Cultural critic and author Lee Siegel is demanding that former President Donald Trump's mental acuity be given the same level of media scrutiny as that faced by President Joe Biden earlier this year.
Writing at The New Statesman, Siegel argues that "Trump is losing it" and is demanding that the news media step up their coverage of what he describes as the former president's "alarming cognitive decline."
To illustrate this point, Siegel zooms in on Trump's controversial comments last month that he'd rather be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom rather than the Medal of Honor on the grounds that people who win the latter tend to be American military servicemembers who have been either wounded or killed.
Beyond the moral outrage of the sentiment behind the remarks, Siegel argues that the manner in which they were expressed "swerves into the incoherent."
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"Trump says that 'everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor that’s soldiers,'" writes Siegel. "(He could also mean: “everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor – that’s soldiers.”) The words verge on nonsense. Either he is saying that every soldier gets the Medal of Honor, which is absurdly untrue. Or he is saying that only soldiers get the Medal of Honor, but that every soldier gets it – which is similarly absurd – but with a twist. If Biden had spoken in such a way a year ago, he would have been pushed aside all the sooner."
Siegel also argued that Trump's Truth Social posting sprees -- which recently included a baseless claim about Vice President Kamala Harris advancing her career by giving sexual favors -- show someone who has lost their ability to restrain themselves.
"Most people do not lack inhibition to this degree," he writes. "But Trump’s repetition of such lunacy has made it routine. Call it the banality of madness."
