Start bookmarking these clips, people. You will want to be able to put some of them side by side and determine which rallies displayed the GOP frontrunner falling apart definitively, and this particular rally is going to be right up there. Trump in North Carolina Saturday (followed by an equally loony display in Virginia) was an epic tour de farce of slurred words, mispronunciations, malapropisms, forgotten names, and the usual makeup malfunction. His hair now looks like road kill glued to his head.
“It’s unbelievable, believe me. I mean, Ripley said believe it or not, but you should believe because you gotta believe, believe me.” He knows words.
— William Elsman (@williamelsman) March 2, 2024
There is a difference between an aging brain and one that’s dementing.
I had to speak out now because the 2024 election might turn on this issue of who is cognitively capable: Biden or Trump? It’s a major issue that will affect some people’s votes. Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.
Almost as if on cue, in a series of speeches and interviews at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and elsewhere last week — which took place after my conversation with Dr. Gartner — Donald Trump again manifested these symptoms. So I spoke with Dr. Gartner again on Tuesday about Donald Trump’s recent behavior, what comes next if his apparent cognitive challenges and related maladies continue to worsen, the dilemma of having human sympathy and concern for a vile person like Donald Trump, and why so many medical professionals (and members of the news media, political class, and others with a public platform) are continuing to be silent about the corrupt ex-president’s very troubling and dangerous behavior.
We spoke last week about how Donald Trump’s apparent mental and emotional challenges and pathologies appear to be getting much worse. That conversation was widely read and circulated — including by the British and other foreign news media. Why do you think your warnings gained so much traction?
Most of us have known someone, possibly in our own families, who’s had Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. The diagnostic signs are not subtle. My warnings and conclusions about Trump simply confirmed what many people had already observed and concluded for themselves but didn’t have the authority to assert. I was giving voice to what ordinary people see with their own eyes, and they were grateful for validation from a mental health professional.
And this doctor was asked about “score settling” by Trump against “the truth tellers” namely himself.
Wow. That is a powerful way of putting it — yes, there is going to be score settling for the truth-tellers. We’re really seeing in real time how a people can be beaten down. People who were enthusiastic members of “the resistance” against Trump and the MAGA movement are now saying, “I can’t do it. I’m intimidated.” The reality and potential for retaliation by Trump and his followers is extremely real. In 2016, what were my peers afraid of? The American Psychiatric Association? What was the worst that could have happened to us? We could have been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association. So what?! With Trump trying to come back to power, people are looking over their shoulders out of a reasonable fear of professional, social economic, and even criminal retaliation, as well as the threat of political violence from the right wing. We weren’t making those risk assessments before.
And here’s the role of the media.
I don’t want to say the mainstream media is covering up Trump’s cognitive disability, but they certainly aren’t covering it like the 5-alarm fire it is. The media will show Trump being combative and saying something outrageous and his audience reacting to it — but they are consistently not showing the parts of Trump’s speeches and interviews where his eyes go blank, his jaw goes slack, he looks confused, and slurs words, uses non-words, can’t finish a sentence, rambles, perseverates, confabulates and babbles incoherently. That’s what should make the 6 o’clock news. Doesn’t the media have a duty to warn the public that the man who wants the nuclear codes back (not including the ones he probably stole) is publicly displaying unimpeachable evidence of a broken and deteriorating brain?
This practitioner, John Gartner, is the one we quoted here a few days ago as diagnosing Trump with phonemic paraphasias. Check out that piece if you haven’t. This is scary but again, I don’t expect the Sunday political shows to be filled with analysis of Trump’s dementia, even though that is the number one news story in America right now and one of the top five in the world, along with the wars in Israel and Ukraine. But don’t expect it to be treated as such.
This still “ageist” concern is regarding a presidential candidate. Not any random AB private citizen.
Recorded, catalogued, verifiable data that substantiates what a lot of people know and see, but are too timid to lock horns with it, for fear of retribution. Time will take its corrosive toll and allow for, of facilitate, a final white anted reckoning. Then there’ll be dancing in the streets.
I’ve been visiting a memory care unit for two years. I’ve seen formerly competent professionals degrade from simple memory problems to an inability to recognize family or people who work with them daily. Their confusion intensifies as does their communication problems. Some develop an inability to even find their room or their private bathroom. One lady, formerly a pharmacist, talks to an imagery dog. Another stares at their plate of food trying to figure out the fork or spoon dilemma. My point is, given the increase in his verbal nonsense, he is declining rapidly and November is far away given the daily stresses he’s under. We should expect him to get worse. I wonder how many in the crowd are leaning over to their spouse and asking: what did he just say?
Why are we as a formerly responsible nation just burying our heads in the sand instead of having him independently assessed regarding his mental status before the election? I’m not talking about the everday voting Americans I’m talking about the far too many stick their heads in the sand policultians who don’t appear to care if he can still spell his name in November as long as he is awarded access to our nuclear codes. We probably don’t need to worry about Russia anymore. Our globe, country, and lives when this orange a**hole bomb will be history after he moves back into the White House.
more to the point, his lawyers are going to want to use this as a get out of jail free card. that would certainly mean Trump would have to quit the race. that would put Haley in the best position to take over and frankly with all the noise about biden’s age she might be able to win. that or they could pull the DeSantis bot out of storage and charge his batteries.