Here's a brief little timeline of Donald Trump's recent cognitive decline:
September 16: Says you need ID to buy a loaf of bread. (No you don't.)
September 18: Claims that under Biden, we would be in World War II. (World War II already happened.)
September 18: Says he beat Obama in 2016. (He beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.)
September 26: Tells a rally audience that Jeb Bush invaded Iraq. (George W. Bush led us into Iraq.)
October 8: Says Hannibal Lecter was a great actor. (Lecter was a fictional character played by the great actor Anthony Hopkins.)
October 13: Thinks Obama is currently president. (Joe Biden is the current president.)
October 14: Says Republicans "eat their young" when they attack him. (The teleprompter probably said "eat their own.")
These aren't examples of routine Trump crackpottery. He says crazy stuff all the time. These are examples of Trump flatly forgetting or confusing things that he once knew. He's losing it.
I’ve been seeing stuff about Trump having dementia for a very long time. I believed it for a while but if true it is progressing very slowly. I remember that video of him getting off Air Force 1 and just sort of wandering around. And that time he couldn’t say origin and instead kept saying oranges. What I think may be the case is that when stuff like that happens it’s because he’s sleep deprived. From what I understand he often is up all hours reading about himself and rage tweeting.
I agree. Plus, if I talked as much as TFG does, some weird stuff would probably come out of my mouth at times too. If we can't convince his cult (I mean, his voters) he's evil, we sure as heck aren't going to peel any off with the dementia thing.
I think Kevin is right because the things Trump has said lately have been more off than usual and they can’t be attributed to ignorance. (Saying Obama would to start WWII for example). Don’t forget his father had Alzheimer’s which puts him at higher risk. Also dementia’s onset is often slow and erratic as it was with Reagan. He clealry already had Alzheimer’s in office, around the time of the Iran Contra insanity. He was so out of it his staff seriously considered invoking the 25th amendment. When they brought Howard Baker in to evaluate him Reagan perked up — as people in the early stages often do — so they and the media decided to pretend he was OK. I also remember his personally chosen biographer Edmund Morris talking about how Reagan was slipping, citing as one example Reagan writing in his diary about an dinner he said has happened that day that had not yet occurred.
It would probably help if he stopped huffing crushed Adderal tablets...
Jr. is the one who seems to have a big time drug problem.
I don’t get why so many people portray Eric as the dumb one when Don Jr. Is clearly the family dunce. People who have known Trump for years talk about how The Donald repeatedly called Don Jr an idiot.
Yea, the problem for people trying to convince the electorate that Trump *or* Biden are in the grip of dementia is that both men were famous for extemporaneous rambling even when they were much younger. So while you can show clips of them mis-speaking or getting confused, its hard to say its really anything age related for either of them.
There was much more footage of him previously compared to now. When he campaigned in 2016, he did many more events, interviews, and rallies than he’s doing this year. He only does a handful of these a month now. When he was in the WH there were many events. The fact that he’s having this many mistakes in such a short period, shows decline.
To an outsider it can look normal if you think the comparison is the same. This is probably a horrible analogy, but Hall of Fame pitcher Catfish Hunter was known to give up the home run frequently compared to other high quality pitchers even in his prime. In his best year, he gave up a HR every 15 innings pitched. At the end, when he was basically done he was giving up a home run every 7 innings pitched. The casual baseball fan didn’t notice it, because he thought well “Catfish always gave up long ball.”
It won’t matter. As long as he is still breathing, he’ll get a minimum of 45% of the vote. Hell, even if he’s dead and obviously propped up Weekend At Bernie’s style, he’ll get 45% of the vote. Until and unless the Republican Party gets his name off the ballot, his fans will vote for him forever.
It is closer to true to say that anyone or anything running as the RepubliQan candidate will get 45% of the vote. Thre MAGA Trumpers will line up behind Trump even if he's dead - but so will the rest of the RepubliQans.
A fine example of this was in the House 2 days ago. A Representative (I don't remember her name) was a solid never-voting-for-Jordan who flipped. Her explanation was something like - he sucks but if not him we have to work with Democrats and that can never happen.
I don’t know that this is true. Or more accurately, I don’t doubt that 45% of the electorate would vote for anybody with an R after their name but the difference between Donald Trump (R) being on the ballot and, say, Mike Pence (R) being on the ballot would be visible in total votes cast. Even if both gain 45% shares, an election with Trump might have 155m turn out and an election with Pence might only have 130m turn out. More so than others, Trump really does drive turn out.
And there are definitely people out there who would cause the 45% floor to vanish. For example, in a bizarro world where Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi somehow switched parties, gained the R nomination and appeared in the general, I could easily see them getting 20-25% of the vote. There are tons of people who could never successfully run as Republicans, no matter how genuine their switch or how much funding they had. The choice of candidate still matters: there are candidates that don’t excite (and in many cases actively repel) Republicans as much as others.
Not saying it isn't dementia, but there's the possibility that Trump has gotten lazy(or tired) and simply throws stuff out there - usually names, but sometimes technology (gas stoves), economics, and crime - which his MAGA base eats up.
If you watch the clips where Trump is error-laden, his physical posture is one of someone who doesn't much care to expend energy - to the point of not standing tall and poised - which he tended to do in the past.
That is my guess, too. He is tired and really lazy - and - he knows he can stand up there and say he'd tasted the cheese the moon is made out of, and it is wonderful.
The MAGAs will cheer, and our useless press will point out that President Biden studders.
Saw a clip of Trump talking to the CA GOP and another of him talking to Mark Levine on Fox. Both times he elaborated on a giant valve in NO.CA. He asked the GOP group - have you seen it? He told Levine it is so big it takes all day to open. That the socialist, communist, child mutilating Newsome won't open the valve to save a fish. Not doing very well by the way. The water goes to the Pacific. If they worked with Trump, rich people in Beverly Hills - have you spoke to them? They smell bad because their showers go drip. drip. drip. If the valve was opened they could take real showers. The central valley would not have patches of farms. The entire valley would be filled with crops making farmers billions and billions. The water would be used to dampen their forests eliminating forest fires. Truly bugfuck crazy. Imagine if Biden said anything close to this.
Yeah, why bother to prepare or have a coherent thought when he can just throw out any old crap and his adoring crowd will eat it up. These are not deep thinkers and he could tell them anything for a cheer.
It would be fitting if Trump lost all his marbles on the stand and destroyed his own case in every trial.
Then in a fit of rage after the fact, claimed that his lawyers had provided him with inadequate representation for failing to bring up his mental fitness to be tried. Further, he would claim that he was now mentally stable again and should have his convictions overturned.
Some of this is Obama obsession. He just can't stand that Obama made fun of him and is so popular.
As for the ID thing, that's just a right-wing attempt to justify voting restrictions. The letters to the editor of the local newspaper and Thanksgiving dinner are packed with claims that you need an ID to do things that definitely do not require ID.
It's right up there with the right-wing claims that "illegals" are being handed tons of goodies that citizens have to work for. It's not real. It's just an expression of their feelings.
When someone is developing symptoms of dementia, it takes a lot of evidence to convince those who love him that dementia is the real problem. People will continue making excuses, minimizing and denying until they can't any more because the cognitive dissonance is too great. But we all know how high the threshold for cognitive dissonance the Trump followers is -- pretty much infinitely high.
maybe. but trump has been spewing incoherent nonsense for years, so i don't think any of this can definitively be identified as signs of dementia. anyone his age will have some cognitive decline, but i think think all of this can easily be attributed to trump just being a rambling idiot.
Almost all of these things aren't actually signs of dementia. They're references to keep his base paranoid and riled up.
ID to buy a loaf of bread: this is to bang the drum of fears about "show me your papers."
WW2: I got nothing on this one, but this could just as easily be a simple slip-up.
Beat Obama in 2016: Obama is still one of the Big Bads to his base. Clinton is no longer relevant, but Biden is and there's a really whacko nutjob conspiracy theory out there about how Obama is "still president" with Biden as his puppet. See below as well.
Jeb Bush invaded Iraq: this is to remind Republicans to stay fringe and not go back to "moderate" candidates.
Hannibal Lecter: Trump is cunning, but rather stupid in other ways. He clearly meant character, not actor, or else he meant Hopkins and not Hannibal. But they're not unrelated. Sign of dementia? Maybe, but it's a weak one.
Obama is president: this is a straight up conspiracy theory among his reporters, and he's referring to that.
"Eat their young": Like the Lecter incident, he said the wrong thing, but it's not entirely unrelated conceptually. Maybe a sign of dementia, or maybe the guy's just a fucking idiot who can't remember shit correctly and never could.
He's always talked this way. It's just simple old person crazy talk. I haven't noticed any difference. I don't think it's dementia, I think he's just stupid and crazy, and he always has been.
maybe the guy's just a fucking idiot who can't remember shit correctly and never could.
I agree -- Trump's mental deficiency isn't necessarily clinical dementia, but simply monumental stupidity. As Fran Lebowitz says, "trust me, you don't know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump." Because he really knows nothing about the world, popular culture, politics, etc., and has an absolutely galactic-sized ego that sucks up most of his mental energy, he largely just rambles when he talks and reflects back bits and pieces of stuff people tell him, or that he thinks will get a rise out of his audience, without having the least clue about its context or what the fuck he's talking about. He remembers he hates Hillary and Obama and so just bandies their names about whenever he talks about something he thinks sucks, because he can't be bothered to think for a second about what the actual facts are. Like they matter to his base anyway.
Naturally, had Biden done any of this, the media would be in a complete meltdown calling for his immediate resignation and institutionalization.
And in this Trump is a perfect reflection of the people who vote for him, but on a galactic scale. He reflects their ideal self.
I rather agree with you. He knows so little and is not interested in anything. I think he just regurgitates bits and pieces so he sounds like he is "in the know". I think he knows squat and he shows it.
Agreed. I don't think the non MAGA populace nor the mainstream media has ever really come to terms with an actual President and ex-President who barely cares about what comes out of his pie hole.
You can see it blatently with regards to his various court cases. The normal response of someone who is the subject of a court case is massive anxiety over what they previously said or might say. The normal response is not to go on social media and blab away.
But Trump always says whatever the hell he wants, and does not care if any of it is true. His base loves that. They all wish they could get something as ridiculously wrong as the World Wars and no one would call them on it.
Unfortunately, I am not betting on being saved by dementia.
"... and that's indicative of the fact that Donald just doesn't know anything."
(David Cay Johnston on C-SPAN in 2016, after the release of his book The Making of Donald Trump)
And I vote for the best ever joke on this, from Rick Wilson when the phone call to Zelenski broke:
"And don't forget, Donald Trump couldn't find Ukraine on a map if there was a giant letter "U" along with a picture of a big Crane on it."
I think you're wrong about the ID thing. The reference to needing IDs to buy groceries is about Voter IDs and is something he has said in the past. So it's about voter fraud.
Regarding Hopkins vs. Lechter, Trump has always been both bad at names and bad at separating people from context. Remember Tim Apple?
Well, either/or on the ID thing I guess. I'd forgotten about that other craziness. Probably plays to both crowds, with quite a bit of overlap or that Venn diagram might even just be one circle.
Dementia is like bankruptcy....it goes slowly then very quickly. Yes each case is different.
I don't think I'm forgetting more as I get older, though I do have more to forget, but it takes me longer to recover so people notice now. Sort of like trip hazards, as you slow down a bit, you less likely to catch yourself so you're more likely to fall, and more likely to hurt yourself if you fall and take longer to recover. You can also develop balance problems making you more likely to trip and fall--that's the dementia analogy. You may be able to cover that for a while, then you'll start blaming others for trying to trip you up, then the problem becomes obvious.
This may all be acute anxiety along with, as mentioned above, lack of sleep and an almost unique mental laziness in all areas except cultivating grievances.
When Trump says Obama is still president, he is echoing a rightwing conspiracy theory that Joe Biden is a puppet and Obama is the puppet master.
"A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest."
This is definitely true of the maga set. They gleaned pearls of wisdom from the word salad that Palin spewed out, and they automagically correct the Defendant's gibberish... that is, if they even remember who the last few presidents were.
Next thing you know, he'll be saying working in the office makes people 50% more productive and inflation isn't that big of a deal!
" Says Republicans "eat their young".."
You sure that is not true?
t-Rump isn't losing it, he he lost it a long time ago. He definitely has lalorrhea. And his megats adore him. Makes one sort of wonder doesn't it.
There is another option. If one views Trump as having a mental illness, and perhaps a serous one, then he can be viewed as decompensating. To borrow a dictionary definition, decompensation is "losing the ability to maintain normal or appropriate psychological defenses, sometimes resulting in depression, anxiety, or delusions." His legal (and other) issues have put him under considerable stress, and decompensation is the predictable result.
It's been bandied about for a long time in my circle that Trump displays some form of aphasia. I was in for Broca's when I first heard back in '16 or thereabouts. Now I'm tending to anomic aphasia. If it's not something else, and given his diet and family history, increasingly looks to be the case.
Also keep in mind that Trump is far too vain to wear the glasses that he needs, so he often misreads his teleprompter. Not necessarily dementia when he says something stupid.
It’s difficult for those who see Trump as an existential threat to separate out signs of Trump’s declining mental health from our own biases and wishful thinking. Trump has always been a “know-nothing,” which his detractors often incorrectly claim is idiocy. Trump’s intellectual laziness and the incredible stress he is experiencing from all his legal issues, combined with his poor physical health, are just as likely a source for these mental slips as some form of cognitive decline.
Until we see unmistakable evidence of a cognitive decline, it’s wishful thinking to assume he is suffering from dementia. The cause of Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior is simply overdetermined.
+1
Fred likely was in better physical condition than Donald due to likely better eating habits, better weight control, lack of Adderal habit, & more sleep.
Yes, Fred wasn't diagnosed with dementia until he was 86, & Alzheimers's 2 years later, & trump is 77 - but isn't it quite possible that the son's habits have been such that he was on the road to physical & mental ruin at an earlier age than his father - who might have avoided a timely diagnosis himself?
And you can bet that Donald,, whose financial gifts from his father were not all done by legal means, was not sympathetic when his father was sick - trump considers such people to be losers, like those who serve in the military, even when drafted, let alone those who have been injured (suckers) or captured (like John McCain).
Do not give this man credit for being either sane or deserving of sympathy- something that he has never given to others. Fred raised him to he as dishonest, unscrupulous, & vicious as he was.
He is certainly a pathological liar and completely delusional. I have no problem with the dementia narrative whether it is completely true or not. The entire GOP/MAGA/Faux News world has been screaming about Biden's mental decline for years, except when they complain that the foxy old geezer stole their lunch money in negotiating the budget.
Agreed that those examples do not support an assertion that he is suffering above average decline. Mistakes, mild confusion, habitual lying.