Trump's cognitive impairment endangers us all
It's undeniable if you actually watch him.
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“He doesn’t sleep and it’s actually a problem,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during Senate testimony this week.
Rubio was trying to make the point that President Trump is a dynamo — a near-superhuman leader who works deep into the night on the complex issues facing the nation and world. But Rubio inadvertently made the opposite point: Trump’s lack of sleep, evidenced by his frequently manic, late night Truth Social posting sessions, is a problem for the president’s clearly declining mental and physical abilities.
The signs of this decline are available for anyone who chooses to see them.
On Wednesday, after six days out of the public eye, Trump bumbled through a ceremony in which he signed a handful of executive orders, marveling at his own signature — “Oh, that’s a good one” — and asking aides to explain to him what the orders being placed in front of him actually did.
After listening to a lengthy explanation of an order that would expand the number of federal employees who can be fired by him, Trump still didn’t quite understand.
“And the reason for this was, what? Whose idea was that?” he said.
Then on Thursday, Trump sat in his chair dozing as members of his cabinet lavished him with praise.
Thursday’s embarrassment of an appearance in the Oval Office would be devastating for any other president. For Trump, it was just Thursday. And before that, it was just another Wednesday.
The on-camera dozing sessions that Rubio was being pressed about are one sign of Trump’s growing physical weakness — which is certainly not helped by staying up until the early morning hours voraciously consuming a Truth Social algorithm feeding him a steady and unhealthy diet of Trump-worshipping AI slop, election fraud conspiracies, and Boomer meme garbage.
Other signs of Trump’s body falling apart: swollen ankles, difficulty walking in a straight line, and unexplained bruising on both hands.
The garbage social media diet probably isn’t helping Trump’s declining cognitive abilities either. The president frequently appears unable to discuss complex matters like peace negotiations with Iran in any competent manner. (The peace deal has been just around the corner or days away, Trump has repeatedly said for several months. He now says the whole matter is “boring” to him.)
All of this madness is plainly viewable for anyone willing to look. And yet, Trump continues to be covered as if he’s a rational actor. “Trump optimistic on Iran deal,” read the chyron on Fox News on Thursday morning — as if the president is deeply involved with the complexities of negotiations and not clearly concentrating on things he actually enjoys, like White House renovations and preparations for his rally there later this month.
Meanwhile, Republican members of Congress have turned themselves into punchlines by never hearing or seeing anything Trump says or posts, or insisting they would need to hear the full “context” of his statements to conclude whether he’s actually losing his mind. But the reality is the signs of mental decline are obvious and abundant.
Trump has even struggled to recall things that he said.
In an interview on May 10, Trump was asked about a plan he made with Elon Musk early in his second term to travel to Fort Knox to “make sure” the US supply of gold bullion remains secured there. Trump clearly did not even remember much if anything about the episode.
“What happened to the audit of Fort Knox?” interviewer Sherryl Atkinson asked.
Trump blanked, looked to the side, and pursed his lips before responding.
“Which one are you talking about?”
Atkinson then explained to Trump his own plan to visit Fort Knox.
“Well we wanted to go knock on the door at Fort Knox, very thick door, and to see whether or not we have any gold in there, you know? Because, uh, we take a look at it … It’s a very interesting question, yeah.” Trump said. “We played with that, uh, I wonder if they left the gold in Fort Knox, ‘cause they steal a lot.”
“No need to really do that, though?” Atkinson followed up.
“Well, I don’t know, I think we … it’s, uh, I do want to go to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there, which I’m sure it will be.”
Trump’s comments were sanewashed by Forbes and other publications as “Trump says he still wants to visit Fort Knox to see if gold is there.” But the moment was telling and just one of many recent episodes in which the president has been confused, incoherent, and nonsensical.
Throughout his second term, Trump’s inability to understand basic math has been on display whenever he boasts of his administration’s efforts to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Trump repeatedly claims he has reduced those costs by as much as 1,000 percent, of course is mathematically impossible. (Such a reduction would mean that Americans would be paid by pharmaceutical companies when accessing those drugs.)
Never one to admit he was wrong, Trump has continued to claim mathematically impossible reductions in prescription drug costs. At an event touting his TrumpRx program last month, he claimed his administration has “slashed the price of dozens of commonly used prescription drugs by differences of 400, 500, and even 600 percent.”
Similarly, Trump has repeatedly uttered the made-up word “mutilization” as part of his smear campaign against transgender people.
These examples and more — the manic posting of delusional AI garbage on Truth Social, the falling asleep in meetings, the unexplained ailments, the strange slurring that often occurs during his speeches, the fixation on the 2020 election, the seeming inability to focus on anything for very long that doesn’t concern a monument to himself, the constant contradictory statements and positions on the war in Iran — cannot lead any objective observer to conclude anything other than that the president is, quite literally, losing his mind.
That’s why, in late April, a group of 30-plus neurologists, doctors, and scientists from all political persuasions who represent some of the country’s most renowned institutions wrote a letter to Congress warning that Trump’s accelerating cognitive decline represents a danger to the public. The letter barely made a blip in the national political press, just as the issue of Trump’s health and mental capabilities are rarely mentioned even by Democrats, but the conclusions reached by the authors of the letter are gravely serious.
Assessing that, prior to being elected in 2024, Trump was already experiencing serious cognitive decline, the scientists and doctors who authored the letter concluded his condition has only worsened.
“We are compelled to warn of a President of the United States who is increasingly a danger to the public,” they wrote.
The authors — who are employed or were trained as neurologists, psychologists, physicians, and mental health experts at Harvard, the Tufts University School of Medicine, Columbia University, George Washington University, and many more — cited a long list of Trump’s behaviors, traits, and even social media posts that portray a man who is routinely displaying a “marked deterioration in cognitive functioning, evidenced by disorganized and tangential speech, rambling digressions, factual confusions, unexplained sudden changes of course in strategic matters, both national and international, episodes of apparent somnolence during critical public proceedings.”
The letter referenced some of Trump’s more insane Truth Social posts, including the one where he portrayed himself as Jesus Christ, as evidence of “grandiose and delusional beliefs, including assertions of infallibility.” The letter also cited Trump’s threats against Iran, domestic political opponents, and American citizens as evidence of his growing inability to control his own thoughts and statements — a symptom of cognitive decline called “disinhibition.”
The authors warn of Trump’s “significant loss of self-control (disinhibition) and getting stuck on the same thoughts or actions, unable to let go or move on (perseveration), including seemingly compulsive, manic-like late-night communications — e.g., 150 social media posts in one night — fixation on perceived enemies, persecutory ideas, and prolonged, disproportionate attacks on specific individuals and institutions.”
This letter, of course, came before the last few days, when Trump has been busy posting AI slop depicting everything from oil tankers arriving in New York City, to him commanding military vessels and sitting behind a Star Trek-like command desk, to Gov. Gavin Newsom in a padded cell, and, for some inexplicable reason, Trump walking alongside an alien who is apparently under arrest, or perhaps being deported.
“It is our professional opinion that the behaviors of Donald Trump, tragically, are neither momentary lapses nor political theater,” the authors of the letter wrote. “It is our professional opinion that they reflect a rapidly worsening, reality untethered, increasingly dangerous decline.”
With Trump representing a “clear and present danger to our country and to the world,” they said, “steps to remove him from office must be undertaken with the greatest urgency.”
Trump’s decline is finally in focus
Almost since his first day in office last year, Trump’s right hand has shown bruising that he has attempted to cover up with makeup. The White House has never offered a plausible explanation for the bruising, instead insisting that it’s due to Trump constantly shaking hands. But in recent weeks, Trump’s left hand has shown similar bruising and attempts to conceal it with makeup. To believe the White House, Trump now must be engaging in handshakes with both of his hands.
Other recent signs of both physical and mental failings include Trump telling on himself by saying people with whom he discusses his administration’s extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers in international water have confused “the sea” with “vision,” a near stumble while exiting his presidential limo in China, and routine instances where he can be heard slurring his words.
One of the more notable recent instances of Trump’s unexplained slurring came during a visit from King Charles II, when he attempted to note that the monarch would be the first to address a joint session of Congress.
Trump fumbled the word “address,” mangling it into “adrist.”
In the last month, Trump’s has slurred his words and struggled to read during a Bible-reading event for Christian nationalists, when introducing Energy Secretary Chris (“Kiss”) Wright at a Rose Garden event where he called the White House a “shit house,” when he struggled with the letter “S” while describing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies as “low IQ,” and again when he struggled with “S” during an event where he said he’d never heard of the term “corner store.”
After years of unhinged behavior indicating cognitive decline as well as voluminous evidence of physical ailments, Trump’s inability to perform the most important job in the world is finally coming into focus. A growing chorus not just of medical professionals like those in the April letter to Congress, but even former and current Trump supporters like Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, and Marjorie Taylor Greene have openly questioned Trump’s mental prowess as his second term has continued to descend into chaos and incoherence.
Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein and former presidential candidate and longtime American progressive leader Ralph Nader recently wrote their own letter to Congress, urging lawmakers to consider invoking the 25th Amendment. (Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland has introduced a bill that would create a commission to examine Trump’s fitness for office.)
Fein and Nader noted that Trump’s Truth Social ravings have only gotten more bizarre, including his threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
“Every day Mr. Trump remains in office is a roll of the dice with the survival of the species,” Fein and Nader wrote, warning that Trump could deploy nuclear weapons “against Iran in a fit of rage.”
And yet, none of the Americans who are charged with acting as a check on the vast power of the presidency seem to be doing anything about it. No one in the Trump administration has offered a remotely plausible explanation for Trump’s physical ailments, and any questions about his clear cognitive challenges — the reading flubs, the obvious confusion, the strange slurring, forgetting what he was talking about, flitting from one subject to another for seemingly no reason — are met by the White House with disdain, denial, mockery, and lies.
Anyone questioning why the US can’t seem to find a resolution to Trump’s war in Iran, rising healthcare costs, inflation, and so much else that plagues the nation has to look no further than the president himself for the answer. If you don’t believe us, spend a few days listening to him and reading his Truth Social feed. Doing so will make the primary cause of our troubles undeniably obvious.
That’s it for this week
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Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.
I follow Aaron's posts every day because I don't watch Fox News and I'm not on his social media app. I am aware of the efforts of the healthcare professionals referenced here.
It's safe to say that we know that the president is seriously unwell. It's not well hidden at all. No efforts to get accurate information to the public have resulted in anything meaningful. I no longer wait for information, I just want this awful mess to be over.
Much more worrisome than the sad spectacle of a dying man is the abject failure of anybody, even his family, to help him. He is being abused by the Republican sociopaths to forward their Christofascistic agenda, and by his family to line their ample pockets. Retribution for this may not be swift, but it must be thorough.