Perhaps we should tap the brakes on wanting to label Trump with any specific age-related diagnosis?

[Tommy Carcetti]

Besides the fact that most of us are not mental health or neurological health experts, I also fear that the desire to diagnose Trump with any specific age related neurocognitive condition (whether it be Alzheimer's or any other dementia related condition) runs the risk of letting the man off too easy for what constitutes a lifetime of dysfunctional behavior on his part in the private and public spheres.

To be fair, Trump is a 79 year old man and like any person of that age is not immune from suffering from at least a certain degree of decline when it comes to speech, motor movements and energy levels. To be fully fair, I said the same thing about President Biden when criticisms were launched against him--he was an old man who talked slower and walked slower than he used to. On the other hand, I honestly believe there was (and still is) no decline in President Biden's basic mental acuity or ability to perform his duties in office, and I still feel that--subsequent prostate cancer diagnosis notwithstanding--there was no reason that he needed to step aside (as he was basically forced by others to do.)

When you heard a speech by President Biden, there was no evidence whatsoever that he lacked the intelligence and the wit behind the words being delivered, no matter how much slower he talked or walked.

But Trump, on the other hand, has never been particularly intelligent, witty, or talented. He has never been an eloquent orator or communicator by any means. As long as he has been in the public sphere, he has demonstrated all the traits of a malignant narcissistic personality intent on both raising himself up and demonizing others around him as much as possible.

His reputation in business was not earned through any talent on his part but rather in good thanks to his father and those around him, until it was cemented onto him.

As President, there has never been a Golden Age of Trump (not counting his White House redecoration efforts.) He has never proposed any significant policy or campaign to better the lives of the people he governs (tax cuts to the rich are not policy). In his first term in office, he inherited a rising economy from President Obama and basically surfed on it until he hit the brick wall that was COVID, and all things then fell apart for him. His worst impulses during the first term were kept in check at times by guardrails--people who had served in the public sphere for years and knew proper behavior and etiquette. But when he lost it all in November 2020, those guardrails got pushed aside as he attempted to overturn his electoral loss and encouraged violent behavior from his base, ultimately resulting at the scene at the Capitol on January 6th.

In his second term, those guardrails have been completely purged and jettisoned, and he is now surrounded only by loyalists who encourage his worst impulses. His cruelty is his own; while he lacks the intellectual tools or wherewithal to create specific policy implementations, he has always been willing to designate that nitty-gritty to others (whether it be Elon Musk, Stephen Miller or other subordinates.) This does not mean he is those persons' puppet or that he does not know or care about what they are doing in his name; rather, they are willing partners with each other in their cruelty on the American people.

At no time has he ever actually had an interest in serving the public as President in terms of how those duties have traditionally been seen in this democratic country; rather, to him the Presidency is simply an excuse for self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment in the way that foreign despots and autocrats have used their power.

So what we see now is by no means a diminished or incapacitated Trump, but rather the rawest version of the man that he has always been, only with signs of expected age-related decline for a person of his age.

This is not to say that he does not, in fact, have Alzheimer's or some other sort of age-related neurological dementia. This is not to say that he might not drop dead within months.

Both of those things are still very much in the realm of possibility.

It's also very much in the realm of possibility that there's been very little actual decline in Trump at all, and all this is just the manifestation of a guardrail-less, uncensored Trump in the purest (and stupidest) of forms.

But until those things are actually known to be true--and we don't know those to be true--all we know to be dealing with is simply Trump being Trump; that is, a stupid, narcissistic, malicious, vindictive man hellbent on power and glory for himself.

And that certainly is bad enough a situation for us and the immediate future and survival of our country.

[MineralMan]

1. Brakes! Tap the Brakes!

No, we shouldn't do that. We should, however, spell it correctly. Sorry, but it does matter when you're trying to make a point.

[Tommy Carcetti]

2. Noted and edited.

My morning coffee has yet to fully kick in.

Or perhaps it's just evidence of cognitive decline on my own part?

[dalton99a]

3. Hope he experiences pain and suffering, whatever the fuck he has

[Srkdqltr]

4. But but Biden used all those words. He talked in sentences, coherent paragraphs. Who could

understand all that? 🥺🥺

[EdmondDantes_]

5. I get why people want to speculate, but it does feel a futile exercise

The diagnosis is irrelevant. Affordability, the ICE detentions, the possible war crimes are all more effective issues. His name calling as maybe gotten worse, but it's baked in to Trump's image and unlikely to change people's mind.

[Keepthesoulalive]

6. No

Take the gloves off and go with brass knuckles. He insults everyone who is not rich or white. Most people don’t understand policy papers but they do understand a sleeping drooling pants shitting old man. I am using the term metaphorically, I am not threatening president catheter poopy pants. You can’t be to careful nowadays with the American gestapo in charge.

[crud]

7. It is mental

in my opinion, his mental disorder requires him to maintain and protect a very fragile and fearful inner child. That takes an enormous effort, and ever increasing effort to accomplish. The more he is exposed, and faces failure the more pressure he is under and eventually he won't be able to maintain. I think it will be a captain Qweeg moment and everyone will know the moment he cracks. I just hope we survive.

[PatSeg]

8. I do believe all the years

of hate and cruelty are coming to the surface with trump. He no longer has the ability or the desire to disguise who he really is. It shows both in his behavior and his physical appearance. Damn, that man gets uglier and uglier every day.

[stopdiggin]

9. +1. agreeing in large part. both in the basic analysis of Trump ..

and the possibility that we aren't seeing anything substantially different in the man. The man has always been a horribly flawed character - with little in the way of real talent or ability. ( and who thinks that the sun doesn't shine ... )

[peggysue2]

10. No!

By tapping the brakes, we give Agent Orange and his Flying Monkey Brigade the opportunity to roll right over us. Personally, I'm for keeping the pressure on Trump and his sycophants who would throw us all into detention centers in a heartbeat. They don't like it. They whine about it, and then they write memos suggesting any and all critics should be tried for treason.

Calling Trump out for his obvious incompetence and physical/mental decline (no, I'm not a doctor but I do have eyes and ears) is part of resisting, smoking out the destructive, depraved behavior of the MAGA movement in general and Trump in particular.

The American public at large has finally started to notice and is pushing back all over the country, be it economic malpractice, Epstein, immigration abuses, foreign policy decisions, murder on the high seas, and yes, the craziness of Donald Trump.

We're not going to save ourselves by letting up now. This is full steam ahead until the midterms and beyond, until the haters and greed heads are pushed out of power, everywhere.

[lame54]

11. To be fair...

Fuck Trump
And anybody who would spend the least amount of energy defending him

[BannonsLiver]

12. Nah. Let's not lay off Trump.

[tinrobot]

13. Just more proof how much more incompetent he's become.

He was incompetent in 2016. But now he's even worse.

Plus, calling him senile and demented seems to hit a nerve with him. Keep hitting it an he might explode.

[Buckeyeblue]

14. I don't think the media is pushing enough

We need direct questions asked to members of his administration. Has the president been diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's disease? And if he received such a diagnosis, should he resign or be removed via the 25th amendment?

I want a trail of answers once the truth comes out.

[Rob H.]

15. We're not getting the unvarnished version of him he's been all along, imo

Go back and listen to him from even 2016 and pay attention to the words he uses and his ability to stay on topic and you'll hear obvious changes. The difference is even more stark when you go back to the late 1990s-early 2000s; his use of language has definitely degraded, becoming much simpler and less coherent, and the most logical explanation I've seen is accelerating, age-related cognitive decline. He goes off on irrelevant tangents repeatedly, either mangles the words he uses or uses completely incorrect words, and has even less verbal impulse control than he did before ("Quiet, piggy," "You're a stupid person," etc.).

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on the internet, but I don't think this is Trump's real personality laid bare so much as it is that he's in obviously failing health.

[1WorldHope]

16. I agree with Tommy. This is who he always was.

He's going to find a way to get excused for all his BS because the poor thing has dementia. He might have dementia now, but he was never qualified to be president. It's like claiming insanity to avoid punishment. If he and his ilk get away with all they have done we will regret that move forever.

[brakester]

17. I love

this:
I said the same thing about President Biden when criticisms were launched against him--he was an old man who talked slower and walked slower than he used to. On the other hand, I honestly believe there was (and still is) no decline in President Biden's basic mental acuity or ability to perform his duties in office, and I still feel that--subsequent prostate cancer diagnosis notwithstanding--there was no reason that he needed to step aside (as he was basically forced by others to do.)

Let's not forget how Biden, out of his sense of "Service" and love for our country, gave 110% in a time of great need.

He used his lifetime of experience in government to gain wisdom and coupled that with his deep compassion to push his philosophical borders to include more modern concepts and innovations.