BECOMING MORE UNFIT?
Now I Agree that Trump Might Be in Cognitive Decline
I’ve always argued against it, but not anymore
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Since 2017, I’ve read progressives and liberals posting that Trump is in cognitive decline. I’ve fought against it. No, he wasn’t declining, I said. He was barely functional in intelligence; he always told gigantic, stupefying lies, was always semi-literate, and was a poor speaker about anything but bullshit. I recall when he discovered that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and “many people don’t know that.”
Notably, he also had no grasp of the government he ran or its history, thinking it was already a dictatorship like Putin’s and his predecessors were too weak to use their powers. If he wasn’t born into wealth, he would be in prison, homeless, or dead by now.
I always saw claims of Trump’s dementia to be part of wishful thinking about the 25th Amendment, which wouldn’t have worked anyway. Its giant loopholes make it impossible to remove a mentally ill president. It was written to deal with a vegetative president.
Why is he popular with about 42% of the country? Because he’s a “tough leader,” meaning he’s tough on everybody else while not being self-disciplined. Certain people admire a man who’s a law unto himself. (See any Clint Eastwood Western). He also “tells it like it is,” meaning that he’s unrestrained by decorum and is otherwise a crass and mean person. Also, many of them admire his vindictiveness, while others fear it. I could already predict the highest names on Trump’s hit list: Mike Pence, Hillary Clinton, Jeff Bezos (owner of the Washington Post), Liz Cheney, and dozens of other names, news organizations, and anyone who’s ever been in his way. Trump knows revenge is crucial to his success as a candidate, so he’s also offered to “share” his revenge ethic with his supporters. (See The Godfather).
People who thought he had dementia would cite a host of reasons: he stands funny, walks funny, slurs his speech sometimes, holds a drinking glass with two hands, walks funny, and doesn’t know truths from lies (he definitely does), and so on.
Finally, he boasted about acing a cognitive test. An unwritten rule is if you brag about your score on a cognitive test, it doesn’t matter how many questions you got right. You failed.
But he would’ve failed it at any point in his life as he could never restrain himself from flaunting his score. There has never been any shortage of indications that he was a surprisingly stupid person. (Read Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough, or any book by David Kay Johnston.)
It might be hard to hide your mistakes and falsehoods with the 24-hour news cycle focused on you, but it’s also easy to fake genius from a position of power. Just look at how people have defended Elon Musk. The idea of such an influential person being gerbil-brained stupid is too scary for some people to contemplate.
A change in speech
I took care of my father as he was dying of Lewy Body Dementia. The one striking early symptom I remember is the tone of his speaking voice changed. He sounded sleepy, mournful, and under-confident.
Trump’s voice has also undergone a dramatic change. Here he is from his 2016 victory speech (start at 5:00):
Here he is this earlier year (start 56:00):
At the very least, he sounds like he’s phoning it in from long distance. His tone slides sleepily.
Is he smelling worse?
I’ve heard complaints recently about Trump’s body odor. How true is this? Since Adam Kinzinger says it, I’m calling it reasonably well substantiated. Yet, why is it only now people are noting this? Has it become worse? That would be another indication of dementia.
If Trump is in cognitive decline, the frightening thing is he’s going to become even dumber.