Trumpland

We Need an Interpreter to Work Out Trump’s ‘Debanking’ Rant

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The former president’s latest rant about “debanking” and electric cars has left The New Abnormal team scratching their heads.

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A photo illustration showing Donald Trump.
Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images

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Whether he is throwing out made-up words like “bigly,” “covfefe” or speaking about the fictitious country of “Nambia,” Donald Trump has always had a special way with the English language.

But as The New Abnormal team discusses in its latest podcast, the former president’s speech in New Hampshire about how banks are trying to “debank you from your political beliefs,” before randomly pivoting to deriding electric cars, left many scrambling to find an interpreter.

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“We’re also going to place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to debank you from your, you know, your political beliefs. What they do, they want to debank you. And we are going to debank, think of this. They want to take away your rights. They want to take away your country, the things you’re doing. All electric cars. Give me a break. If you want an electric car, good. But they don’t go far. They’re very expensive,” he said.

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“What does ‘debank you’ mean? Like debank you from your rights? What is he saying?” The New Abnormal’s co-host Danielle Moodie asked, perplexed. “Is the bank demanding I get an electric car? I didn’t see that in my recent statement. Did you guys see that in your recent bank statements?”

Fellow co-host Andy Levy went on to try and decipher what Trump was saying.

“The interesting thing here is that most of this ‘debanking’ is done against sex workers. You know, places like PayPal will not allow it to be used as a payment method for OnlyFans and for stuff like that. Generally, this sort of thing is used to target sex workers and Donald Trump has his own history with sex workers and I guess that didn’t work out too well for him. So maybe you’d think he would be in favor of this ‘debanking,’” he said.

Levy said trying to connect the dots between Trump talking about “debanking” and then electric cars proves more difficult.

“He’s not sundowning. I mean, it’s midnight. A thought pops in his brain and somehow he’s talking about banks not letting you use it for specific businesses or whatever. Then suddenly that makes him think of electric cars and apparently everyone is now being forced to buy an electric car. It’s bizarre. It’s the kind of thing that again might be funny if he weren’t going to be running for president. If he weren’t going to be the first official dictator of the United States.”

Plus! Danielle Moodie talks to Keith Boykin, the political commentator, film producer and Bill Clinton’s former White House aide, about his new book Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race? 25 Arguments That Won’t Go Away.

Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

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