OK, Maybe He has Dementia.
He's canceling events, speaking incoherently, and bobbing to music for 40 minutes.
Hey everyone. This week, we’re talking about Donald Trump’s mental deterioration. Guys, I am officially worried about his brain.
What happened to Trump this week?
So, if you missed what was happening, on Monday night Trump held a town hall with dog genocider South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. He was supposed to take questions, but after only a few minutes the event descended into chaos, with two people fainting from the heat inside the venue. Trump ended the Q&A and decided to just…listen to music for almost 40 minutes, standing on stage and bopping along.
It “reignited” discussion about Trump’s cognitive decline. Here is a piece from Cornell University:
Harry Segal is a senior lecturer in the Psychology Department at Cornell University and in the Psychiatry Department at Weill Cornell Medicine. He says Trump’s awkward display at his rally was another clear sign of mental decline.
Segal says: “What’s alarming is how the rate of Trump’s bizarre speech and political decisions have been increasing. He gave an answer about childcare to the Economic Club of New York so incoherent that even his supporters were concerned. Last week he got cognitively lost in a rally and began to talk about the ‘eight circles’ that Biden filled up with journalists. No one on his staff has been able to explain the reference.1
So, that happened. Then, later in the week, Trump started pulling out of interviews…a lot of interviews. He was scheduled to do interviews with NBC, CNBC, and was also supposed to give a speech to the NRA. He backed out of all three. Then, this morning it was reported that he backed out of an interview with The Shade Room, citing “exhaustion.” Here is POLITICO with that story:
Recently, it’s becoming something of a pattern: Trump is scheduled for an interview with a neutral media outlet, the date nears and then … things fall apart.
It happened just this week to planned Trump sit-downs with NBC in Philadelphia and CNBC’s “Squawk Box” — and that’s on the heels of him backing out of a “60 Minutes” episode earlier this month.
Why does this keep happening? Playbook has learned that yet another outlet was given an explanation by Trump’s team for why their own interview wasn’t coming to fruition: exhaustion.
Spoiler: Being President of the United States is a little more demanding than doing interviews.
It is hard to imagine what the reaction would have been had if Joe Biden were the one doing this. Just a few weeks ago the Press was complaining about Harris not sitting down for interviews with the major networks and instead choosing to do the Podcast circuit. It all feels like the distant past now that Trump is actively canceling events.
I have said for a long time that I do not think Trump has dementia, so the headline for this piece is a little tongue-in-cheek. But I do not think Trump voters should be under any illusion: He is absolutely too old to do the job for another four years. A vote for Trump is essentially a vote for J.D. Vance.
It’s not just him backing out of interviews though; if you look at his public speeches, he is becoming more incoherent. The New York Times sort of nailed it with the headline for this piece: “Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age.” And then the piece itself gets it:
Former President Donald J. Trump vividly recounted how the audience at his climactic debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was on his side. Except that there was no audience. The debate was held in an empty hall. No one “went crazy,” as Mr. Trump put it, because no one was there.
Anyone can misremember, of course. But the debate had been just a week earlier and a fairly memorable moment. And it was hardly the only time Mr. Trump has seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality lately. In fact, it happens so often these days that it no longer even generates much attention.
He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own “beautiful” body. He relishes “a great day in Louisiana” after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is “trying to kill me”when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.
Not great. I wanted to go back and look at how severe Trump’s decline has been, because I have been watching more of him the past few weeks and he just sounds terrible. Maybe it’s in my head? But look at this:
This is Trump in 2015. This is Trump earlier today:
The contrast there is insane. I know, it has been nine years between the two videos. But that is a pretty big decline.
Axios also had another breakdown of Trump canceling events:
With only 17 days to go until Election Day, the spate of cancellations gives voters fewer chances to hear from Trump before heading to the polls in a coin toss race.
Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has been on a media blitz after enduring criticism from Republicans about a perceived lack of interviews.
And while Harris has ventured into the unfriendly territory of a Fox News interview, Trump has stuck to the safe spaces of conservative outlets.
In the appearances he has made, Trump's rhetoric has grown more violent and nativist. In recent weeks, he has decried his critics as the "enemy from within" and fanned the flames of false conspiracy theories about migrants.
In an interview on CNN, Maggie Haberman went into why Trump’s speeches have gotten crazier:
I said this after the debate, but listen to the way aides talk about Trump: They have to hide him from the Press. They have to get him to reduce the length of his speeches. They have to be careful about not letting something trigger him.
Basically, everyone in the conservative movement that has more than two brain cells to rub together openly says the obvious: The guy needs to be controlled or he will implode. It is an open admission that he is unqualified.
Dueling Town Halls
I want to end by highlighting Kamala and Trump’s performances at the Univision Town Halls. The reaction to both seem to move into totally opposite directions. Essentially, the undecided Latino voters who attended the town halls were not impressed with Trump and were more impressed with Kamala. Watch this response from Trump, and pay attention to the faces from people in the audience.
A line that stood out to me, aside from him calling January 6th a day of love: “Ashley Babbit was killed. Nobody was killed.” How does his brain say and “complete” that sentence?
Harris’s team took the correct approach today asking about his “exhaustion,” and how he can be expected to do the job if he can’t even campaign. The truth is, the thing that they hit Joe Biden with so much that it forced him out of the race is now circling back on Trump, less than three weeks before the election.
I’m coming back in the middle of next week. See you all then.
If you are wondering about the “circles” thing, it’s here. Yes, it makes no sense.