Okay, I admit that I still get some guilty pleasure reading the Palmer Report. While the conclusions they draw don’t always flow from the facts, the facts they report are usually just that: facts. Today they relate another fact, also reported over at Hullabloo:
You don’t have to be a medical expert in order to piece together that Donald Trump is showing worsening signs of dementia. He no longer knows who the people around him are, in his political and personal life. He can’t figure out what the current period of time is. He sees the name “Donald Trump” on the teleprompter and doesn’t understand that he’s that person. And his brain keeps shorting out mid sentence, causing him to start randomly babbling about the last word he heard himself say.
But if you want confirmation of what you think you’re seeing, it turns out an expert in the field very much agrees. Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, says that “Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia.”
Dr. Gartner points to Trump’s frequent use of non-words, known as “phonemic paraphasias,” as a medical indicator of how advanced Trump’s dementia is. Trump typically makes up fake words that sound similar to real words, as he tries and fails to remember what the real words are.
The cited symptom isn’t the sole symptom, as anyone who is paying attention would know. It is, however, according to Gartner, a sign of “moderate to severe stages of Alzheimer’s”. The sad fact is that not everyone is paying attention, and much of the media is making no attempt to bring this state of affairs to their attention, preferring instead to concentrate on the senility from which Joe Biden is not suffering. It is to be hoped that as the days go on, particularly given the pressure from his various court cases,that his condition will further deteriorate to such an extent that even the mainstream media will pay sustained attention to it.
I wonder though. I remember that shortly after Reagan was elected I watched one of his press conferences and it struck me that he wasn’t all there mentally. During one of his debates with Mondale in 1984 he wandered off into an irrelevant anecdote that actually caused a bit of comment, but it quickly receded and he declined further into his senility as his second term progressed. Of course they were successful in keeping it all under wraps, because after all, who needs a functioning president if the people who pull his strings can still get all they want. In the end, all he has to be capable of doing is signing his name where they tell him to, and if he has trouble with that, they can always guide his hand. It never became an issue with Reagan, but it’s also the case that his condition wasn’t as advanced while he was in the White House as Trump’s condition appears to be.
It may be a bit of a different story if the man has to run for president while in the grip of senility, because he has to go out in public, at least sometimes. Of course, he’ll refuse to debate and will avoid all but friendly media, but the press will not question whatever lame excuses they put forward for his actions. But it will become more and more difficult to make the issue about Biden as Trump’s public displays become more numerous and less open to bullshit explanations. Plus, give the Biden folks credit, they are tweeting out videos of all Trump’s senile moments (on Truth Social too) and that has to have at least some affect on other coverage.
I suppose that from a potential VP’s point of view, it is an enticing prospect. Assuming they steal the election fair and square this time, the VP could simply wait until January 21st and then invoke the 25th Amendment.
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