For a guy who is almost 80 who doesn’t exercise, eats fast food, is full of rage, is overweight and has a busy schedule, he seems to be in good physical health. His mental health however seems to be declining pretty bad.
I have several aunts and uncles in their 70s, none have lost cognitive abilities the way Trump has.
Watch a clip of Trump in his 50s, he was much sharper and more coherent than he is now.
He was a criminal asshole back then, and now we are seeing his decent into madness.
What scares me is that despite his obvious descent, the election is still tight. In other words, millions of Americans are somehow willing to look past all of the warning signs.
I agree. The accusations about Katie Johnson are from the 1990s. I do not deny he is a malignant narcissist who is evil and doesn’t feel empathy.
He was just able to hide it better until the dementia kicked in.
I truly believe that his supporters want to be just like him. They admire him for these reasons -
Why Trump didn’t end up sweeping floors at a big box store is going to be a question for all time.
I read someplace the other day that his usual order at McDonalds is two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish and a chocolate milkshake. That is an astonishing amount of food, though perhaps that explains his enormous energy stores?
It certainly explains his enormous girth and +enormous oversized suits.
Your first reason explains the answer to your question, and all the other reasons he’s admired for:
That’s it. Weath and the things it brings are Trump’s main enablers, Couple that with his craving for adoration and respect, and they’ve gotten him to where he is today.
If you had someone just like Trump without huge amounts of inherited wealth, sweeping floors at a big box store is his upside.
I could be mistaken but I believe that from a nutrition standpoint, your energy is not about how much you consume but about your health and metabolism, etc. In other words, a thin vegan who eats healthy but only 2,000 calories per day is likely to have more energy than an obese person who eats 4,000 calories a day.
He takes amphetamines, etc. doesn’t he? Also good pain management can hide many health flaws. Years ago I traveled with a lady who was 77 and certainly appeared in very good shape, but she admitted that a small dose of predisone and some Tylenol were her best friends. I later met her at home, without those assistances, and it was much different. She walked much slower and stiffer, and did not have a high energy level, and it was just a few weeks later after our trip to Europe. That said, she was a small woman who suffered from osteoporosis as well as arthritis, and she had undergone cancer treatment. So perhaps it isn’t much of a comparison to Trump. But I would not rule out some medications as well as extra napping that is keeping up his appearance of vigor .
The biggest question is “Why do people kiss his ass when they KNOW they will not get a slice of that money” My guess is power. And I never understood that. I hate power. It sucks.
I’ve heard this before, but it’s only a rumor as far as I know. IOW, cite?
I help run (as a volunteer board member and former officer) a non-profit that helps elderly people continue to live fulfilling lives independently in their homes. We basically offer volunteer services to help them with tasks they can no longer do and lots of social activities to keep them from getting lonely. As a result, I have known a lot of people in the 65-95 range over the last nine years. The median age of our members is, drum roll please, 78.
Our members have a wide range of physical capabilities but we have many members in different social groups dedicated to specific physical activities including walking, running, swimming, biking, tennis, pickleball (so much pickleball), golf, and yoga. I’d say that about 10% of our members can’t walk unassisted, and Trump is clearly better off physically than they are. I don’t see that being able to golf with a cart and stand for a few hours at a time bumps him too far up the rankings but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he is probably just a bit below the average for our members.
My basic impression is that cognitively, only a few of our 250 odd members are worse than Donald Trump. We have very active social groups dedicated to memoir writing, fiction writing, poetry appreciation, poetry writing, playwriting, play production, documentary film making, current events, chess, Scrabble, and a bunch more I’m forgetting about. Nearly all of our members engage actively in one or more of these activities. Our average member participates in at least four social activities like these per month.
Our board is also mostly composed of the people it serves so I see people in their 70s and 80s who need to evaluate and decide on complex issues, which in recent years have included hiring a new executive director, signing a lease, deciding whether to sublease a portion of their space, launching a retirement plan, adding health benefits for employees, and merging with two other similar organizations that were simply failing. I’ve known about 30 board members over the past nine years and only two of those seemed to be at anywhere near Trump’s level of cognitive dysfunction. For them, it mostly manifested as being quiet and offering no substantive input to decisions.
On the extremely capable end, I knew a 92 year old guy (unrelated to the organization above) who used to bike ride seven miles to work every every day running a small but influential non-profit that required him to regularly raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and give many long speeches. In his down time, he played tennis. He was also an indisputable American hero who was once seriously discussed as a potential Republican presidential candidate. Trump couldn’t hold a candle to him in any way.
Admittedly, the older people I know are generally healthier than average because we screen members seeking volunteer services to make sure that they don’t need more than we can offer. There is also a survivorship bias (figuratively and literally) because if members get too sick or diminished to live in their homes anymore, they tend to quit the organization. Even accounting for that bias, I still think that Trump is probably only a bit better physically than the average 78 year old and is way worse cognitively.
I did some research, and as you suggest, it is all rumor, etc. He has never released his medical records, so we don’t know. Is he required to release them? I thought HIPAA forbade this practice, if the patient refused to be transparent about health issues. So, there is no real proof that he is taking Adderall or anything else, just conjecture. I will pose the thought that many people can do quite well in their late 70s, but the 80s becomes much more limited for the vast majority of people. It is very difficult to hide one’s aging in that decade. He will be 80 in 18 mos, and if he is president, I rather doubt he will keep going at the present pace.
He did release the basic results of his annual physicals while he was president, though given that his White House physician, Ronny Jackson, also turned out to be a MAGA dude, they seemed at least a bit generous.
Pretty much every president in the modern era has undergone an annual physical, and publicly released at least the basic results, as a matter of course. I don’t think that they are “required” to release them, but it’s an expectation – and in Trump’s case, I imagine that he wanted to use the opportunity to “prove” that he was the healthiest, most amazing physical specimen ever to hold the office.
But, yes, HIPAA rules are that medical professionals aren’t allowed to publicly discuss or release any “personal health information” for their patients without express permission.
One can argue that “evil” is subjective (what I consider “evil” is almost certainly “good” from someone else’s perspective), but the common element to all reasonable definitions of “evil” is power.