There’s been more than ample evidence of Trump’s complete delusion and burgeoning dementia. No, I’m neither a credentialed professional qualified to issue a diagnosis, nor have ever I had the opportunity to conduct a personal examination, but I also don’t think you need to be to arrive to this conclusion. You just have to pay attention to when the facade cracks.
It does indeed run in the family, but while it is a significant factor it's important to keep in mind the baseline. Risk of developing Alzheimer's when both parents have it is 22% compared to a population baseline of 6-13%: https://www.alzinfo.org/articles/diagnosis-and-causes-44/
I've only noticed this phenomenon last year, but it's absolutely everywhere (in certain circles). People are so furious at the idea of virtue signalling that they think "I don't give a shit about good and evil and I support only what's good for me" is a great thing to broadcast now.
(It's especially weird because it's often hypocritical. The people sending these signals do *not*, in fact, care exclusively about what personally benefits them like emotionless robots. They still have ideologies and ingroups and loved ones. But still they signal as hard as they can.)
I agree with much of this article. But you liked Tracing Woodgrains's exposé on the FAA's shady hiring practices for air traffic controllers. Why do you now think "DEI caused this plane crash" is such an obviously insane take? Surely a higher incidence of collisions is exactly what you'd expect when diversity is selected for rather than raw competence.
If Trump ends up being correct and vindicated on that issue, it would've been by accident. It would not have been totally insane to float "lackadaisical hiring standards" as a _possibility_ behind the crash, but that conclusion could not have been supported with the information they had at the time while bodies were still pulled out of the water.
The more congruent explanation is that Trump hates taking the blame for any Bad Thing, and thought of a convenient scapegoat to throw to his gullible followers (knowing the helicopter pilot was a woman was a sufficient nexus, if he even needed one).
What makes you think Trump didn’t know that the pilot was a woman, the control tower was understaffed, and/or that the ATC was a POC at the time of his statement?
Any one of those facts could have justified his statement, whether actually the cause or not. Surely he was privy to at least some of that info immediately after the incident occurred, no?
And why would Trump be at blame for the crash in the first place, such that he would need a scapegoat?
It’s obvious the reason he said what he said is because the story is the epitome of why DEI sucks. Even if not the direct cause, knowing DEI polices exist forces us to ask the question, and in this case we had to ask three times.
Sincerely,
Someone who likes your writing but is worried you may be missing some important context if you think all people who support Trump are gullible, braindead, obedient sycophants.
You're asking me why I don't accept at face-value an evidence-free statement from a relentless liar?
I never made the blanket statement about all Trump supporters you're attributing to me. I can totally understand supporting him if certain issues (Israel, trans issues, anti-white discrimination) are of so paramount importance to turn a blind eye on everything else.
I’ll be the first to agree he’s a relentless liar. But do you truly not think he had evidence about the pilot and staff at the time? (And must every statement from a President - or anyone, for that matter - cite relevant evidence to avoid it being branded as “evidence-free”?) I suppose it’s possible he just got lucky, but the more likely scenario sure seems that the President knew a few things the general public didn’t at the time of the crash.
Anyway, glad to know I mis-attributed your comments as being to all supporters. It comes across that way, what with all the cult-talk and insistence that gullibility and braindead-ness are the only explanations for support. But I take it back.
Despite our different viewpoints, I appreciate your engagement on things! One day you’ll hit it big-big and you’ll stop replying to us annoying plebs…
I'm a clinician. I have diagnosed and treated dementia for 10 years. I don't like Trump. I didn't vote for Trump. I also work daily at being mindful of my own biases, especially when passing character judgements. Especially especially when making diagnoses. To this end I have carefully watched numerous unedited interviews and speeches in their entirety. He clearly unequivocally may have a lot of issues but dementia is not one of them.
Now what character judgement gets passed to me based on this singular statement? How do I get categorized?
Recommend some deep meditation and reflection before accusing me of delusional thinking.
Actually, I don't have to defend the null. The onus is on you to make the case for this very serious diagnosis of the President of the United States, pretending for the moment that you are qualified to make that diagnosis, which you have already acknowledged you are not. But as many like to argue these days, common sense and personal experience can sometimes be more valuable than expert opinion. So let's analyze the case as you have currently laid it out.
1. At the beginning of a 3-hour unscripted interview with Joe Rogan, which you acknowledge many have found to be evidence of his mental sharpness, you argue the opposite. You identify an instance near the beginning where he references an interview with Oprah and got the date wrong. Do people with dementia make such mistakes? Absolutely, particularly in later stages of dementia where they start to become temporally confused about the current date. Do people without dementia make such mistakes? Of course. Probably especially someone very busy who does a bazillian interviews.
What alternative explanation is there for this timelapse besides commonplace forgetfulness? Might someone exaggerate or lie about a date? Does Trump exaggerate and lie a lot? On this we can agree there is no shortage of evidence. Does this better explain the problem? I think so, and I suspect if you actually listen to the Rogan interview in its entirety, you will agree.
2. There is no #2.
In conclusion, this is insufficient to make an accurate diagnosis of dementia.
If not for the love for some of your previous writing, I would not take the time to write this. Honestly, it feels like this was written by a different person than the writer who calmly and meticulously tried to bring accurate history and reason to the early days of the Israel/Palestine conflict. This writing is dripping with emotional rhetoric, character attacks, and partisanship that feels more like the kind of arguments you have previously pushed back against. I hope after a few days of distance and reflection you agree.
You made an affirmative assertion that he does _not_ have dementia, which is very different from "there is insufficient evidence to conclude dementia based on this one observation". That's refuting an argument I neither made nor would endorse.
I'm not even sure what you are arguing now. Perhaps this article is satire and I missed it? Honestly it feels like a satire piece that never buried the lead.
If it is not satire, I will repeat, the onus is on you to make the argument that the President of the United States has dementia. The null is that he does not.
There is a good litmus test for evaluating for concerning cognitive changes. You compare against a baseline. Go onto Youtube. Watch random unedited non-partisan interviews with Trump now compared to a decade or two ago. He comes across as the same old bastard he ever was.
Do the same test with Biden and the difference is striking how much he has slowed down in his thinking, speaking, & walking. His speech is more slurred, and his thoughts are clearly slower, simpler, & more disorganized especially when he is not on a teleprompter.
We both may not like it, but objective reality doesn't care about our preferred reality.
I think the issue is you're confused about what null means. Saying something is "NOT X" is an affirmative assertion which requires justification. Assertions don't become "null" just because they contain the word "NOT".
A null in this context would be something like "there is no relationship between symptoms of time distortion and dementia" but you've explicitly already rejected that. Offering up one alternative explanation for time distortion does not _refute_ all other explanations just because you think yours is more likely.
Had you said "I think X is more likely, but you might be right" I would have no disagreements. Instead you went with "I think X is more likely, therefore you are wrong." which doesn't follow.
I'll never be able to prove conclusively that Trump has dementia, because the guy has refused to submit to medical examinations from a non-stooge. But if you really wanted to refute me (instead of just offer up plausible alternative explanations), the way to do it would be to showcase evidence that is inconsistent with my theory, such as examples of Trump successfully completing complex cognitive tasks that would be challenging for someone with dementia.
This is all rather pointless. Just watch any number of press interviews, which he is doing multiple times a week (and more than Biden did in 4 years). The man does not have dementia. It's obvious.
>Trump successfully completing complex cognitive tasks that would be challenging for someone with dementia.
Is taking over a political party and winning a competitive election a complex cognitive task? He completed that successfully. Most people fail to do that, even with their full faculties. I know that you're asking for some interview segment where everyone deconstructs his grammar, argues about what is indicated by a pause of 2 seconds rather than .5 seconds or what he "really means" or if it's "complex" to answer a question about Hamas by describing threatening tariffs on China unless they put sanctions on Iran. But it's essentially asking for one specific play that **proves** the Eagles are a good football team while ignoring that they won the Super Bowl.
One obvious counterargument would be assuming anyone that doesn't think Trump has dementia would probably say Biden does, then pointing out that Biden was almost able to win. But a key part of Biden's strategy was staying out of public so his staff could do everything. In contrast, Trump has never seemed to follow the strategy of staying out of public and seems like a vital part of his success. (I'd even argue that Trump is so personally distasteful that all of his "allies" will turn on him the first moment they don't need him, which is strong evidence that he's necessary to the campaign's success) Until there's Trumpism without Trump, Trumpism's electoral success indicates that Trump is a key part of it. (or say that it was really Bannon or Putin or Musk or ______ that is actually responsible and Trump is just a "useful idiot", which would open the question of whether someone that can't complete complex tasks would be a useful part of a presidential campaign)
Another argument could be something about how he's an idiot but he's able to win because he caters to McDonalds swilling morons that sit slack-jawed in front of reality tv so it doesn't count and anyone could win them over. While I wouldn't say that about voters (or consumers of McDonalds/reality TV) it seems empirically false to say that they're easy to cater to. There's a massive building in Chicago full of brilliant minds, calculating the exact salt content that would increase chicken nugget sales by 2% or the optimal placement of a new store. In an ideal world, these people would be working on curing cancer or something instead of optimal McRib supply chains, but it doesn't seem like they're stupid and most people can't do what they do. Therefore, a successful political movement that caters only to the same demographic should be assumed to have a similar high level of competence.
He has said that he's watched lots of unedited interview footage which is strongly indicative of Trump not having dementia. A problem in this debate is just that it's easier to point to a specific cognitive lapse as evidence of dementia rather than any specific "moment of clarity" or complex cognitive task as evidence against.
But I probably agree with Justin that the very large body of evidence of normal (well...Trump-normal) cognitive functioning points strongly against dementia. I also understand his annoyance at your piece; this section, while superficially true, struck me as very misleading:
"The reality is that those struggling with severe conditions will still present as fine most of the time...even full-blown dementia patients are notorious for having “good days and bad”.
It looks like you're trying to negate any contrary evidence in advance, just because having dementia is compatible with lucidity, without addressing how non-dementia is compatible with non-lucidity. If "normal" 78 year-olds also have off days, time-slips, speech errors, and memory lapses etc. (they do, right?), then Trump's errors are not significantly diagnostic of dementia.
The Oprah "last week" example is curious, but it sounds like he's just mixing up words. It sounds bad out of context, but he clearly means "he did one of her last shows/her last week" (untrue, but ... as I said, "Trump-normal"), and clarifies instantly. In context, it sounds completely fine.
To recap our exchange downstream, you started by making an affirmative assertion that Trump did _not_ have dementia. The only evidence provided was an appeal to your credentials.
When I asked for more substance, you refused, erroneously claiming that your assertion was actually a "null" that required no defense. You then acknowledged that the date confusion I cited is consistent with both dementia and non-dementia (which I agree with!) and denied that this solitary example was sufficient to conclude dementia (which I never claimed!). Between dementia vs common forgetfulness, you made another assertion that the latter explanation was more likely, without substantiating why.
After pointing out your "null" confusion and more questions, you retreated further into the abstract, posting a 37 minute video and claiming "it's obvious" that Trump does not have dementia. (side note: I don't know why you keep bringing up Biden, I've pointed out that guy's cognitive decline back in 2020).
I offered to be subject to real-time scrutiny & it's totally your right to decline. But in the process you accused me of being untethered from facts by refuting a claim I never made. Trump does indeed regularly forgo his teleprompter and freely ad lib! I explicitly said that his death grip reliance on teleprompters was "when outside the weave". I can't tell if this was malicious strawmanning on your part or just deficient reading comprehension.
Maybe you do indeed have 10 years of diagnosing dementia patients, and maybe Trump does indeed _not_ have dementia, but your comments have done a poor job of substantiating either. Your unacknowledged "null" confusion, fallacious reasoning, and strawmanning don't help either. Invitation remains open regardless.
I generally liked the article, but don’t appreciate the imagery in the final paragraph (gonna have nightmares).
“Human centipede” would’ve done just fine. No one thinks Trump’s other hole could provide that kind of nourishment, and you could’ve added something about coughing up sesame seeds or other indigestible Big Mac ingredients.
Not a psychiatrist, but it feels more like normal aged related changes. Of the 70 and 80 yr olds I know a lot of their filters start to drop and Trump had very little to begin with. I am not Freudian but I like the metaphor of his super ego starting to diminish and his ego and ID taking over, dialed up to 11. So even more bullshit and him believing his own bullshit even more.
Are you sure you're not reading too much into the Trump "last week" stuff? He started off by saying "last week" then talked about how he was one of the last shows, then mentioned that it was on the final week. It seems like he only erroneously believes that he was on the final (or last) week of the show, not that the show occurred a week earlier. This is the interpretation of the CNN article you linked (which makes no mention of Trump claiming that the show happened the week earlier). Do you believe that the author of that article is a secret Trump cultist? Doesn't seem likely. Are there many people besides you that think Trump was confused and thought the Oprah show was the previous week?
Obviously Trump is wrong when he said that he was on the last week of the show. But that makes him demented? You might remember a decade ago when news anchor Brian Williams falsely claimed that he was on a helicopter while it was being shot at. Scott Alexander mentioned it a contemporary SSC post.
>Brian Williams did exactly what I unfortunately do all the time – unthinkingly tell a story the much cooler way it should have happened, the way it happened in my head – rather than the way it actually did happen (my colleagues elsewhere in the psychiatry blogosphere go further and call this “normal brain function”).
I think that's a more reasonable view of why Trump said that he was specifically on the final week instead of just the final season.
(Also check out the comments for people bickering, including one conspiracy theorist who believes that Williams was a sacrificial pawn to inoculate the public against Clinton lies. I'm guessing they're referencing her statements on things like being sniped at in Bosnia or being named after a mountain climber. She had been attacked for those going back to 2008 and defended it with things like
>You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement," she said.
Always interesting to pick through the detritus of culture wars past)
Besides for that, I don't think it's unusual for "the party line" to be repeated by members of a party. That's the point of a party line. If anything, the current Republican party has less discipline and conformity than you'd expect given its success. Just look at their recent attempts to decide their speaker(15 ballots in one and 4 in another, both resulting in a non-trump-endorsed speaker) or the 2024 primary and how many endorsements Trump opponents got.
Finally it seems like an omission to talk about how a political party deals with a leader possibly having dementia and not mention the democrats in the time period between the debate and Biden's withdrawal from the race. It seems like a recent reference point.
He was (incorrectly) claiming that he was on one of the final days of the final week which would be even more special. In reality, he was a Monday guest earlier in the final season and he was exaggerating, like people do. I didn't think that was notable until I read your linked argument with the Star Wars guy, where you say it was odd Trump brought up an irrelevant detail. That might make sense, but in this context the day of week is germane to the story since Thursday and Fridays are higher status time slots. Trump mentions that difference in status when he (falsely) says he was one of the last shows in the last week and calls it a "big deal".
Let's say he really did believe that he was on Oprah the week before. Trump is directly responding to Rogan mentioning that Oprah encouraged him to be president years ago. You believe that Trump heard a reference to someone encouraging him to run for president, thought they meant that had happened the week before, then seconds later was talking about how "the apprentice as still going very strong" at the time he appeared. Did he also think that he was hosting the apprentice the week before? That must be the case, unless this delusion lasted for only a few seconds. When he says "boy, we've come a long way since then" seconds later, is he still referencing an event he believes occurred a week ago?
Also keep in mind the context was them complaining about how Trump used to be treated well on shows like the View or Oprah, but now isn't. Why would he bring up a recent Oprah appearance, exaggerating the prominence of his slot, if they were talking about how he isn't currently being treated well by the talk shows? It would undermine the small-minded grievance of current mistreatment that was the entire point of the conversation. (As a tangent, I think Trump cares more about Hollywood pettiness like treatment on Oprah than anything else. Long after he's forgotten the names of his children, he's going to know which Oscar parties were no longer "hot".)
Furthermore, what are other people doing when they don't call this out? Joe Rogan asked him about something that happened pre-presidency while discussing things that happened a decade earlier, then he just ignored that Trump referenced the week before? With no hesitation, Rogan continues to reference events from before Trump's first presidency. A CNN fact checker wrote an article about Trump's lies, but refused to touch that one? The NYT, BBC, the Washington Post, they all fact check Trump on other claims made on Rogan, but conspire to not call out that Trump got the year wrong?
So yes, it's possible that Trump experienced a delusion and not only was confused about what year the Oprah show happened, he brought it up at a time that was not only inappropriate but actually undermined the petty grievance he was whining about seconds before and seconds after that fit of disorientation occurred while his conversation partner seamlessly hid this break in conversation. But it seems much simpler to assume that Trump made the same type of petty exaggerations that all people do when recalling decade old memories and blurted out incorrect details (e.g. it was the last week, it was the most important day of the week, etc.) about his time slot to embellish it before repeating those (incorrect) details in a more structured way.
I know that this it a long explanation compared to "LISTEN TO WHAT HE SAID!" but I think it would take just as long to explain that Obama doesn't think there are 57 states, or that Brian Williams misspoke, or that Clinton isn't intentionally stealing sniper valor or other mistakes made by people speaking in an unstructured way. Rather than dissecting grammar or specific words, I'd be more convinced that Trump experiences time disorientation if there were examples of him bringing up events that only make sense in the context of what's being discussed. Krugman did something like this pre-election in an article about Trump being "unmoored in time" but I read most of it as just outdated references, like when people use Soviet imagery for Putin or complain about "fundies" hating Harry Potter. Or if large newspapers, like the NYT, shared your interpretation that Trump didn't know what year it was.
(finally, it looks like an actual clinician is commenting somewhere else, but I don't think that thinking specific events were recent is how Alzheimer's works. My grandmother never erroneously told me something happened last week when it happened years ago. Instead she'd say she was worried about her pregnancy (her youngest child was ~40) or that she needed to get my aunt ready for soccer practice or that my cousin was sick with the cancer that had killed him years earlier or that she wanted to go to some restaurant that had closed down decades before I was born. It's more like slipping into an old status than getting specific things wrong. It'd be Trump thinking that he could currently get lauded on Oprah, not that he was on Oprah recently.)
I had often said, in the run-up to the November elections, that Trump may well be a cure worse than the disease. But that as the patient was on death's doorstep, virtually anything was worth a shot. Haven't seen much since then to disabuse me of that argument.
Drawing a line on transgenderism -- as he commendably did with various EOs -- was absolutely essential. Though I doubt he had much direct involvement in writing them. But Helens Dale and Joyce quite reasonably argued that transgenderism was, and is, a "civilization threatening/ending movement". Not sure if that is hyperbole or understatement though I and no few others tend to the latter.
But many of Trump's other actions remind me of "The Madness of King George", the sci-fi classic "Short in the chest", and the Red Queen's "Off with their heads" -- some "victims" clearly needing that, many others much less so.
"Trump is on firmer ground with his efforts to leverage the federal government’s ubiquitous funding to curtail DEI’s race and sex discrimination. But even here, he is larding up the public record with comments that absolutely reflect his own animus and bigotry — especially against trans people — which will give opponents some chance to fight back in the courts. He didn’t have to do this. There are good, non-transphobic arguments for fairness in sports and ethical medicine for children. But a bigot’s gotta bigot, even if it boomerangs on him, as it should."
Seem to recollect that I did read that — as a free subscriber — before Sullivan paywalled it. Though don’t recollect exactly what “transphobic, bigoted” comments of Trump he had in mind.
But Sullivan certainly didn’t pull any punches himself in condemning “gender identity” ideology when it came to “the worst attack on gay kids since Anita Bryant”:
Apparently reflecting his own biases — nobody complains until it is their own ox that is being gored.
No doubt that Trump is a bull in a china shop, throwing the baby out with the bathwater as Bulwark writer Cathy Young argued recently in the context of DEI.
But as even you apparently acknowledge in the case of Gaza and the Palestinians, clearly some crockery needed breaking, even if some might be “offended” at losing some “priceless” heirlooms.
My pessimistic prognosis so far is that the authoritarian lavishment and trafficking in hallucinations-as-news won't come close to being worth it. I hope I'm wrong.
👍 So do I. But I really don't think that Dale's & Joyce's "civilization threatening/ending movement" is idle chitchat. As a lawyer, you might have some interest in the former's review of the latter, and of Maya Forstater of Sex Matters:
This is maybe a bit out of your bailiwick -- or motte or bailey 😉🙂 -- but you might also have some interest in this post on the TransAtlantic from a scientific perspective:
"The dislocations experienced around gender identity ideology have revealed the great threat couched in abnegation of the scientific disposition."
"Above the very doors of [the Royal Society's] Marble Hall in central London, etched into the stonework above the lintel, stands the bedrock statement of the scientific episteme – Nullius in Verba, On No One’s Word."
At least include a statement acknowledging Biden's dementia and showing how early you spotted that? Or even better, post receipts showing your concern about our (actually) very-clearly-demented president, who had no idea where he was half the time, being propped up for four years while his team did whatever they wanted under his "leadership" and the world burned around us
I hate having to defend Trump, but as a classical liberal who just watched the dems incinerate what little credibility they had left ("sharp as a tack", right?), it's been refreshing to see a president in action and actually making things happen. Yes, he's old and may even have burgeoning dementia. One could argue he's no less delusional now than he was 20 years ago, but he's always seemed to occupy a separate reality from the rest of us.
The bottom line is that he's delivering on what he promised to deliver, and half of our country is cheering him on. Time will tell if we're better off in the end, but one thing's for certain: calling out Trump's dementia after witnessing what we did over the past four years is RICH.
I don't obligate myself to being a hugbox provider. If someone is vexed by Trump's dementia and need to be soothed and comforted by mentions of Biden's, they gotta look elsewhere for emotional reassurance.
I question your reading comprehension if your TLDR was "Orange Man Bad". Telling me that he's delivering on what he promised is the opposite of reassuring when my argument is about his supporters being brain-dead sycophants, obedient to a dementia patient.
It is always good to read someone in the Trump camp defend him: "Biden had dementia too!" is a new one, but hey I like novel defenses.
As for the rest of "he's delivering on what he promised" I guess I can't disagree, he is trying to rule as a dictator and purge the state of opponents so he can replace them with loyal sycophants, just as he promised, so technically you aren't wrong. Then again he's already walked back solving inflation, so it probably depends on which promises you thought mattered the most.
To be clear, I didn’t defend Trump by saying “Biden had it too”. Trump is delivering - like it or not. That’s the defense. I acknowledge he’s old and may in fact have onset dementia.
My point about Biden is that if you’re going to call out Trump’s dementia, you should realize people either a) don’t care whether our president has dementia or not [see most Dems 2020-2024], or b) are likely to ignore the argument, given recent history + human nature.
An interesting thing though, and this ties into Yassine's previous post about Republicans being cucks, is that when the Democrats were faced with incontrovertible evidence that Biden couldn't hack it anymore, they dumped Biden. It was messy, it was painful, but as a political party they rose up and deposed their sitting leader, who was the incumbent President, less than 6 months before an election.
Also Trumps mom and dad both had dementia before they died. It runs in the family but no one talks about this ever? It’s weird.
It does indeed run in the family, but while it is a significant factor it's important to keep in mind the baseline. Risk of developing Alzheimer's when both parents have it is 22% compared to a population baseline of 6-13%: https://www.alzinfo.org/articles/diagnosis-and-causes-44/
That article about vice signalling is good.
I've only noticed this phenomenon last year, but it's absolutely everywhere (in certain circles). People are so furious at the idea of virtue signalling that they think "I don't give a shit about good and evil and I support only what's good for me" is a great thing to broadcast now.
(It's especially weird because it's often hypocritical. The people sending these signals do *not*, in fact, care exclusively about what personally benefits them like emotionless robots. They still have ideologies and ingroups and loved ones. But still they signal as hard as they can.)
I agree with much of this article. But you liked Tracing Woodgrains's exposé on the FAA's shady hiring practices for air traffic controllers. Why do you now think "DEI caused this plane crash" is such an obviously insane take? Surely a higher incidence of collisions is exactly what you'd expect when diversity is selected for rather than raw competence.
If Trump ends up being correct and vindicated on that issue, it would've been by accident. It would not have been totally insane to float "lackadaisical hiring standards" as a _possibility_ behind the crash, but that conclusion could not have been supported with the information they had at the time while bodies were still pulled out of the water.
The more congruent explanation is that Trump hates taking the blame for any Bad Thing, and thought of a convenient scapegoat to throw to his gullible followers (knowing the helicopter pilot was a woman was a sufficient nexus, if he even needed one).
That's fair.
What makes you think Trump didn’t know that the pilot was a woman, the control tower was understaffed, and/or that the ATC was a POC at the time of his statement?
Any one of those facts could have justified his statement, whether actually the cause or not. Surely he was privy to at least some of that info immediately after the incident occurred, no?
And why would Trump be at blame for the crash in the first place, such that he would need a scapegoat?
It’s obvious the reason he said what he said is because the story is the epitome of why DEI sucks. Even if not the direct cause, knowing DEI polices exist forces us to ask the question, and in this case we had to ask three times.
Sincerely,
Someone who likes your writing but is worried you may be missing some important context if you think all people who support Trump are gullible, braindead, obedient sycophants.
You're asking me why I don't accept at face-value an evidence-free statement from a relentless liar?
I never made the blanket statement about all Trump supporters you're attributing to me. I can totally understand supporting him if certain issues (Israel, trans issues, anti-white discrimination) are of so paramount importance to turn a blind eye on everything else.
I’ll be the first to agree he’s a relentless liar. But do you truly not think he had evidence about the pilot and staff at the time? (And must every statement from a President - or anyone, for that matter - cite relevant evidence to avoid it being branded as “evidence-free”?) I suppose it’s possible he just got lucky, but the more likely scenario sure seems that the President knew a few things the general public didn’t at the time of the crash.
Anyway, glad to know I mis-attributed your comments as being to all supporters. It comes across that way, what with all the cult-talk and insistence that gullibility and braindead-ness are the only explanations for support. But I take it back.
Despite our different viewpoints, I appreciate your engagement on things! One day you’ll hit it big-big and you’ll stop replying to us annoying plebs…
I'm a clinician. I have diagnosed and treated dementia for 10 years. I don't like Trump. I didn't vote for Trump. I also work daily at being mindful of my own biases, especially when passing character judgements. Especially especially when making diagnoses. To this end I have carefully watched numerous unedited interviews and speeches in their entirety. He clearly unequivocally may have a lot of issues but dementia is not one of them.
Now what character judgement gets passed to me based on this singular statement? How do I get categorized?
Recommend some deep meditation and reflection before accusing me of delusional thinking.
I'd like to hear something more substantive than "nuh-uh" to explain severe time disorientation of that magnitude.
Actually, I don't have to defend the null. The onus is on you to make the case for this very serious diagnosis of the President of the United States, pretending for the moment that you are qualified to make that diagnosis, which you have already acknowledged you are not. But as many like to argue these days, common sense and personal experience can sometimes be more valuable than expert opinion. So let's analyze the case as you have currently laid it out.
1. At the beginning of a 3-hour unscripted interview with Joe Rogan, which you acknowledge many have found to be evidence of his mental sharpness, you argue the opposite. You identify an instance near the beginning where he references an interview with Oprah and got the date wrong. Do people with dementia make such mistakes? Absolutely, particularly in later stages of dementia where they start to become temporally confused about the current date. Do people without dementia make such mistakes? Of course. Probably especially someone very busy who does a bazillian interviews.
What alternative explanation is there for this timelapse besides commonplace forgetfulness? Might someone exaggerate or lie about a date? Does Trump exaggerate and lie a lot? On this we can agree there is no shortage of evidence. Does this better explain the problem? I think so, and I suspect if you actually listen to the Rogan interview in its entirety, you will agree.
2. There is no #2.
In conclusion, this is insufficient to make an accurate diagnosis of dementia.
If not for the love for some of your previous writing, I would not take the time to write this. Honestly, it feels like this was written by a different person than the writer who calmly and meticulously tried to bring accurate history and reason to the early days of the Israel/Palestine conflict. This writing is dripping with emotional rhetoric, character attacks, and partisanship that feels more like the kind of arguments you have previously pushed back against. I hope after a few days of distance and reflection you agree.
You made an affirmative assertion that he does _not_ have dementia, which is very different from "there is insufficient evidence to conclude dementia based on this one observation". That's refuting an argument I neither made nor would endorse.
I'm not even sure what you are arguing now. Perhaps this article is satire and I missed it? Honestly it feels like a satire piece that never buried the lead.
If it is not satire, I will repeat, the onus is on you to make the argument that the President of the United States has dementia. The null is that he does not.
There is a good litmus test for evaluating for concerning cognitive changes. You compare against a baseline. Go onto Youtube. Watch random unedited non-partisan interviews with Trump now compared to a decade or two ago. He comes across as the same old bastard he ever was.
Do the same test with Biden and the difference is striking how much he has slowed down in his thinking, speaking, & walking. His speech is more slurred, and his thoughts are clearly slower, simpler, & more disorganized especially when he is not on a teleprompter.
We both may not like it, but objective reality doesn't care about our preferred reality.
I think the issue is you're confused about what null means. Saying something is "NOT X" is an affirmative assertion which requires justification. Assertions don't become "null" just because they contain the word "NOT".
A null in this context would be something like "there is no relationship between symptoms of time distortion and dementia" but you've explicitly already rejected that. Offering up one alternative explanation for time distortion does not _refute_ all other explanations just because you think yours is more likely.
Had you said "I think X is more likely, but you might be right" I would have no disagreements. Instead you went with "I think X is more likely, therefore you are wrong." which doesn't follow.
I'll never be able to prove conclusively that Trump has dementia, because the guy has refused to submit to medical examinations from a non-stooge. But if you really wanted to refute me (instead of just offer up plausible alternative explanations), the way to do it would be to showcase evidence that is inconsistent with my theory, such as examples of Trump successfully completing complex cognitive tasks that would be challenging for someone with dementia.
This is all rather pointless. Just watch any number of press interviews, which he is doing multiple times a week (and more than Biden did in 4 years). The man does not have dementia. It's obvious.
https://youtu.be/yoYpeufpEWE?si=iFM15rQKZ0pVjnOG
>Trump successfully completing complex cognitive tasks that would be challenging for someone with dementia.
Is taking over a political party and winning a competitive election a complex cognitive task? He completed that successfully. Most people fail to do that, even with their full faculties. I know that you're asking for some interview segment where everyone deconstructs his grammar, argues about what is indicated by a pause of 2 seconds rather than .5 seconds or what he "really means" or if it's "complex" to answer a question about Hamas by describing threatening tariffs on China unless they put sanctions on Iran. But it's essentially asking for one specific play that **proves** the Eagles are a good football team while ignoring that they won the Super Bowl.
One obvious counterargument would be assuming anyone that doesn't think Trump has dementia would probably say Biden does, then pointing out that Biden was almost able to win. But a key part of Biden's strategy was staying out of public so his staff could do everything. In contrast, Trump has never seemed to follow the strategy of staying out of public and seems like a vital part of his success. (I'd even argue that Trump is so personally distasteful that all of his "allies" will turn on him the first moment they don't need him, which is strong evidence that he's necessary to the campaign's success) Until there's Trumpism without Trump, Trumpism's electoral success indicates that Trump is a key part of it. (or say that it was really Bannon or Putin or Musk or ______ that is actually responsible and Trump is just a "useful idiot", which would open the question of whether someone that can't complete complex tasks would be a useful part of a presidential campaign)
Another argument could be something about how he's an idiot but he's able to win because he caters to McDonalds swilling morons that sit slack-jawed in front of reality tv so it doesn't count and anyone could win them over. While I wouldn't say that about voters (or consumers of McDonalds/reality TV) it seems empirically false to say that they're easy to cater to. There's a massive building in Chicago full of brilliant minds, calculating the exact salt content that would increase chicken nugget sales by 2% or the optimal placement of a new store. In an ideal world, these people would be working on curing cancer or something instead of optimal McRib supply chains, but it doesn't seem like they're stupid and most people can't do what they do. Therefore, a successful political movement that caters only to the same demographic should be assumed to have a similar high level of competence.
He has said that he's watched lots of unedited interview footage which is strongly indicative of Trump not having dementia. A problem in this debate is just that it's easier to point to a specific cognitive lapse as evidence of dementia rather than any specific "moment of clarity" or complex cognitive task as evidence against.
But I probably agree with Justin that the very large body of evidence of normal (well...Trump-normal) cognitive functioning points strongly against dementia. I also understand his annoyance at your piece; this section, while superficially true, struck me as very misleading:
"The reality is that those struggling with severe conditions will still present as fine most of the time...even full-blown dementia patients are notorious for having “good days and bad”.
It looks like you're trying to negate any contrary evidence in advance, just because having dementia is compatible with lucidity, without addressing how non-dementia is compatible with non-lucidity. If "normal" 78 year-olds also have off days, time-slips, speech errors, and memory lapses etc. (they do, right?), then Trump's errors are not significantly diagnostic of dementia.
The Oprah "last week" example is curious, but it sounds like he's just mixing up words. It sounds bad out of context, but he clearly means "he did one of her last shows/her last week" (untrue, but ... as I said, "Trump-normal"), and clarifies instantly. In context, it sounds completely fine.
To recap our exchange downstream, you started by making an affirmative assertion that Trump did _not_ have dementia. The only evidence provided was an appeal to your credentials.
When I asked for more substance, you refused, erroneously claiming that your assertion was actually a "null" that required no defense. You then acknowledged that the date confusion I cited is consistent with both dementia and non-dementia (which I agree with!) and denied that this solitary example was sufficient to conclude dementia (which I never claimed!). Between dementia vs common forgetfulness, you made another assertion that the latter explanation was more likely, without substantiating why.
After pointing out your "null" confusion and more questions, you retreated further into the abstract, posting a 37 minute video and claiming "it's obvious" that Trump does not have dementia. (side note: I don't know why you keep bringing up Biden, I've pointed out that guy's cognitive decline back in 2020).
I offered to be subject to real-time scrutiny & it's totally your right to decline. But in the process you accused me of being untethered from facts by refuting a claim I never made. Trump does indeed regularly forgo his teleprompter and freely ad lib! I explicitly said that his death grip reliance on teleprompters was "when outside the weave". I can't tell if this was malicious strawmanning on your part or just deficient reading comprehension.
Maybe you do indeed have 10 years of diagnosing dementia patients, and maybe Trump does indeed _not_ have dementia, but your comments have done a poor job of substantiating either. Your unacknowledged "null" confusion, fallacious reasoning, and strawmanning don't help either. Invitation remains open regardless.
I generally liked the article, but don’t appreciate the imagery in the final paragraph (gonna have nightmares).
“Human centipede” would’ve done just fine. No one thinks Trump’s other hole could provide that kind of nourishment, and you could’ve added something about coughing up sesame seeds or other indigestible Big Mac ingredients.
Not a psychiatrist, but it feels more like normal aged related changes. Of the 70 and 80 yr olds I know a lot of their filters start to drop and Trump had very little to begin with. I am not Freudian but I like the metaphor of his super ego starting to diminish and his ego and ID taking over, dialed up to 11. So even more bullshit and him believing his own bullshit even more.
Are you sure you're not reading too much into the Trump "last week" stuff? He started off by saying "last week" then talked about how he was one of the last shows, then mentioned that it was on the final week. It seems like he only erroneously believes that he was on the final (or last) week of the show, not that the show occurred a week earlier. This is the interpretation of the CNN article you linked (which makes no mention of Trump claiming that the show happened the week earlier). Do you believe that the author of that article is a secret Trump cultist? Doesn't seem likely. Are there many people besides you that think Trump was confused and thought the Oprah show was the previous week?
Obviously Trump is wrong when he said that he was on the last week of the show. But that makes him demented? You might remember a decade ago when news anchor Brian Williams falsely claimed that he was on a helicopter while it was being shot at. Scott Alexander mentioned it a contemporary SSC post.
>Brian Williams did exactly what I unfortunately do all the time – unthinkingly tell a story the much cooler way it should have happened, the way it happened in my head – rather than the way it actually did happen (my colleagues elsewhere in the psychiatry blogosphere go further and call this “normal brain function”).
I think that's a more reasonable view of why Trump said that he was specifically on the final week instead of just the final season.
From: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/02/14/drug-testing-welfare-users-is-a-sham-but-not-for-the-reasons-you-think/
(Also check out the comments for people bickering, including one conspiracy theorist who believes that Williams was a sacrificial pawn to inoculate the public against Clinton lies. I'm guessing they're referencing her statements on things like being sniped at in Bosnia or being named after a mountain climber. She had been attacked for those going back to 2008 and defended it with things like
>You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement," she said.
Always interesting to pick through the detritus of culture wars past)
Besides for that, I don't think it's unusual for "the party line" to be repeated by members of a party. That's the point of a party line. If anything, the current Republican party has less discipline and conformity than you'd expect given its success. Just look at their recent attempts to decide their speaker(15 ballots in one and 4 in another, both resulting in a non-trump-endorsed speaker) or the 2024 primary and how many endorsements Trump opponents got.
Finally it seems like an omission to talk about how a political party deals with a leader possibly having dementia and not mention the democrats in the time period between the debate and Biden's withdrawal from the race. It seems like a recent reference point.
You're focusing on "last week" without addressing "I think maybe Thursday or Friday"
He was (incorrectly) claiming that he was on one of the final days of the final week which would be even more special. In reality, he was a Monday guest earlier in the final season and he was exaggerating, like people do. I didn't think that was notable until I read your linked argument with the Star Wars guy, where you say it was odd Trump brought up an irrelevant detail. That might make sense, but in this context the day of week is germane to the story since Thursday and Fridays are higher status time slots. Trump mentions that difference in status when he (falsely) says he was one of the last shows in the last week and calls it a "big deal".
Let's say he really did believe that he was on Oprah the week before. Trump is directly responding to Rogan mentioning that Oprah encouraged him to be president years ago. You believe that Trump heard a reference to someone encouraging him to run for president, thought they meant that had happened the week before, then seconds later was talking about how "the apprentice as still going very strong" at the time he appeared. Did he also think that he was hosting the apprentice the week before? That must be the case, unless this delusion lasted for only a few seconds. When he says "boy, we've come a long way since then" seconds later, is he still referencing an event he believes occurred a week ago?
Also keep in mind the context was them complaining about how Trump used to be treated well on shows like the View or Oprah, but now isn't. Why would he bring up a recent Oprah appearance, exaggerating the prominence of his slot, if they were talking about how he isn't currently being treated well by the talk shows? It would undermine the small-minded grievance of current mistreatment that was the entire point of the conversation. (As a tangent, I think Trump cares more about Hollywood pettiness like treatment on Oprah than anything else. Long after he's forgotten the names of his children, he's going to know which Oscar parties were no longer "hot".)
Furthermore, what are other people doing when they don't call this out? Joe Rogan asked him about something that happened pre-presidency while discussing things that happened a decade earlier, then he just ignored that Trump referenced the week before? With no hesitation, Rogan continues to reference events from before Trump's first presidency. A CNN fact checker wrote an article about Trump's lies, but refused to touch that one? The NYT, BBC, the Washington Post, they all fact check Trump on other claims made on Rogan, but conspire to not call out that Trump got the year wrong?
So yes, it's possible that Trump experienced a delusion and not only was confused about what year the Oprah show happened, he brought it up at a time that was not only inappropriate but actually undermined the petty grievance he was whining about seconds before and seconds after that fit of disorientation occurred while his conversation partner seamlessly hid this break in conversation. But it seems much simpler to assume that Trump made the same type of petty exaggerations that all people do when recalling decade old memories and blurted out incorrect details (e.g. it was the last week, it was the most important day of the week, etc.) about his time slot to embellish it before repeating those (incorrect) details in a more structured way.
I know that this it a long explanation compared to "LISTEN TO WHAT HE SAID!" but I think it would take just as long to explain that Obama doesn't think there are 57 states, or that Brian Williams misspoke, or that Clinton isn't intentionally stealing sniper valor or other mistakes made by people speaking in an unstructured way. Rather than dissecting grammar or specific words, I'd be more convinced that Trump experiences time disorientation if there were examples of him bringing up events that only make sense in the context of what's being discussed. Krugman did something like this pre-election in an article about Trump being "unmoored in time" but I read most of it as just outdated references, like when people use Soviet imagery for Putin or complain about "fundies" hating Harry Potter. Or if large newspapers, like the NYT, shared your interpretation that Trump didn't know what year it was.
(finally, it looks like an actual clinician is commenting somewhere else, but I don't think that thinking specific events were recent is how Alzheimer's works. My grandmother never erroneously told me something happened last week when it happened years ago. Instead she'd say she was worried about her pregnancy (her youngest child was ~40) or that she needed to get my aunt ready for soccer practice or that my cousin was sick with the cancer that had killed him years earlier or that she wanted to go to some restaurant that had closed down decades before I was born. It's more like slipping into an old status than getting specific things wrong. It'd be Trump thinking that he could currently get lauded on Oprah, not that he was on Oprah recently.)
I had often said, in the run-up to the November elections, that Trump may well be a cure worse than the disease. But that as the patient was on death's doorstep, virtually anything was worth a shot. Haven't seen much since then to disabuse me of that argument.
Drawing a line on transgenderism -- as he commendably did with various EOs -- was absolutely essential. Though I doubt he had much direct involvement in writing them. But Helens Dale and Joyce quite reasonably argued that transgenderism was, and is, a "civilization threatening/ending movement". Not sure if that is hyperbole or understatement though I and no few others tend to the latter.
But many of Trump's other actions remind me of "The Madness of King George", the sci-fi classic "Short in the chest", and the Red Queen's "Off with their heads" -- some "victims" clearly needing that, many others much less so.
I agree with Andrew Sullivan on this (now paywalled unfortunately: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/trumps-shock-and-awe-month):
"Trump is on firmer ground with his efforts to leverage the federal government’s ubiquitous funding to curtail DEI’s race and sex discrimination. But even here, he is larding up the public record with comments that absolutely reflect his own animus and bigotry — especially against trans people — which will give opponents some chance to fight back in the courts. He didn’t have to do this. There are good, non-transphobic arguments for fairness in sports and ethical medicine for children. But a bigot’s gotta bigot, even if it boomerangs on him, as it should."
Seem to recollect that I did read that — as a free subscriber — before Sullivan paywalled it. Though don’t recollect exactly what “transphobic, bigoted” comments of Trump he had in mind.
But Sullivan certainly didn’t pull any punches himself in condemning “gender identity” ideology when it came to “the worst attack on gay kids since Anita Bryant”:
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/rachel-levine-must-resign-2d7
Apparently reflecting his own biases — nobody complains until it is their own ox that is being gored.
No doubt that Trump is a bull in a china shop, throwing the baby out with the bathwater as Bulwark writer Cathy Young argued recently in the context of DEI.
But as even you apparently acknowledge in the case of Gaza and the Palestinians, clearly some crockery needed breaking, even if some might be “offended” at losing some “priceless” heirlooms.
My pessimistic prognosis so far is that the authoritarian lavishment and trafficking in hallucinations-as-news won't come close to being worth it. I hope I'm wrong.
👍 So do I. But I really don't think that Dale's & Joyce's "civilization threatening/ending movement" is idle chitchat. As a lawyer, you might have some interest in the former's review of the latter, and of Maya Forstater of Sex Matters:
https://lawliberty.org/podcast/when-does-sex-matter/
This is maybe a bit out of your bailiwick -- or motte or bailey 😉🙂 -- but you might also have some interest in this post on the TransAtlantic from a scientific perspective:
"The dislocations experienced around gender identity ideology have revealed the great threat couched in abnegation of the scientific disposition."
https://thetransatlantic.substack.com/p/self-id-or-nullius-in-verba-between/comment/47238283
"Above the very doors of [the Royal Society's] Marble Hall in central London, etched into the stonework above the lintel, stands the bedrock statement of the scientific episteme – Nullius in Verba, On No One’s Word."
https://thetransatlantic.substack.com/p/self-id-or-nullius-in-verba-between
TL;DR Orange Man Bad.
At least include a statement acknowledging Biden's dementia and showing how early you spotted that? Or even better, post receipts showing your concern about our (actually) very-clearly-demented president, who had no idea where he was half the time, being propped up for four years while his team did whatever they wanted under his "leadership" and the world burned around us
I hate having to defend Trump, but as a classical liberal who just watched the dems incinerate what little credibility they had left ("sharp as a tack", right?), it's been refreshing to see a president in action and actually making things happen. Yes, he's old and may even have burgeoning dementia. One could argue he's no less delusional now than he was 20 years ago, but he's always seemed to occupy a separate reality from the rest of us.
The bottom line is that he's delivering on what he promised to deliver, and half of our country is cheering him on. Time will tell if we're better off in the end, but one thing's for certain: calling out Trump's dementia after witnessing what we did over the past four years is RICH.
I've called out Biden's diminishing cognition way back in July 2020! https://www.ymeskhout.com/p/person-woman-man-camera-tv
I don't obligate myself to being a hugbox provider. If someone is vexed by Trump's dementia and need to be soothed and comforted by mentions of Biden's, they gotta look elsewhere for emotional reassurance.
I question your reading comprehension if your TLDR was "Orange Man Bad". Telling me that he's delivering on what he promised is the opposite of reassuring when my argument is about his supporters being brain-dead sycophants, obedient to a dementia patient.
It is always good to read someone in the Trump camp defend him: "Biden had dementia too!" is a new one, but hey I like novel defenses.
As for the rest of "he's delivering on what he promised" I guess I can't disagree, he is trying to rule as a dictator and purge the state of opponents so he can replace them with loyal sycophants, just as he promised, so technically you aren't wrong. Then again he's already walked back solving inflation, so it probably depends on which promises you thought mattered the most.
To be clear, I didn’t defend Trump by saying “Biden had it too”. Trump is delivering - like it or not. That’s the defense. I acknowledge he’s old and may in fact have onset dementia.
My point about Biden is that if you’re going to call out Trump’s dementia, you should realize people either a) don’t care whether our president has dementia or not [see most Dems 2020-2024], or b) are likely to ignore the argument, given recent history + human nature.
An interesting thing though, and this ties into Yassine's previous post about Republicans being cucks, is that when the Democrats were faced with incontrovertible evidence that Biden couldn't hack it anymore, they dumped Biden. It was messy, it was painful, but as a political party they rose up and deposed their sitting leader, who was the incumbent President, less than 6 months before an election.
The same would be absolutely unconscionable for the other side