Trump emerges from air force one. The presidential limo is literally at the very bottom of the steps. But Trump somehow misses it and has to be directed back to it. You must watch to appreciate how bizarre it is.
Who else would that limo at the foot of the stairs be for? And how could he not see it? He had to turn because it was in his path.
I mean it -- is he OK?
Having watched my beloved father suffer from dementia, I cannot joke about it. It is a terrible thing, something I would wish on no human. So this is not a joke or a sneer. It is a sincere question -- might he be in the early stages of dementia?
I have to tell you -- that is the kind of thing my dad started doing in the early stages of his illness. He'd not be able to find things right in front of him, or wouldn't recognize common objects right away.
This is weird. I'm sorry, it is.
And then there is covfefe. And then there is that weird inappropriate happy singing at Arlington. And the way he doesn't seem to remember what he said the day before and constantly contradicts himself. I'd been chalking that last thing up to lying, but... well, he really does display some signs of dementia.
I'm guessing they thought he was heading over to talk with someone -- I mean, how do you miss a car sitting right in front of you with the presidential seal and the door open for you?
And then there was this moment...
And covfefe. And his word salad, his word repetition, his blithe self-contradictions, his irrational anger and paranoia...
All of this stuff reminds me horribly of my dad's decline. I think Trump really might have dementia. No joke.
Just in time for North Korea to arm up and for Trump to meet with Putin.
I've been giving a lawyerly raspberry to the 25th amendment talk, but if he has dementia, that would be another story.
In the first vid, it looks like--to me--that he thought there was going to be some kind of minor event on the tarmac: a meet and great, a short q&a, I don't know. That, or there were more cars lined up that we couldn't see and Trump thought he was getting in one of those. Doesn't the Secret Service vary this? He doesn't look like he's unaware or confused at all, just simply mistaken.
I think he'd be told if there were a meet and greet. There is not another car lined up in front of that one (the secret service let him get pretty far before turning him around). And why in hell would they put the president's car a million miles away, while putting that one smack at the foot of air force one?
It's an airport, not a busy city street, so I should think they'd be able to secure the immediate area around the plane. (I know when the president flies in any out of NYC, it is a ginormous pain because they more or less lock things down. I can't really see where getting all clever and tricking assailants by putting Trump in a car 50 feet from the plane makes much sense. And we know how he hates to walk.
At the 0:22 mark, it looked to me like there was a kind of moment of recognition, like "ah, there the car is."
And why would he think he was getting into another car? Note the flags on the front of the car and the presidential seal on the side. Unless the Secret Service is in the habit of using decoy cars (maybe they do?), I don't see how this should have been ambiguous at all.
If you have ever dealt with a loved one with early to mid dementia, that moment of recognition is painfully familiar. I have. Watched Dad walk past the car in the driveway more than once. "Dad? Dad, where are you going? The car is here, Dad." It actually hurt to watch this for me, because it brought it back so vividly.
I've read that his dad had Alzheimer's, for what it is worth.
I can also say this -- if Trump is in early stage dementia, stress (the kind a president is constantly under) will make it worse. Much worse.
ETA:
Taking aside covfefe, dementia would explain a few things I'd chalked up to pure arrogance, ignorance, or assholishness. E.g., his driving all over that golf green in a golf cart (if you golf or have a loved one who does, you understand how not cool that is). His inexplicable praising of Duterte -- and even of Putin. Maybe he can't hold it in his head long enough why these guys are not good to be chummy with. He likes people who are friendly to him, because they must be good. Those bizarre prolonged handshakes. His sitting there like a rock and not shaking hands with Angela Merkel even when she and reporters prompted him.
ETA:
I saw this as a snub when I first watched it.
Now, I'm wondering if it is dementia. I am not joking. I am not being flip. I am not just looking for excuses to bash him. I don't joke about dementia, like I said. But just... god, this looks familiar.
As a matter of fact, my increasing fear that he's suffering from dementia is giving me some sympathy for him. I'm picturing putting my dad in that situation. Christ.
Trump is the oldest man to be elected president. He's been talking goofy for years now. Whether its dementia or drugs or whatever, who knows? And even if he is, what do you wanna do about it? Tell Mike Pence to get warmed up in the bullpen and Reince Preibus to hide the nuclear go-codes?
The most egregious parts of Donald Trump’s personality—his racism, his misogyny and his lack of scruples or ethics—have been on display for more than four decades. All of those traits have long been part of Trump’s unapologetic public persona. But in recent years, Trump has become an even more extreme version of himself. The behaviors that accompany that shift could be closely correlated with dementia and a general cognitive decline.
The blogger behind the Neurocritic laid out what he sees as proof of Trump’s mental deterioration. He notes that President Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age 83, though he began to manifest symptoms far earlier. Researchers have combed through records of off-the-cuff speeches Reagan delivered and found significant declines in his mastery of language. By his second term, Reagan’s speech showed a deep drop-off in the use of unique words; a marked increase in the use of non-specific nouns (thing, something, anything); an uptick in filler words (well, so, basically, actually, literally, um, ah); and a greater use of low-imageability, high frequency verbs (get, give, go, have, do).
Trump seems to have parallels in all these areas. He has become notorious for his word salads, incomprehensible soliloquies delivered at the speaking level of a fourth-grader. He frequently falls back on words like “tremendous” and often drags on without using specifics. Trump often speaks at length while saying nothing.
Alex Leo of the Daily Beast transcribed one sentence Trump delivered at a campaign stop in South Carolina, a series of dead ends, unfinished thoughts and ramblings:
Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it's true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my, like, credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it's four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger, fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
Is it possible Donald Trump is in the early stages of Alzheimer's? If he is, it would certainly explain a lot. It's also possible we'll find out for sure at the same time we see his tax returns.
Last Edit: Jul 5, 2017 11:00:57 GMT -5 by nighttimer
Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. Audre Lorde
Human beings cannot be willed and molded into non-existence. Angela Davis
I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do. James A. Baldwin
If he really does have dementia, that would be a legitimate reason to invoke Article 25.
I've thus far pooh-poohed invoking Article 25. It wasn't intended for a president who is simply an asshole or has unpopular policies (for which the answer is the ballot box), or one who abuses his office (for which the answer is impeachment or the ballot box). It was intended for a president who is incapacitated and can't perform his duties.
Using Article 25 as a lever to remove Trump just because many of us think he's an asshole or because the GOP Congress won't impeach would be a disaster and would backfire, IMO -- a lot of people would feel it was an illegitimate coup. Better to grit our teeth and trust in Mueller, or failing that, the ballot box in 2018 or 2020.
But if he is suffering from dementia, that is an entirely different thing.
I watched my dad go from an exceptionally intelligent, witty, gentle man who tutored kids in calculus to someone who could not remember his grandchildren's names or sign his own in less than three years. He also developed a violent temper-- distressing personality changes are very common with dementia. The image of a sweet harmless little old lady who thinks she's Lady Bird Johnson...yeah, if only that were the extent of it. Unfortunately, it can be so much worse.
Not every dementia case develops so swiftly, but some do. And even when they don't...this is the president. He has the nuclear codes. North Korea and so forth.
Anyway. It matters whether he's just a jerk with policies half of us don't like or whether he is developing dementia -- for Article 25 reasons and other reasons (e.g., if it is dementia, it will get worse -- for the entire country, not just liberals).
If he really does have dementia, that would be a legitimate reason to invoke Article 25.
I've thus far pooh-poohed invoking Article 25. It wasn't intended for a president who is simply an asshole or has unpopular policies (for which the answer is the ballot box), or one who abuses his office (for which the answer is impeachment or the ballot box). It was intended for a president who is incapacitated and can't perform his duties.
Using Article 25 as a lever to remove Trump just because many of us think he's an asshole or because the GOP Congress won't impeach would be a disaster and would backfire, IMO -- a lot of people would feel it was an illegitimate coup. Better to grit our teeth and trust in Mueller, or failing that, the ballot box in 2018 or 2020.
But if he is suffering from dementia, that is an entirely different thing.
I watched my dad go from an exceptionally intelligent, witty, gentle man who tutored kids in calculus to someone who could not remember his grandchildren's names or sign his own in less than three years. He also developed a violent temper-- distressing personality changes are very common with dementia. The image of a sweet harmless little old lady who thinks she's Lady Bird Johnson...yeah, if only that were the extent of it. Unfortunately, it can be so much worse.
Not every dementia case develops so swiftly, but some do. And even when they don't...this is the president. He has the nuclear codes. North Korea and so forth.
Anyway. It matters whether he's just a jerk with policies half of us don't like or whether he is developing dementia -- for Article 25 reasons and other reasons (e.g., if it is dementia, it will get worse -- for the entire country, not just liberals).
First, and most importantly, my sincere sympathies for what happened with your father. Been there. Done that. It's a hard road to walk and you feel like you're doing it barefoot with the weight of the world on your shoulders.
Secondly, I've been reading a lot about the 25th Amendment and the pros and cons of disposing of the Donald through it. I fall on the side of "con" for the purely simple reason unless Trump goes totally bonkers, he is going nowhere.
Even if he did, would his current enablers turn on him and punt him out of office? Dahlia Lithwick dissents.
Ever since Donald Trump landed in the Oval Office, millions of us have been obsessing on how to get him out. For many, the question has been not just if, but how and how soon. Will impeachment happen? Could Trump simply admit defeat and stand down? Or could proving his mental incompetence to be president force his hand?
The last option has gained traction in the past few days, perhaps because it is increasingly obvious to anyone following the news that Congress has no stomach for impeachment, and also that the president is demonstrably not up to the job. Trump’s missteps have more frequently revealed themselves to be blunders of incompetence rather than blunders of malice (though they can often be both). It’s become standard for reports coming from the inside of the White House to acknowledge, slyly at first but now overtly, that Trump is in constant need of managing. He believes false reports and refuses to read truthful ones. He lashes out at anyone who hasn’t lied for him adequately. There are now entire reports devoted to his rage, his anger, his madness and his inability to accept responsibility.
An increasingly vocal pool of 25th Amendment aspirants have begun to contend it is in fact possible that the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could simply notify Congress that the president is unable to “discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Even before the calamities of this past week, the idea gained traction following Evan Osnos’ expansive reporting in the New Yorker from early May on the possibility of the 25th Amendment as a vehicle for Trump’s removal. As Osnos explained, after the Kennedy assassination, the worry arose that a president could be incapacitated but not dead, and the Constitution afforded no remedy:
[T]he Twenty-fifth Amendment was added to the Constitution in February 1967. Under Section 4, a President can be removed if he is judged to be ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.’ The assessment can be made either by the Vice-President and a majority of the Cabinet secretaries or by a congressionally appointed body, such as a panel of medical experts. If the President objects—a theoretical crisis that scholars call “contested removal”—Congress has three weeks to debate and decide the issue. A two-thirds majority in each chamber is required to remove the President. There is no appeal.
As Osnos goes on to detail, however, part of the reason the 25th Amendment has never been used to remove a sitting president is that the inquiry requires assessments of presidential incapacity and mental illness that mental health experts generally want no part of, and politicians are reluctant to engage in. Almost to a one, the constitutional experts I contacted about all this confirmed that removal under Article 4 of the 25th Amendment happens only in political thrillers because back here in the real world, there will never be the political will to do it.*
The most practical problem with the 25th Amendment option is that it won’t happen. The selfsame Cabinet and vice president tasked with assessing the president are still enabling him. That’s how you get lines like the closer of this New York Times’ piece assessing the president’s alleged blurting of classified intelligence reports to Russian officials: Three administration officials privately reported “that they could not publicly articulate their most compelling—and honest—defense of the president: that Mr. Trump, a hasty and indifferent reader of printed briefing materials, simply did not possess the interest or knowledge of the granular details of intelligence gathering to leak specific sources and methods of intelligence gathering that would do harm to United States allies.”
That’s the problem with tilting at the 25th Amendment windmill—the people who would need to trigger it won’t. Invoking it would not only require the moral backbone they clearly lack, it would also implicate the same people who benefit from Trump’s deficiencies. As Jennifer Rubin notes in the Washington Post, Donald Trump’s possible future mental health diagnosis is not the issue. His current mental state is, and the people who might do something about it spend every day defending it.
Detesting every word that escapes from his filthy sewer of a mouth and despising everything he does is not going to get the likes of De Vos, Carson, Tillerson or Pence to abandon ship on the U.S.S. Drumpf. They still work for Trump and he can fire them anytime they give him a sideways glance.
It is understandable to desire a shortcut to happiness and nothing would make me happier than to figure out a way to get rid of Trump, but unless he starts foaming at the mouth as his beady eyes turn red, grows fangs and tries to rip out the throats of a Girl Scout troop visiting the Oval Office, there is no way Trump will be removed through the provisions of the 25th Amendment.
Simply put, it ain't happening. There is no silver bullet here.
Last Edit: Jul 5, 2017 14:54:09 GMT -5 by nighttimer
Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. Audre Lorde
Human beings cannot be willed and molded into non-existence. Angela Davis
I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do. James A. Baldwin
You are almost certainly right, nighttimer. It would take something pretty extreme to get this cabinet to invoke Article 25.
But I would argue it's there for a reason -- and dementia would justify it, if his cabinet were so inclined. My guess, however, is that instead they'd cover it up as best they could.
Anyway. I'm worried. He's bad enough just being the man I've disliked for decades for so many reasons. But if he has dementia, that's some serious shit. I'm finding myself looking back at all kinds of incidents this last several months with a new eye, and damn, it fits.
I have a couple of things to say to you regarding your recent trip to France, and, according to my good friend CassandraW, these things are most properly expressed in Courier Font.
I'm worried that you might have physically injured the French first lady for no good reason. I understand that your previous attempt to outshake the hand of President Macron didn't go so well, but I really think you should have let that go, so to speak, rather than doubling down on his wife.
Also, I realize that you're used to judging women based solely upon their physical appearances in beauty pageants, and on Twitter, and in general, and in perpetuity, but the thing is, when you're the President of the United States, you kind of have to not do that.
Look, okay, I get it. As an example, I really appreciate the total hawtness of President Macron. But the thing is, I would not ever actually say to him, were I to meet him, that he was hawt. I know better, see? So I would just think it in my head, and talk to him like a human being and not just the sum total of hawtness which I could not stop myself from blurting out because I was totally uncontrollably incapable of recognizing his existence as a person outside of my superficial obsession with his aesthetic qualities.
I'm just saying. Maybe you could do that. Keep your thoughts inside your head.
Sincerely,
CassandraW Chrissy
Last Edit: Jul 13, 2017 22:09:16 GMT -5 by Christine
I've had some experience as my wife's grandparents suffered from it, both were very important to her. Her grandfather showed early signs of it at our wedding where he gave her away. (Reluctantly) Her grandmother lived with us for a few years after that, but then her dementia got so bad we had to put her in a nursing home. It was a difficult time as we had to try and keep my wife's father, her son, away from her as much as possible. She was easily manipulated and confused. My wife had to go to a court hearing as well.
I've had some experience as my wife's grandparents suffered from it, both were very important to her. Her grandfather showed early signs of it at our wedding where he gave her away. (Reluctantly) Her grandmother lived with us for a few years after that, but then her dementia got so bad we had to put her in a nursing home. It was a difficult time as we had to try and keep my wife's father, her son, away from her as much as possible. She was easily manipulated and confused. My wife had to go to a court hearing as well.
It is a terrible, terrible thing to have a loved one suffer from it. And it is my single biggest fear for my own old age.
As you all know, I can't stand Trump and never could. But whenever it crosses my mind that maybe, just maybe, he might be in the early stages of dementia, I have a wave of kindness and compassion toward him.
Several people have pointed out to me that he doesn't deserve it. But I can't help it. I have to remind myself that maybe he's just a giant jackass to work myself into wanting to kick him again.
Or I just have to watch him with Brigitte Macron. Poor woman.
There is no silver bullet here. 
