Why does Donald Trump make those hand gestures?

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]If you have ever wondered why Donald Trump uses his hands like this all the time, this is my take. My name is Hillilary and I am a licensed and certified speech language pathologist who specializes in concussion and neurological rehabilitation. Now, what this behavior is, it has a name. It is called handwaving. Yes, handwaving.

[00:00:18]Literally and figuratively, someone is using a gesture and vague language or superficial explanations to give impression of substance without actually saying anything meaningful. Sound familiar? I think so. Now, what is happening with this? First of all, there is a mismatch between the gesture and the semantic content or the meaning. In typical communication, gestures are tightly linked to meaning. For example, if I want to show size and I say it's small, I would go, "Oh, it's really small." If I want to show something and look out in the distance or direction, I might go, "It's over there." And I look with my eyes and I point with my fingers. That has meaning that matches the language. With handwaving, what Trump is doing, that linkage breaks down. The gestures are generic and they could accompany almost any topic which is why we see it so frequently. This means there's no semantic anchoring.

[00:01:20]There's no anchor of the gesture to the meaning. So this is what we're getting.

[00:01:25]Empty gestures with Donald Trump. It also has to do with capturing your communication partner's attention and cognitive unloading for the person who's doing it. Now, gestures naturally draw the listener's attention. I'm using gestures. I'm being very affusive with my hand movements, but they do tend to match kind of what I'm doing. All right?

[00:01:47]Think about Italians. They are super good at using their hands to talk. Okay?

[00:01:53]So, they're getting the listener's attention and that can create a sense of fluency and confidence even if that's not really there. it can mask that there's weak content because the brain tends to interpret that type of speech as smooth and animated and it delivers competence. So, a gesture can function as a distraction or as a compensatory signal. More recently, Donald Trump has not been using this gesture anywhere near as frequently as he has been in the past. Now, what does this mean? This is because he likely is dealing with reduced automaticity. With someone who has dementia or neurological decline, things that used to be very automatic are now going to take thought. They're going to take effort and energy to do.

[00:02:43]So for someone who previously gestured a lot like Trump, those movements at the time were automatic and they were very integrated with his speech regardless of whether they had any meaning connection at all. Dementia disrupts the automatic processes. So now using those gestures are now like extra effort. He has to think more and more to control those gestures and it is very difficult for him to do that when he is also speaking because speaking is clearly very difficult. He cannot put together a coherent sentence. He cannot motorcoordinate his words appropriately.

[00:03:21]So he has paraphas all the time. Now, now gestures are the least important within the communication. Um, some would argue that, but within his communication because they are not meaningful in any way, his brain is dropping those first.

[00:03:38]So, that is why one of the reasons why we are not seeing Donald Trump use the gestures the way that he used to.

[00:03:44]Something else happens, which I mentioned a little bit earlier, is the cognitive load increases. The constraints that Donald Trump has to perform at a high level, they are much lower than they were before because his brain is deteriorating. So, as the cognitive load increases to do things like make speech production, the gestures that require additional resources become diminished as the system becomes overloaded. For Donald Trump, someone who used to use this hand gesture all the time and is not using it anywhere near as much now, that decline, that decrease likely reflects reduced connection between understanding and movement. So, between the language and the gesture, less initiation of the brain itself, and increased difficulty with planning movements, gestures that were once previously automatic to him and helpful for his communication. Not saying they actually communicated anything meaningful, but they were great distractors. Now appear reduced because his speaking and thinking is so much more effortful. So that is my breakdown of why I think Donald Trump ever even started using his crazy gestures as well as why I think they have declined over the last couple of months. My opinion is that he has a brain that is deteriorating and he's got to go.