Opinion | Whats Wrong With Donald Trump?

This is a transcript of an audio essay, and we recommend listening to it in its original form so you can hear the clips.You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.You’ve probably seen the clip by now.

Donald Trump is holding a town hall.It’s Monday, Oct.

14, in Pennsylvania.He was being asked softball questions by Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, and there is a medical emergency in the crowd.

The rally stops for a while.They play “Ave Maria” while the medics respond.

Then Trump and Noem begin again.Then someone else in the crowd needs medical help.

The rally stops again, begins again.Noem is settling back in when Trump announces he’s had enough.Donald Trump: Let’s not do any more questions.

Let’s just listen to music.Let’s make it into a music.

[Cheers.] Who the hell wants to hear questions, right? [Laughter.]What comes next is something I’ve never seen before.Trump, swaying dreamily to his playlist, in front of a rally full of people, for nearly 40 minutes.

It was like he was D.J.’ing his own bar mitzvah.You can look, in these clips, at the faces of the people around him, like Noem.

They really have no idea what to do.They are suddenly backup dancers in a concert that shouldn’t exist.Part of me finds Donald Trump’s behavior here unusually relatable.

You think I want to sit up here talking about politics and war day after day? You don’t know the temptation to, just once, just for one week, turn this podcast into a drum and bass set or play you my favorite Kiasmos songs.But I don’t.

Of course I don’t.It’s not what we’re doing here.

And if I were a presidential candidate in the final weeks of a campaign, I wouldn’t do what Trump did, because the fallout would be predictable: an avalanche of media coverage asking, “What the hell was that?”I wouldn’t do it because of the inevitable attacks from...