We very carefully skate a line between reporting on incidents and behaviors that seem to indicate something is very wrong with Trump’s cognitive ability, while not asserting that we know the ultimate cause. It is true that Trump was never one who would be confused with Christopher Hitchens, George Will, or Bill Buckley. But in watching older video of Trump, one can see that he actually considers questions put to him and can answer with some level of insight directed at answering the actual question. His answer isn’t one stringing cliche after cliche, repeating himself, and reverting to an attack whenever feeling threatened.

As an example, the clip below is from only six years ago. Forget for a moment how much he’s aged physically, the presidency does that to near everyone. Forget that he’s put on a massive amount of weight, it’s largely irrelevant to how one can do the job. Instead, pay attention to the inflection he puts into words. He doesn’t repeat himself. His answers at least address the question, and he completes answers instead of going off on tangents. Also notice that he not out of breath by his second sentence:

Now look at a quote published by the New York Times – just a quote not even video on the spot. Moreover, it’s not a gotcha instant. The subject of the quote encompasses his raison d’etre. He is asked what he wants to do with a second term. Politics 101 dictates that he have the perfect canned answer, except he doesn’t, or he can’t articulate it.

Nope:

Trump’s 2d term agenda:

“I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done.” https://t.co/8SnW6jkrGw

— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) August 28, 2020

That is a quote by a man struggling to put together a coherent thought, whether it is because he’s so consumed with anger, anxiety, whatever it might be, it doesn’t matter – he can’t articulate a simple thought even for a short newspaper quote.

Again, we are not saying we know what it is that renders him incapable, but some do believe that his behavior leads to one conclusion:

More of Trump's mind is gone than remains. He can't articulate anything because so many of his memories & thoughts are missing or fragmented. He's becoming harder to translate. It's part of his degenerative neurological disease- Frontotemporal Dementia. It will continue to worsen https://t.co/TbtUsEpabe

— Tom Joseph (@TomJChicago) August 28, 2020

It is hard to argue with the observation that Trump really struggles to articulate his thoughts, or struggles to form those thoughts. Again, compare to the video above, just six years ago. Perhaps it is important to note that he always seems out of breath by his second sentence now, but not then.

It is impossible to ignore.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom