Scarborough Says People Close To Trump Worry He's 'Pre-Dementia'

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. I think he's starting to slide past the "pre-" stage.

Dementia is gradual and incremental, and it doesn't manifest itself exactly the same way all the time. Sometimes Trump probably seems perfectly normal (for him, anyhow; he's never been normal normal), but then at other times he goes off the rails, especially under stress. Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1994, well after he left office. Whether he already had it while he was president has never been conclusively established and remains controversial. There were reports that he occasionally showed signs of confusion but these episodes didn't last long; however, they may have been precursors of the disease. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ronald-reagan-alzheimers-disease/ Whatever is ailing Trump seems to be a lot more obvious and weird than Reagan's occasional memory lapses. Unlike Reagan, who didn't appear to have significant problems speaking coherently (at least in public), Trump can't seem to find words - he kept saying "oranges" for "origins," for example, and he didn't even seem to realize he was using the wrong word. His vocabulary seems to have diminished; he repeats the same simple phrases over and over. As the investigations progress and the heat is turned up even more, I think we'll see him become increasingly incoherent.