Has anyone noticed that Donald Trump, at age 78, is no longer capable of expressing a cogent thought? He is not the man he was in 2016, and the decline should scare us.
You might not appreciate how much ground he has lost if you only read the snippets. Because reporters covering his rallies often try to help their readers make sense of Trump’s rambling by quoting short excepts, couched by their own interpretations of what he probably meant to say. There’s even a new term for it – sanewashing.
But read a full transcript, and you can see why a cognitive test is in order, and why it’s a serious problem that Trump has refused to release his medical records.
Take a look at this ramble, from an appearance with Tucker Carlson:
“So, we built a thing called the Panama Canal. We lost 35,000 people to the mosquito, you know, malaria. We lost 35,000 people building — we lost 35,000 people because of the mosquito. Vicious. They had to build under nets. It was one of the true great wonders of the world. As he said, ‘One of the nine wonders of the world.’ No, no, it was one of the seven. It just happened a little while ago. You know, he says, ‘Nine wonders of the world.’ You could make nine wonders. He would’ve been better off if he stuck with the nine and just said, ‘Yeah, I think it’s nine.’”
Or this one, from a rally earlier this year in Georgia, talking about President Biden in a swimsuit at the beach, for reasons unknown:
“Look, at 81 — do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant, he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today. We used to have Cary Grant and Clark Gable and all these people. Today we have — I won’t say names because I don’t need enemies. I don’t need enemies. I got enough enemies. But Cary Grant was like, Michael Jackson once told me, ‘The most handsome man, Trump, in the world.’ Who? ‘Cary Grant.’ Well, we don’t have that anymore. But Cary Grant at 81 or 82 — going on 100, this guy, he’s 81 going on 100 — Cary Grant wouldn’t look too good in a bathing suit either, and he was pretty good-looking, right?”
Some aging experts see signs of cognitive decline. The way his train of thought jerks back and forth, one tangent after another. His increasing tendency to use absolute terms, like “never” or “always” or calling Kamala Harris a “communist” and a “fascist.”
A team of reporters at the New York Times studied his rally speeches now, compared to 2016, and found that he drones on much longer, for 82 minutes now, compared to 45 minutes in the earlier campaign. A detailed look revealed that the speeches now are “darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past,” the Times found.
“He’s not competing at the level was he was competing at eight years ago, no question about it,” says Anthony Scaramucci, a former Trump aid who has endorsed Harris. “He’s lost a step.”
Another sign is that he’s increasingly untethered from reality. Haitians are not stealing and eating pets. Democrats are not killing babies after birth. Schools are not taking Johnny out for gender surgery without telling his parents.
The Times recently fact-checked a 63-minute speech of Trump’s and found 64 statements that were misleading or outright bogus. Read the list, and your jaw will drop.
That’s the part that scares me most because wars can start that way. The danger is multiplied by Trump’s casual interest in national security. In his first term, aides say he rarely read the President’s Daily Brief, which contains reports from U.S. intelligence agencies on hot spots around the world.
“He’s fundamentally ignorant, and he really doesn’t care about the facts,” says John Bolton, his former National Security Advisor. “He thinks international relations are about personal relations, which is a line and approach that I can tell you, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are eagerly looking forward to.”
Bottom line: The age issue has flipped. President Biden was driven from the race because his cognitive decline was disqualifying. Trump has more physical energy than Biden. But his cognitive decline is just as obvious, and far more dangerous.
More: Tom Moran columns
Tom Moran may be reached at [email protected] or (973) 986-6951. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
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