Don’t take away their hope.
(Soeaking of which, can’t fail to imagine people wishing Cheney were the Sith Master he was cast as, and could have brought these guys down.)
I know, right? Turns out he was already dead inside!
Do you think he EVER knew what the document is about?
That’s not cognitive decline. That’s being a lazy, reluctant reader who thinks in cliches, which is a tremendously common thing at all ages. I’ve had twenty-year-old students tell me that Siegfried Sasson’s They is an uplifting poem about how “everything happens for a reason.” It doesn’t mean they have dementia, it just means they aren’t paying attention.
Well, when you’re a silver spoon kid and you bought your papers to turn in you never learn the actual lesson.
That, or it’s just plain stupidity.
Being intellectually incurious, a non-reader, and ignorant of a whole lot of things, while simultaneously presenting himself as brilliant and supernaturally insightful, have all been aspects of Trump for decades.
What seems to be relatively new is both (a) a greater level of confusion about things, and (b) meandering monologues (“the Weave”) about whatever bugbear wanders through his brain at a given moment.
John Gruber, emphasis added:
Watch the clip. A transcript doesn’t do justice to just how clear it is he has no idea what it means. I keep mentioning that Democrats should hammer, every day, the argument that Trump is way too old and now suffering from dementia. It’s just good politics. But I think it’s actually true, too. Mark my words, by the time he gets toward the end of this second term they’re going to have to somehow try to keep him away from microphones. You can’t get out of the fourth grade without being able to describe what the Declaration of Independence means.
I’m not familiar with Siegfried Sasson. Yes, students bullshit about class readings. But saying that the Declaration of Independence is something about, “Love and unity” is next level. I concede that Trump is operating from a low baseline though: during the 1980s the author of Art of the Deal couldn’t keep Trump’s focus for very typical 2 hour interviews. He ended up just taking notes as Trump spoke on the phone in his office.
Trump can’t follow an ordinary conversation about policy. He can’t delegate because he doesn’t trust anyone, and he doesn’t like it when he’s presented with ideas contrary to his impulses. The result is nonsensical policies, like when Trump launches a vendetta against the most dovish and possibly the most capable member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, thereby causing long term interest rates to spike, which are the rates that matter. Treasury Secretary Bessent surely grasps the situation. But his influence is capped by Trump’s cognitive limitations.
How about a bowl of mashed potatoes?
As the kids waited, Donald was engaged in one of his favorite activities–tormenting his little brother, Robert, who was about five at the time and was also very frail, very skinny, very pale, and very thin skinned, figuratively, if not literally. Donald was around seven. My dad would’ve been 13 or so.
By this time, Donald was a pro at teasing and belittling his little brother and, as was often the case, Robert started crying hysterically and screaming for Donald to stop. Donald, of course, wouldn’t and nobody could get him to—especially not my grandmother for whom, even then, Donald had a fair amount of contempt. He didn’t listen to a word she said, and even telling him to wait until his father came home had no impact on his behavior,
In the midst of the fighting and yelling and sobbing, my grandmother started setting the table and bringing the food in from the kitchen. As things continued to escalate, my dad, in just a fit of frustration, did the only thing he could think of to do to make Donald stop: He picked up what must have been the quite massive bowl of mashed potatoes that my grandmother had just put on the table and he dumped it on Donald’s head. Robert immediately went quiet and Donald was speechless.
And, probably worst of all for him, everybody, except Donald, of course, started laughing. They were laughing their heads off, and Donald knew they were laughing at him. It may have been the first time, at least consciously, that Donald felt that awful feeling of humiliation, and there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t laugh it off because, even then, he wasn’t capable of laughing at himself. I think it some ways, this is the source of his grievance, the source of his always feeling that everything is against him and life is completely unfair—which sounds absurd because among other things, it’s completely untrue.
The bowl of masked potatoes ended Robert’s suffering, at least that night, but it also set Donald’s into motion. It was the source of his terror of being humiliated. And he developed some very strong armor and defense mechanisms so he’d never feel that way again.
(Apologies for the lengthy quote, but the context matters.)
-checks to make sure it’s the Pit-
You know, I could see it go the other way. If I was a government representative with diplomatic immunity (ideally, the comic book version abused by Dr. Doom!) I think I’d show up in comically awful and inappropriate clothes and turn it up to 11 with a Melanie-inspired bright neon-yellow jacket with “I really don’t care, do U?”
Furthermore, I’m also not sure I could resist whipping it out and taking a whiz on the coffin, especially if I coordinated it with many of the attendees.
Yes, not practical, they’d shuffle us off, long before we got to make a scene, but hey, Pit version of reality. 
Must be the same ones who insist Wilfred Owen’s The Parable of the Old Man and the Young is an anti-semitic screed that blames the Jews for WWI.
Chatter on Bluesky that Trump has no plans for the weekend (including no golf!) and hasn’t been seen in public for two days.
Example:
The thing is, Biden took being President seriously and actually did the work. That has to wear anyone down; just look at pictures of Obama before taking office and after leaving it. Trump isn’t putting in anywhere near the level of work the job requires to be done properly.
OMG. 1) What a stunner of a closing couplet; and 2) please tell me no one has seriously argued that?
Yeah, but it was a while ago, and on the internet, so maybe they were just trolling? IDK. I was much less attuned to such things in those days. I was in my 20s myself then.
“Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.”
Meanwhile, at least there’s some laughter available to the select few
Trump has had an incredibly stressful time of it for the last few years. He was convicted of multiple felonies and was facing possible jail time, he was found liable for sexual assault, the Trump organization had former judge Barbara Jones overseeing their financial decisions making it difficult for them to actually do business, and of course the Trump organization was on the hook for hundreds of millions because of fraud.
Here in 2025 we might cynically look back and think none of that mattered. But they mattered to Trump, and whenever he spoke to the press you could tell he was scared shitless. He couldn’t control himself in court appearances, he pleaded with Congress to save him from the corrupt “Department of Injustice,” he was losing case after case, and it looked like he might even go to jail for those pesky documents at Mar-a-Lago. That took a toll on Trump more profound than any decisions he had to make as a president because it was his ass on the line. Trump didn’t give a shit about running the country, he only cares about Trump.
I’m not too keen on wishful thinking when it comes to Trump. i.e. I’m not going to get my hopes up that he’s going to die soon. It would sure be nice if he does though.
Headline from today (also appeared on MSNBC which I take as a wonderful sign but unfortunately I couldn’t find a link to it from them) indicating that we at the Straight Dope are not the only ones licking our chops in anticipation of the Best Headline Ever:
Apologies for the double post but I just learned that Trump hasn’t been seen on camera for three days now:
Gosh, that’s a bad photo. He looks like he’s ready to start drooling. All it needs is somebody spoon-feeding him some oatmeal or soup or something else you don’t need teeth for.