Perhaps we should tap the brakes on wanting to label Trump with any specific age-related diagnosis? [View all]

[Tommy Carcetti]

Besides the fact that most of us are not mental health or neurological health experts, I also fear that the desire to diagnose Trump with any specific age related neurocognitive condition (whether it be Alzheimer's or any other dementia related condition) runs the risk of letting the man off too easy for what constitutes a lifetime of dysfunctional behavior on his part in the private and public spheres.

To be fair, Trump is a 79 year old man and like any person of that age is not immune from suffering from at least a certain degree of decline when it comes to speech, motor movements and energy levels. To be fully fair, I said the same thing about President Biden when criticisms were launched against him--he was an old man who talked slower and walked slower than he used to. On the other hand, I honestly believe there was (and still is) no decline in President Biden's basic mental acuity or ability to perform his duties in office, and I still feel that--subsequent prostate cancer diagnosis notwithstanding--there was no reason that he needed to step aside (as he was basically forced by others to do.)

When you heard a speech by President Biden, there was no evidence whatsoever that he lacked the intelligence and the wit behind the words being delivered, no matter how much slower he talked or walked.

But Trump, on the other hand, has never been particularly intelligent, witty, or talented. He has never been an eloquent orator or communicator by any means. As long as he has been in the public sphere, he has demonstrated all the traits of a malignant narcissistic personality intent on both raising himself up and demonizing others around him as much as possible.

His reputation in business was not earned through any talent on his part but rather in good thanks to his father and those around him, until it was cemented onto him.

As President, there has never been a Golden Age of Trump (not counting his White House redecoration efforts.) He has never proposed any significant policy or campaign to better the lives of the people he governs (tax cuts to the rich are not policy). In his first term in office, he inherited a rising economy from President Obama and basically surfed on it until he hit the brick wall that was COVID, and all things then fell apart for him. His worst impulses during the first term were kept in check at times by guardrails--people who had served in the public sphere for years and knew proper behavior and etiquette. But when he lost it all in November 2020, those guardrails got pushed aside as he attempted to overturn his electoral loss and encouraged violent behavior from his base, ultimately resulting at the scene at the Capitol on January 6th.

In his second term, those guardrails have been completely purged and jettisoned, and he is now surrounded only by loyalists who encourage his worst impulses. His cruelty is his own; while he lacks the intellectual tools or wherewithal to create specific policy implementations, he has always been willing to designate that nitty-gritty to others (whether it be Elon Musk, Stephen Miller or other subordinates.) This does not mean he is those persons' puppet or that he does not know or care about what they are doing in his name; rather, they are willing partners with each other in their cruelty on the American people.

At no time has he ever actually had an interest in serving the public as President in terms of how those duties have traditionally been seen in this democratic country; rather, to him the Presidency is simply an excuse for self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment in the way that foreign despots and autocrats have used their power.

So what we see now is by no means a diminished or incapacitated Trump, but rather the rawest version of the man that he has always been, only with signs of expected age-related decline for a person of his age.

This is not to say that he does not, in fact, have Alzheimer's or some other sort of age-related neurological dementia. This is not to say that he might not drop dead within months.

Both of those things are still very much in the realm of possibility.

It's also very much in the realm of possibility that there's been very little actual decline in Trump at all, and all this is just the manifestation of a guardrail-less, uncensored Trump in the purest (and stupidest) of forms.

But until those things are actually known to be true--and we don't know those to be true--all we know to be dealing with is simply Trump being Trump; that is, a stupid, narcissistic, malicious, vindictive man hellbent on power and glory for himself.

And that certainly is bad enough a situation for us and the immediate future and survival of our country.