"I don’t believe that Trump will do much in the next year to rectify that."
It doesn't help that he can barely speak coherent sentences. His speech at the McDonald's event yesterday was horrifying, not because of any threats he made, but in how his dementia demonstrated itself in such living color. He's on an MRI protocol where his doctors are asking him to identify giraffes and draw clocks. He has one foot in the grave and the other on the throat of whoever he's talking to.
I agree with your evaluation about short memory spans, but maybe Americans can try a little harder next presidential election cycle. There's no excuse for such general contempt of history and facts.
I generally find that he has a level of bravado that enables him to power through the fact that the transcript of nearly anything he says off the script is fifth grade level gibberish half of the time. He has virility that Biden never did as president (most of the time), and even if Trump is less coherent, he wears his ineptitude confidently. I haven’t really observed him being fundamentally less worse in that regard this time around than last. I remember pre-pandemic and during his first impeachment, he was babbling, incoherent, and delusional. Even on this point I feel like we succumb to recency bias quite a bit, where each new Trump speech feels like it represents a new low and we can’t possibly go any lower. It’s easy to forget (repress?) just how ignominious some of the worst lows of his first term were.
I'll respectfully disagree with you a little here. I've been around dementia enough to recognize it in someone, even on television. He was pretty "babbly" during Mad Clown 1.0, for sure. But his mannerisms are different. His train of thought is worse than ever. There's progression here.
I've been on the stroke protocol. Doctors don't have you doing animal recognition tests unless they're freaked out about a brain MRI.
When they find something alarming in a brain scan, they instruct you to draw a clock. A normal person doesn't react to that by saying he passed the test better than anyone has (I don't remember his exact words). They say, "I should probably resign from the presidency, eh?"
I do agree that he was already in bad shape during 1.0 compared to a decade before. His Howard Stern interviews were coherent.
By the time he was elected the first time, he had trouble piercing together a paragraph in any kind of free form conversation.
His condition is serious now. His babbling is worse. Given the rigors of the job, I am betting a vegetative state within the next year or two.
He's getting the highest level medical care that is possible on earth. That is buying him some time. But not much.
I hope it doesn't seem at all like I'm downplaying how bad he is now, because it's pretty horrendous to watch. I just think it's easy to become removed from just how horrendous it was the first time around. He's more fascist this time, and more negatively impactful, and surrounded by worse enablers, but one thing that just doesn't strike me as a night and day difference is his general coherence. Even this whole dementia story feels like it's straight from his last term with the famous "person, woman, man, camera, TV" incident. Bragging about his performance on tests designed for children or the mentally impaired, as bizarre and dystopian as it is to say, isn't new. It's hard to exaggerate just how bad he was even then. It's been over half a decade now since the bleach/pandemic incident and I'm not sure that was even the worst we saw of him that year. I literally didn't believe it was possible to set the bar any lower, so it's not a compliment when I say I haven't seen him exactly outdo himself yet. Like you say, there was a huge downturn in his clarity reaching his 70s, but if his dementia is progressing, he conceals it well.
No I didn't think you downplayed it all. It's just a difference in viewpoints over the degree of progression. It's bad any way we look at it. You'll see what I mean, though, when it's time to campaign for the midterms. He won't do much. He's very ill. If he campaigns, it will kill him.
When viewing someone with dementia, don't focus on what he says. For example: bleach. Focus on his diction, and increasingly lately, his mannerisms. He's had a stroke recently. It's obvious to anyone who has been around stroke patients. I was lucky. It just affected my vision. He wasn't so lucky. Let's compare notes in 6 months. :-)
The cyclical nature of voter dissatisfaction you describe here resonates deeply. What's intresting is how the pendulum swings have acelerated in recent cycles. The observation about how incumbents globally struggled in 2024 suggests this isn't purely an American phenomenom but rather a broader symptom of how information ecosystems shape political memory. Your point about October surprises mattering more than multi-year policy records is both depresing and accurate.
"I don’t believe that Trump will do much in the next year to rectify that."
It doesn't help that he can barely speak coherent sentences. His speech at the McDonald's event yesterday was horrifying, not because of any threats he made, but in how his dementia demonstrated itself in such living color. He's on an MRI protocol where his doctors are asking him to identify giraffes and draw clocks. He has one foot in the grave and the other on the throat of whoever he's talking to.
I agree with your evaluation about short memory spans, but maybe Americans can try a little harder next presidential election cycle. There's no excuse for such general contempt of history and facts.
I generally find that he has a level of bravado that enables him to power through the fact that the transcript of nearly anything he says off the script is fifth grade level gibberish half of the time. He has virility that Biden never did as president (most of the time), and even if Trump is less coherent, he wears his ineptitude confidently. I haven’t really observed him being fundamentally less worse in that regard this time around than last. I remember pre-pandemic and during his first impeachment, he was babbling, incoherent, and delusional. Even on this point I feel like we succumb to recency bias quite a bit, where each new Trump speech feels like it represents a new low and we can’t possibly go any lower. It’s easy to forget (repress?) just how ignominious some of the worst lows of his first term were.
I'll respectfully disagree with you a little here. I've been around dementia enough to recognize it in someone, even on television. He was pretty "babbly" during Mad Clown 1.0, for sure. But his mannerisms are different. His train of thought is worse than ever. There's progression here.
I've been on the stroke protocol. Doctors don't have you doing animal recognition tests unless they're freaked out about a brain MRI.
When they find something alarming in a brain scan, they instruct you to draw a clock. A normal person doesn't react to that by saying he passed the test better than anyone has (I don't remember his exact words). They say, "I should probably resign from the presidency, eh?"
I do agree that he was already in bad shape during 1.0 compared to a decade before. His Howard Stern interviews were coherent.
By the time he was elected the first time, he had trouble piercing together a paragraph in any kind of free form conversation.
His condition is serious now. His babbling is worse. Given the rigors of the job, I am betting a vegetative state within the next year or two.
He's getting the highest level medical care that is possible on earth. That is buying him some time. But not much.
I hope it doesn't seem at all like I'm downplaying how bad he is now, because it's pretty horrendous to watch. I just think it's easy to become removed from just how horrendous it was the first time around. He's more fascist this time, and more negatively impactful, and surrounded by worse enablers, but one thing that just doesn't strike me as a night and day difference is his general coherence. Even this whole dementia story feels like it's straight from his last term with the famous "person, woman, man, camera, TV" incident. Bragging about his performance on tests designed for children or the mentally impaired, as bizarre and dystopian as it is to say, isn't new. It's hard to exaggerate just how bad he was even then. It's been over half a decade now since the bleach/pandemic incident and I'm not sure that was even the worst we saw of him that year. I literally didn't believe it was possible to set the bar any lower, so it's not a compliment when I say I haven't seen him exactly outdo himself yet. Like you say, there was a huge downturn in his clarity reaching his 70s, but if his dementia is progressing, he conceals it well.
No I didn't think you downplayed it all. It's just a difference in viewpoints over the degree of progression. It's bad any way we look at it. You'll see what I mean, though, when it's time to campaign for the midterms. He won't do much. He's very ill. If he campaigns, it will kill him.
When viewing someone with dementia, don't focus on what he says. For example: bleach. Focus on his diction, and increasingly lately, his mannerisms. He's had a stroke recently. It's obvious to anyone who has been around stroke patients. I was lucky. It just affected my vision. He wasn't so lucky. Let's compare notes in 6 months. :-)
The cyclical nature of voter dissatisfaction you describe here resonates deeply. What's intresting is how the pendulum swings have acelerated in recent cycles. The observation about how incumbents globally struggled in 2024 suggests this isn't purely an American phenomenom but rather a broader symptom of how information ecosystems shape political memory. Your point about October surprises mattering more than multi-year policy records is both depresing and accurate.
fantastic article!