For all President Joe Biden’s earlier troubles, it is now Donald Trump who faces increasing scrutiny about possible mental slippage, after all, Trump would be the oldest president to be sworn in if he wins in November. Questions are now coming from many sources. But no one is better placed to assess the matter than Trump’s biographer, Timothy O’Brien, who says that even Trump is aware of the concern:

To be sure, Trump has always jumped from place to place in speeches, reliably veering off script if he felt a groove – which he usually did. But this isn’t that according O’Brien, who states in an article in The Guardian:

“The reason he’s now offering these convoluted explanations of his speech patterns in his public appearances is because he’s hyper-aware that people have noted that he’s making even less sense than he used to.”

It is dangerous to assume that Trump is hyper-aware of much but this is all about him, so it’s plausible. Getting back to O’Brien:

What we’re seeing now is a reflection of someone who’s very troubled and very desperate.

Yes, okay. But as to what? Trump is still leading in most polls and he must be super-aware of that, so is he actually desperate? Maybe. People who find themselves aging at an alarming rate do seem to take special notice.

By all appearances, Trump’s issues go beyond simply forgetting simple stuff. In a recent diatribe, Trump referenced the “late, great Hannibal Lecter” and then – and this is almost art, called the movie character “a wonderful man.” If a cannibal isn’t that bad a guy then who is?

Part of Trump’s appeal on the right is that on any given day he is capable of saying any given thing, almost always something the opposite of the stereotypical political candidate, closer to – well, any given “wonderful man.”

To liberals, the issue goes beyond a smug laugh. Joe Biden’s political career ended – perhaps thankfully so – due to similar concerns over the same issues. To be fair, Biden never mused about the merits between dying by shark versus batteries.

But Trump is going to Trump. It makes it difficult to determine the difference between decline and flare. Even vintage Trump was always capable of taking a question about inflation and diving into the choice between bacon and wind as he recently did by saying:

“You take a look at bacon and some of these products and some people don’t eat bacon any more. We are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down, you know, this was caused by their horrible energy – wind, they want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow we have a little problem,”

He was capable of stuff that blows back in 2016 and we saw how that worked out.

The concerns are important simply because the stakes are so high. Less simple is the measure of decline versus a need to trump his last inane speech.

Funny or not, this matters, so keep watch.