The infinite monkey theorem postulates that, given an infinite amount of time, a monkey banging on a typewriter will almost surely produce the works of Shakespeare. Here is the Trump corollary: given an hour and 35 minutes in Iowa, Donald Trump regurgitating everything he’s ever said will accidentally quote Beckett.

In 95 minutes, Trump repeats everything he’s said at every event, every rally, every debate in the past five months, as if speaking from the other side of a fugue state. He sighed. He laughed. He said, “We have to be mean.” He moped. He signed a book for someone in the audience and threw it them, saying, “There you go baby, I love you. Thank you.” He talked about deals. He sounded very, very tired. This, a campaign stop in Fort Dodge, Iowa, is Trump’s fourth state in as many days, the Washington Post reports.

At one point, he enumerated his rivals’ strengths and flaws, dedicating nearly nine minutes to Ben Carson.

“Carson is an enigma to me,” he said, before offering a summary of one of Carson’s books. “He said that he’s ‘pathological’ and that he’s got, basically, pathological disease...I don’t want a person that’s got pathological disease.”

(What is pathological disease?)

“If you’re pathological—there’s no cure for that, folks. There’s no cure for that,” Trump said. “If you’re a child molester—a sick puppy—a child molester, there’s no cure for that. There’s only one cure, we don’t want to talk about that cure. That’s the ultimate cure. Well, there’s death, and there’s the other thing.”

The whole speech is below. It is worth watching, in full or in part, as an artifact of a brilliant, exhausted performer running on fumes. “This is a special night. I’ve really enjoyed being with you,” Trump said as he came to a...conclusion? “It’s sad in many ways, because we’re talking about so many negative topics, but in certain ways it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.”

Donald Trump: death is the ultimate cure—death, and the other thing.


GIF by Ashley. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.