As we know, Trump loves to call any criticism including factual reporting that’s unfavorable to him as Fake News. We got used to that, and also that the more and/or louder he screamed Fake News the more justified the criticism, reporting and even mocking. However Trump clearly believes regardless of the powers provided to Presidents by the Constitution HE has unlimited power. So recently he’s moved from complaining to outright censorship.
The most glaring example was the recent attempt to get Jimmy Kimmel off the airwaves. ABC and its parent company are trying to complete a $6Billion merger that requires federal regulatory approval. I don’t know about you but if Trump didn’t think of it himself, someone suggested using the withholding of approval as leverage to force ABC to dump Kimmel. That’s why FCC head Brenden Carr could so bluntly and publicly threaten the network. His ‘we can do this the easy way or the hard way’ comment caused ABC to cave to Trumpty’s demand to silence a comedian who regularly exposed his stupidity. Well, Team Trump overplayed it’s hand and Kimmel is back on the air.
Alas, it’s a given that Trump and his minions aren’t giving up. Worse, some are it seems figuring out more subtle ways of limiting the public’s ability to see/hear anything less than total MAGA style worship of Trumpty-Dumpty. Tweets being deleted, yes by users but although Musk would deny it deleting or hiding content to avoid the wrath of Trump is almost certain. Videos have been removed from YouTube. It’s a given that attempts were made in the recent Tik Tok deal to be able to regulate critical stuff about Trump even if it doesn’t work out that way. And now we have this article from Newsweek telling us Google is steering search results away from a current hot topic – discussion of Trump’s seeming slide into dementia.
As Newsweek reminds us when Trump was sworn in back in January he was the oldest President to take the Oath of Office. They also remind us age and mental fitness were major issues during the campaign. Biden endured months of intense scrutiny before stepping aside and it continues to this day. Trump as the linked article note made plenty of gaffes and weird statements himself. What Newsweek does NOT get into is how little that got in comparison to Biden.
However Biden is off quietly living his life and dealing with prostate cancer. While the shame many journalists (and too many Democrats) feel about the treatment they visited on Biden and still speak/write to justify it the fact is a CLEARLY devolving Trump is abusing the virtually unlimited power SCOTUS has given him to lay waste to the country and the free world. He wasn’t “all there” in his first term and the campaign showed he was even less so. Trump’s general idiocy and dumbassery combined with his impulsiveness were always a bad mix but any objective observer can see with each passing month he’s getting worse.
It makes sense people looking at what’s going on, and thinking about Trump’s age and clearly poor physical health would want to know more about mental/cognitive stuff. It stands to reason there would be an increase in online searches for information about mental decline and dementia, and specifically whether the Trump we see and hear exhibits classic signs of it. Yet Google, the largest search engine has tweaked its AI to NOT generate a list of specific articles regarding Trump’s dementia/possible dementia. Instead it’s a more generalized list.
Google’s AI Overview did not provide a summary for the query “does Trump show signs of dementia,” despite doing so for a number of former presidents, according to a report by the Verge.
Newsweek contacted Google and the White House press office for comment via email on Thursday outside regular office hours.
On Tuesday, the Verge reported that searches for “does Trump show signs of dementia” and similarly worded queries were failing to produce a Google AI Overview result, though Google AI Overviews were available when the same question was asked about former presidents.
When Newsweek searched for “does Trump show signs of dementia” on October 2, Google’s AI Overview did not produce a custom AI summary. Instead, it offered a list of the top search results, per Google’s traditional system.
You might say well, that figures and it’s probably just some accident of trying to be careful about promoting speculation on high profile people like Presidents. Yet as we learn from the linked article if you type in a similar query about Biden you get the full treatment! Google’s AI Overview gladly pops out a list of things to look at when asked ‘does Biden show signs of dementia.’ However it’s even worse than that:
“As of October 2025, there has been ongoing speculation and public concern regarding former President Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities and whether he shows signs of dementia,” the AI Overview said.
Google’s AI Overview did not provide a summary for the query “does Trump show signs of dementia,” despite doing so for a number of former presidents, according to a report by the Verge.
Newsweek contacted Google and the White House press office for comment via email on Thursday outside regular office hours.
If you think this is all a big coincidence or that I need to be fitted for a tinfoil hat consider this: YouTube which is owned by Google suspended Trump’s account following the January 6 riots. Trumpty reacted exactly the way you’d expect. Now that he’s President again and with FAR more leverage than he once had you can be assured he put the screws to Google, albeit in a far more subtle way than having a minion like Brenden Carr make a public mafia style threat. For once he let his lawyers do the talking and guess what? On Monday there was a court filling saying Google’s parent company, Alphabet had agreed to a $24.5 Million settlement. Don’t think for one second that there’s not a connection between that legal fight and Google suddenly screwing with ‘Dementia Don’ search results!
I’m sure lots of conservatives including on Capitol Hill think both that this kind of stuff Trump has been doing lately is bad and that it’s not just going to continue but get worse. By the time his term is up or Mother Nature finally does her job Trump will have amassed Presidential power beyond even the worst fears of our founders who worked so hard to prevent any one person but especially the President from holding such power. So, they are counting on a DEMOCRATIC President and other Democrats to NOT abuse that power the way Trump has. And that they are afraid to rein in.
Just like conservatives make a mess of the economy and explode the deficit and national debt and count on Democrats to fix it eventually (and we always do) they are counting on the same thing with Trump’s turning the Presidency into a Dictatorship. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that at least partially I’d like a Democratic President to give them a dose of their own medicine. And when they complain look them/the camera straight on and say ‘You didn’t say jack when Trump did this kind of thing and HE was screwing over all but rich cronies. Kiss my ass if you don’t like ME using the power you handed him to benefit the masses!’
Hmmm, yeah “… what’s going on, and thinking about Trump’s age and clearly poor physical health would want to know more about mental/cognitive stuff. It stands to reason there would be an increase in online searches for information about mental decline and dementia, and specifically whether the Trump we see and hear exhibits classic signs of …” total body rot! By extension, a related quandary: wonder if Melania would entertain being his full-time carer when his ‘total body rot’ finally takes hold, good an proper. Begs a question along the lines of how much would she be paid, or more to the point, how much would she charge, to be his full-time carer?
He’ll always be Dementia Donny to me.
He always was. He’s also always been Dumbass Don, Dimwit Don, Dickhead Don etc.