Trump's neurological health - a rational discussion please

Politics & Elections
1

I would like to start by requesting we keep this discussion based on facts and reasonable inferences. Let’s try to analyze the available evidence and avoid partisan debates if we can. I’m only interested in discussing whether it’s reasonable to believe that Trump is showing symptoms of dementia, not what should be done if he is.

OK… To my untrained eye, it appears that Trump’s verbal skills have declined noticeably from just a few years ago. During the Republican primary debates, I think the majority of his sentences held to a fairly coherent Subject-Verb-Object format, and he had the ability to deliver sharp verbal jabs at times. He may have been repetitive, and he may have said things that were not factually accurate, but he stayed in the ballpark of recognized syntax and grammar. This seems no longer to be the case. It seems (again to my untrained eye, and admittedly I haven’t done a rigorous analysis) that his sentences have become less and less coherent and more belligerent. His calls to Fox are louder and more wandering, often leaving the Fox anchors embarrassed.

In addition, he increasingly seems to be unable to recognize fairly common words and ideas. Recently, he thought a question about “busing” was referring to simple student transportation, and he mangled a Medal of Honor citation when he got to a line about an attacker jumping out of “a wardrobe”. Trump stopped reading and “corrected” the line to “wearing a wardrobe”. Today, he boasted that the Fourth of July parade would feature brand new Sherman tanks, a type that hasn’t been made since WWII.

More and more, his facial expression seems fixed and mask-like, and he walks with a strained, clumsy gait. When he stands, his arms are rigid at his side. I haven’t even seen his trademark thumbs-up in a while.

Some guy on Twitter who goes by “Tom Joseph” has been talking about this. I can’t vouch for this Twitter user, but he has collected some interesting images and made some points that don’t seem crazy. Joseph argues that Trump is showing symptoms of something called “frontotemporal dementia”. He believes that Ivanka is glued to his side because she’s his caregiver, trying futilely to keep his dementia hidden. Here’s a picture Joseph uses to illustrate the point: https://twitter.com/TomJChicago/status/1145134081778364416. Trump’s jutting tongue and Ivanka’s pained expression are jarring.

Joseph also points out that Trump often seems to be wearing something bulky around his lower back, as seen here: https://twitter.com/TomJChicago/status/1144793452686848000. Joseph believes Trump is wearing a back brace to counter the loss of balance due to neurological deterioration.

I don’t know shit about any of this, and maybe this Joseph guy is a crank. But, Trump does seem, to me, to be less and less coherent and stable by the day. Is this due to a progressive neurological disorder, or just the stress of the job on a typical 73-year-old? Or am I just a hopelessly partisan Democrat seeing what I want to see?

What do you think?

2

I’m not going to diagnose him, but the guy doing the Oprah interviews back in the 80s and today’s Trump might as well be 2 different people.

3

Similarly, in his appearances on Larry King Live back in the 90s, he used complex sentence structure, subordinate clauses, and generally sound syntax and thought structure.

4

Trump’s response when asked if he agreed with Putin that Western liberal democracy is obsolete:

I mean… does this sound like a neurologically healthy human being?

5

A LOT of verbal speech – especially “off the cuff” remarks – translates very poorly to the page. Many people have a certain degree of stream-of-consciousness quality to extemporaneous speech that sounds ok when you hear it, but looks downright terrible when you read a transcript.

6

He literally thinks “Western liberal democracy” refers to liberal Democrats on the West Coast.

7

A wealthy person probably isn’t familiar with everything middle class folks are.
I wonder if his handlers have asked him to “dumb things down” to appeal to some of his supporters.

8

That’s why he should stick with the written word. Covfefe! Hamberders!

9

I’ve never been under the impression that Trump has ‘handlers’ as conventionally defined; he pretty clearly just does and says whatever he wants. Who, specifically would be a few of these notional ‘handlers’?

What’s most striking to me about Trump, aside from the increasingly frequent odd verbal tics already mentioned, is his near-total inability to take on and integrate new information.

10

For him it isn’t a lot, it is most, and it sounds bad when listened to as well as when read. Emotionally, verbally and physically his problems are there for all to see, and you aren’t doing him any favors by covering for him.

11

If you called an airline, a cell phone company, or some other organization, and got a customer service representative who speech was as incoherent as Donald Trump’s, within three minutes you’d be demanding to be transferred to someone who speaks English.

Is that a neurological issue? Don’t know. But I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

12

Here is an interview trump did with tim russert in 1999. I think he was 53.

The cognitive decline from then to now is impossible to ignore. Trump was cogent, coherent and used complex sentences in his 50s. His control over his emotions was much stronger. His comprehension of politics and global affairs was far stronger.

Personally I think trump has both dementia and a narcissistic disorder. We need legitimate, independent medical evaluations.

By comparison to the video of him in his 50s, here is a video of modern trump appearing to get lost walking from air force one to his limo.

13

I think that’s the case. He is incredibly ill-informed and has likely never encountered the term “western democracy” because he reads nothing and is unlikely to listen to programs where the phrase might be uttered.

The bit about his posture and gait are interesting but I don’t think conclusive. It could be a matter of his suits not fitting well.

14

And it looks like one of the Air Force guys was standing there with the door open for him.

Also note how he was walking down the stairs, looking down at his feet as though he was unsure how to navigate the steps. I know that older people often have difficulty with stairs, so I don’t know if his capability with steps is in the typical range for a man his age and weight.

15

Maybe stairs are a problem if you’re wearing a new pair of elevator shoes, or if your bone spurs are acting up. Or if you need glasses to see stairs clearly, and you’re too vain to wear them. But that isn’t neurological.

16

The pictures in the OP don’t mean much to me. Photographs are a 1/100th of a second snapshot in time and can be chosen to make things appear that are not.

I would put much more weight on analyzing his off-the-cuff speech patterns as some have linked to above.

17

Trump has been incurious for a very long time. I think the fact that he doesn’t understand the controversy surrounding ‘busing’, or a concept like ‘western liberalism’, is just indicative of his lifelong aversion to knowing anything that doesn’t have to do with him.

Being a lifelong narcissist, Trump has only been able to talk about himself and has never had the interest or ability to learn about things outside that orbit. Now that he’s in his 70’s, this attitude has narrowed his world view to such a degree that he seems confused or lost when he is asked to talk about virtually anything other than his own life experience.

I don’t think it’s dementia, but it is completely backward to what we should strive for in our elected representatives.

18

What about the video offered a couple posts up from yours?

19

I think the evidence presented here and elsewhere shows a definite deterioration in thought, speech and movement.

20

His latest statement:

Is this man mentally competent enough to run a country?