Róisín McManus has stuttered her whole life. When she saw the video start to circulate of former President Donald J. Trump at a rally on Saturday imitating President Biden stuttering, she had two competing reactions.
The first was: Of course. Mr. Trump had made fun of Mr. Biden’s stutter before, and a part of Ms. McManus figured he would do it again. But as she watched and rewatched the clip, the other reaction was a painful one.
“I think it gets to a very visceral feeling for all people who stutter,” said Ms. McManus, 35, a palliative care nurse practitioner in Providence, R.I., who said she was an unaffiliated former Democrat. “Most of us have been mocked in some way in our childhood. We’ve heard this before. And so watching a video, it hits that familiar humiliation feeling.”
John Moore, 53, a marketing consultant who leads a National Stuttering Association group for people who stutter in Greenville, S.C., said the clip had brought back memories of bullies who made fun of him. Heather Grossman, a speech pathologist who works with people who stutter, burst into tears thinking of her patients while she watched it.
The moment happened at Mr. Trump’s rally in Rome, Ga., when he was criticizing Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address. “Didn’t it bring us together?” Mr. Trump said. Then he turned to mocking Mr. Biden, mumbling unintelligibly and saying, “Bring the country t-t-t-t-together.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said on Monday that “President Trump was clearly talking about Crooked Joe Biden’s declining mental state, which the world can see, and that he is unfit to be president any longer.”
