Amid widespread criticism from Democrats that the media haven’t applied the same standards to Trump’s as they did to President Joe Biden – there’s a growing recognition that Trump is suffering from serious cognitive deterioration. Euphemisms aren’t being used. The latest report comes in a heavily documented New York Times deep-dive. Some excerpts:
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.
With Mr. Biden out, Mr. Trump, at 78, is now the oldest major party nominee for president in history and would be the oldest president ever if he wins and finishes another term at 82. A review of Mr. Trump’s rallies, interviews, statements and social media posts finds signs of change since he first took the political stage in 2015. He has always been discursive and has often been untethered to truth, but with the passage of time his speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past.
And:
According to a computer analysis by The New York Times, Mr. Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. Proportionately, he uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age.
Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change. And he uses swearwords 69 percent more often than he did when he first ran, a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition. (A study by Stat, a health care news outlet, produced similar findings.)
Mr. Trump frequently reaches to the past for his frame of reference, often to the 1980s and 1990s, when he was in his tabloid-fueled heyday. He cites fictional characters from that era like Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lip” (he meant “Silence of the Lambs”), asks “where’s Johnny Carson, bring back Johnny” (who died in 2005) and ruminates on how attractive Cary Grant was (“the most handsome man”). He asks supporters whether they remember the landing in New York of Charles Lindbergh, who actually landed in Paris and long before Mr. Trump was born.
Some Trump associates insists there aren’t any shift. But many other observers notice a stark change.
Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, said: “He’s definitely more undisciplined, unhinged and deranged. He’s always had these tendencies but, as he’s gotten older, they’ve become much greater. The Hannibal Lecter stuff or the shark versus electrocution stuff is just insane, just crazy and should be discussed on that basis.
“But it’s a big mistake just to talk about Trump being unhinged or insane. You’ve got to talk about also how dangerous and retrograde what he’s saying is. We also ought to stress the extreme racism and misogyny.”
That quote comes from an article in the Guardian, titled “‘Undisciplined, unhinged and deranged’: will Trump’s strange behavior hurt him at the polls?” with the subhead “While he’s always been quick to insult, he’s now frequently vicious, and his speeches are increasingly disjointed.”
Some excerpts
:
[…]While he’s always been quick to insult, he’s now frequently vicious, and his speeches are increasingly disjointed
Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has spent years saying the unsayable to entertain, goad and grab attention. But his pronouncements over the past few weeks have plumbed new depths of absurdity and incoherence.
Trump, 78, increasingly slurs or stumbles over his words, raising fears over cognitive decline. He is slipping in polls against Kamala Harris and knows that defeat could lead to criminal trials and even prison. After a decade of dominating American politics, critics say, Trump could be in the throes of a final meltdown.
His verbal output now is “absolute batshittery”, according to Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill. “These are not the musings of a well-adjusted adult. He demonstrates daily how unfit he is to have the most powerful position in the world.”
Trump was mostly given a pass by the mainstream media, Setmayer added, because of the intense focus on Joe Biden’s age and mental acuity when he was still running. “Now the focus is solely on him because he is the oldest candidate in this race. His kookery is even more highlighted now than before because he is alone on an island with his deterioration.”
And:
Democrats see Trump as a politician in decline. Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “He has definitely lost a step, as they say. He is less coherent than he was certainly four years ago.
“He used to insult people in a way that got to one of their problems, like ‘Little Marco’ [Rubio], but now he’s just throwing random insults. Whatever you say about Kamala Harris, she’s not mentally disabled. That’s crazy. A lot of people have noticed he would occasionally be off the wall but now it seems to be more so.”
Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, recalls that in 2016 Trump could read from a teleprompter like he believed it – but now he sounds like he does not want to be here. “He reminds you of a sixth-grade boy having read something out loud at the front of the class who’s generally pissed off that he’s there and not on the soccer field.”
Leading mental health experts, including a former White House doctor, have expressed alarm over Donald Trump’s mental faculties, suggesting he’s showing signs of “cognitive decline.”
Several experts told The Independent their concerns about the Republican presidential nominee are similar to those they had about President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race, warning Trump appears to “have lost touch with reality,” as exhibited by the 78-year-old’s “rambling” speeches and “erratic” debate performance.
They join a growing number of mental health professionals calling for independent and objective cognitive testing as November’s election edges closer.
[…]Biden, 81, faced a deluge of questions about his mental fitness for another four years in office following his disastrous debate against Trump in June when he repeatedly stumbled over his words and trailed off. Now, all eyes are on Trump, who is prone to incoherent tangents and bizarre musings.
Is he rambling? Indifferent to his audience? Exhibiting symptoms of cognitive decline? Or, instead, could former President Trump’s extended discourses demonstrate his genius — an ability, as he says, to “weave” disparate stories into a beautiful tapestry?
The 78-year-old Republican nominee’s meandering speaking style — and what it might say about his mental state — has become a new fixation in a race already upended when President Biden, 81, dropped out this summer amid questions about his own age and mental acuity.
In recent weeks, Trump has said he would deport Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, “back to Venezuela.” He said he was being supported by “the vice president’s family” — meaning relatives of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who is running for the office but is not vice president.
He insisted — incorrectly — he had been in a helicopter crash with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Trump has repeatedly hurled critiques at former President Obama, when his real target seemed to be President Biden, misstatements he insisted were “sarcasm.”
In August, the science-and-health-focused website Stat News published a detailed analysis of Trump’s speech patterns in recent months, comparing them with public speeches in 2017. Several researchers noted “more short sentences, confused word order, and repetition, alongside extended digressions.”
Those changes “could be attributed to a variety of possible causes,” the experts told Stat, “some benign and others more worrisome. They include mood changes, a desire to appeal to certain audiences, natural aging, or the beginnings of a cognitive condition like Alzheimer’s disease.”
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