Former Trump admin officials warn his alarming cognitive decline has accelerated

As the clock counts down to Election Day on November 5, former President Donald Trump’s alarming cognitive decline is accelerating, as evidenced in a series of embarrassing memory lapses, misstatements and the kinds of outbursts associated with an angry old age.

“With the passage of time his speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past,” The New York Times stated in a thorough catalog of the twice-impeached and convicted felon’s alarming behavior on the stump.

Related:

Donald Trump’s gay niece says we’re not ready for the vengeance he’ll unleash if he wins

She urged the American people to take his threats seriously.

In the words of one Trump supporter turned critic, Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci, the short-lived communicatipons director for President Trump in the first months of his administration, “He’s not competing at the level he was competing at eight years ago, no question about it.”

Your LGBTQ+ guide to Election 2024

Stay ahead of the 2024 Election with our newsletter that covers candidates, issues, and perspectives that matter.

Daily

Weekly

Good News

“He’s lost a step. He’s lost an ability to put powerful sentences together,” Scaramucci added.

A computer analysis by the Times reveals a host of data points indicating cognitive decline, related to age alone or an as-yet undiagnosed or undisclosed medical condition.

Trump swears on the stump 69% more often than he did when he first ran, a trend experts call a sign of “disinhibition.” He uses 32% more negative words than positive words now versus then, an indication of anger and frustration associated in some people with old age, the Times wrote.

He rambles. Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016.

The signs of advancing age are apparent in his increased use of  “all-or-nothing” terms like “always” and “never.”

And the septuagenarian seems trapped in the amber of his halcyon days in the 1980’s and 90’s, when he was a bright star in the tabloid universe of the New York Post and Daily News, untethered from expectations of honesty and the pressures of a political campaign.

He’s fixated on the cannibal character Hannibal Lector from the movie The Silence of the Lambs, released in 1991. He said he’d like to see late-night host Johnny Carson, who retired the same year, back on the air — but Carson died in 2005. He swoons for Cary Grant and Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh, a disgraced hero his father no doubt admired.

Technology confuses him. The former president has said that “most people don’t have any idea what the hell a phone app is”  while 96% of Americans own a smartphone. He’s struggled to remember the name of Trump supporter Elon Musk’s Starlink system, even as he’s invoked it while bashing the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene.

Sarah Matthews, another Trump administration vet, as deputy press secretary, agreed the former president had lost his “fastball.”

“I don’t think anyone would ever say that Trump is the most polished speaker, but his more recent speeches do seem to be more incoherent, and he’s rambling even more so and he’s had some pretty noticeable moments of confusion,” she said. “When he was running against Biden, maybe it didn’t stand out as much.”

Experts call the rambling “tangentiality.”

While Trump has always verged on incoherency in his speaking style, the memory lapses are clearly piling up. That was on display in 2021 when he sat down for a follow-up interview with Ramin Setoodeh, author of a new book on Mr. Trump’s days hosting The Apprentice. 

“When I said, ‘Do you remember sitting down with me’” three months earlier, Trump replied, “‘No, that was a long time ago.’” 

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.

Don't forget to share: