There are growing concerns about Trump’s cognitive decline. It remains to be determined how much ground President Joe Biden lost during his term in the White House. To be sure, his debate with Trump left people worried for pretty good reason; on the other hand, Biden had almost 50 years of service in Washington to fall back on as seasoned wisdom, offsetting some decline in acuity. But Donald Trump is now showing some of the same signs without those many years of trust built up, and comes back to the White House after having already established a weak grasp of facts, a highly undereducated view of the world and history, an obvious lack of attention span, and an already agreed-upon propensity to act arbitrarily. That is a devastating menu of concerns that is increasingly generating fear, as chronicled in a USA Today article out this morning.
The essay bases its concerns largely on Trump’s meandering press conference yesterday in which he twice referenced meeting Putin “in Russia” (It will be in Alaska) and went meandering off-topic on several occasions. Even Grok punted out some other concerns noted: (Anytime this column uses AI it will be expressly set out as below.)
During an August 11, 2025, briefing on homelessness and crime, Trump went on wild tangents about “transgender for everybody” and windmills, failing to stay focused on crime statistics. Observers called it “word salad,” with insiders labeling it a “clear sign of decline.”
Of the press conference, the USA Today piece noted:
Asked a specific question about whether other cities like Chicago and Los Angeles might expect similar action involving the use of the National Guard to combat crime, Trump said, in part, this:
“But when I look at Chicago and I look at LA, if we didn’t go to LA three months ago, LA would be burning like the part that didn’t burn. If you would’ve allowed the water to come down, which I told them about in my first term, I said, ‘You’re going to have problems, let it come down’. We actually sent in our military to have the water come down into LA. They still didn’t want it to come down after the fires. But that was it, we have it coming down. But hopefully LA is watching. That mayor also, the city is burning, they lost like 25,000 homes. I went there the day after the fire, you were there, and I saw people standing in front of a burned-down home. Their homes were incinerated, they weren’t like, even the steel, literally it was all warped, literally disintegrated because of the winds and the flames like a blow torch. They were standing on this beautiful day, maybe a couple of days after, we gave it a little time because of what they had suffered. Almost 25,000 homes. And you see what’s happening now.”
It is an almost impossible task to determine how much cognitive decline is present in the above ‘word salad,’ given that Trump has always been given to incoherent answers. All that can be said with certainty is that the man is not sufficiently sharp – this is especially true in light of the “going to Russia” mistakes, and that whatever the decline is, it will not be getting better.
The article’s second focus is on the press’s lack of attention to the matter, especially given the near obsession with Biden’s age and acuity during his term. Two mistakes like the Russia one would send the media into a tailspin that would occupy the Fox News cycle for two weeks. No one expects Fox News to cover the decline as much as it did Biden’s possible issues, but the hope would be that more mainstream outlets would press the issue:
I wish a reporter had asked Trump what “LA would be burning like the part that didn’t burn” means. I wish a reporter had asked the president if the DC crime wave he kept referring to was in the room with them as they spoke. But there was no pushback.
The Fox News folks and the right-wing radio squawkers and the Republicans who called the former president a dithering old fool need to start worrying about the competency of the current president.
One can wish, but that’s where a final element of the story comes into play: whether the press has been scared off from asking tough questions out of fear that they will be ignored altogether, or worse, banished from the room. There are accusations that Biden’s staff “hid” him from view, but no accusations that Biden’s administration hid from tough questions put forth by a tough press corps. We have already seen reporters having their access yanked over tough questions, leaving a dangerous situation- a man in mental decline and without anyone available to ask about it.
As for social media, that is a different story altogether. The posters on Bluesky (Follow me here) have certainly documented the concerns:
BREAKING: In a shocking moment, Trump forgets that he's going to Alaska to meet Putin this week. "It's embarrassing for me to be up here. I'm gonna see Putin. I'm going to Russia on Friday."Where is the coverage of his cognitive decline?
— My America 🇺🇸 (@oldamerica.bsky.social) 2025-08-11T16:20:07.785Z
Trump is in real cognitive decline. Paul doesn't work of the New York Times anymore.What Epstein file got up his ass this morning?
— Spicy Jalapeno (@jalapeno7.bsky.social) 2025-08-11T13:25:45.500Z
‘They want transgender for everybody’ hahahah what does that even mean. I keep thinking about some of the nonsense Trump spat yesterday. But it was Biden who was in cognitive decline?! Voting for Trump twice shows a USA in cognitive decline.
— DanTechnik (@dantechnik.bsky.social) 2025-08-12T07:16:28.463Z
Who actually writes Trump's social media posts? It's clearly not Trump given his cognitive decline. So someone else writes it. Does Trump even know what these people are writing?
— Dean Obeidallah (@deanobeidallah.bsky.social) 2025-08-04T15:48:18.639Z
Why is it that Radar Online is one of the few media outlets that has an accurate headline about Trump walking on the White House roof? He is clearly in massive cognitive decline, and mainstream media continues to ignore it. @mediabusters6.bsky.social radaronline.com/p/trump-whit…
— David Hoff (@davidhoff10.bsky.social) 2025-08-06T14:41:55.310Z
Of course, you know this site documents every significant instance, or you wouldn’t be reading this column; still, it remains concerning that the questions don’t arise more often. One can safely assume that the signs won’t be diminishing. Indeed, as one might expect, it seems as though significant stress exacerbates the symptoms.
So we should be cheering on all media that consistently note that the indicia are there, ever more prominently, and even when it can be tough to tell, given what is considered the bizarre baseline. He was never sharp, but he used to be able to pull off being somewhat funny. No more.
It remains an ever-increasingly dangerous problem, especially given his tendency for heavy-handed approaches to exploding executive authority. The more out of it he gets, the more severe he may lash out. It was already terrifying. So now what?
**** Please follow me now on Bluesky
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and also on X at @JasonMiciak.
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In Alice In Wonderland there’s ‘The Queen of Hearts’ who has and exhibits: an extreme temper; narcissism; and an obsession with hurting others. These are possibly symptoms of NPD (narcissistic personality disorder). Trump also, has demonstrated a tendency to attack his critics and opponents; the media; and officials who may cross him. Just like the Queen of Hearts, he has no respect for the democratic institution of law: he’ll happily go project a sentence before a verdict.
Then there’s the Cheshire Cat where Trump appears to parallel its nine lives of endurance and persistence, whilst showing no clear logical, rational decision and direction; but align with indecision-taken half-baked cakes, that are topped with an unthinking thick mucoid word-driven layer of verbal reality. All combined in a way that shows his declined and declining state, to a point where he, in the public eye, only manages to shape facts, rather than authentically state them in actuality, or genuinely reflect upon them … before, and during, him engaging his brain and yap. It’s sad and embarrassing to both witness and endure, and also to cringe from. To the rational observer and thinker, they must ponder WTF is wrong with this giant dickhead? God have mercy on him, and God help us all.
The billionaires get what the billionaires want.
George Carlin summed it up as follows: the rich keep all the money and PAY NO TAXES; the middle class works shit jobs for shit pay, and pay all the taxes; the poor are there to scare the hell out of the middle class so they’ll show up for their crappy job.
Questions? Nope.
Give mister cognitive test another one. I THINK he could pass with the right list of words to remember. That part where you’re given some words, told to file them away and then a little later asked to repeat them back. In Trump’s case there ARE words I think he could remember. Sorry for the crassness but he’d pass that part with flying colors if the words were “Tits, pussy, f**king, sex and Ivanka.” I’ll bet all this Epstein stuff has got him thinking about banging his oldest daughter again. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to make a big deal out of THOSE five words when bragging about his memory!
The recent evidence of Trump’s continuing cognitive slide reminds me of a conversation I had with my father when he was in the throes of mid-stage Alzheimer’s. He asked me some question about a sports telecast we were watching, and I answered. Ten seconds later he asked the same question; I gave a slightly different answer. This continued for seven repetitions of his question, until I gently steered the the conversation in a different direction. That symptom of dementia is the obvious cause for Trump’s repeating, again and again, the assertion that his administration has cut drug prices “1500 percent.” I hope by now some aide has quietly taken him aside and asked him not mention that percentage in public. But if one has, the warning hasn’t taken effect, for the same reason that I had trouble distracting my father from his “question.” Dementia sufferers’ minds run in grooves, and it’s difficult to shake them out of those grooves. Any unbiased observer only needs to see a few sound bites from Trump’s press conferences to conclude that he is deep into mid-term dementia. The shameful thing is not that Trump has lost a lost chunk of his mental faculties; the true shame belongs to Republican politicians, officials, influencers and candidates who deny or slide past what any TV viewer knows to be true. They are the ones history should vilify, just as it has vilified the Nazis who refused to acknowledge Hitler’s insanity. Let’s pray that the results aren’t the same for the U.S. in the 21st Century.
They will be.