impact on our community is real,” Ms Cokley said. “By making fun of people’s disabilities, we are creating a society where it is not safe for people with disabilities to identify themselves.”