It's not just that he's stupid (he is) but he's also sick
In
other words, the usual Trump torrent of lies and insults.
But
what got my attention was his description of his departure from the White House
as a “peaceful” transfer of power, his insistence that the group that mounted
the assault on the Capitol was relatively small, and his boast that attendance
at his January 6 rally preceding the assault was larger than the crowd Martin
Luther King Jr. drew on the National Mall for his “I Have a Dream” speech.
“If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours — same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not — we had more.”
Friends,
these are not the statements of a sane person.
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Trump
is showing growing signs of dementia.
In
April, he spoke to a rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, about the famed
Civil War battle at Gettysburg. Trump told the
audience:
“Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. It was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways— it represented such a big portion of the success of this country."
Trump
continued, “Gettysburg, wow — I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to
watch."
During
the last months of the Republican primaries, he repeatedly claimed that his
opponent Nikki Haley was in charge of Capitol security on January 6. (Haley
never had any connection to Capitol security.)
He
has repeatedly confused whom he ran against in the past, such as stating, “With Obama,
we won an election that everyone said couldn’t be won.” (Trump defeated Hillary
Clinton in 2016.)
Last
September, Trump suggested that the way to prevent wildfires in California’s
forest lands is to keep them damp. Here are his words:
“They say that there’s so much water up north that I want to have the overflow areas go into your forests and dampen your forests, because if you dampen your forests you're not gonna have these forest fires that are burning at levels that nobody’s ever seen.”
In
October, Trump warned his
supporters that Biden will lead America into World War Two.
Can
I be frank? It appears that Trump — with a family history of dementia —
is increasingly unhinged.
He
has claimed that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group, is “very smart.”
That whales are being killed by windmills. That he
won all 50 states in
2020. That he defeated Barack Obama in 2016.
That the outgoing chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed.
The
most telling evidence of Trump’s growing dementia is found in his paranoid
thirst for revenge, on which he is centering his entire presidential campaign.
On
November 11, he pledged to a crowd of supporters in Claremont, New Hampshire,
that:
“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”
Are
these the words of a sane person? Or of an aging paranoid megalomaniac?
Even
if it’s unclear to which category Trump belongs, shouldn’t this question be
central to the coverage of his campaign for reelection?
I’m
no physician, and I have no business providing a diagnosis, but the weight of
the evidence suggests Trump is suffering from early dementia. So why isn’t the
media covering this — at least with the same intensity they covered Biden’s
apparent difficulties?
When
I’ve asked members of the media, they say Trump’s malfunctioning brain is “old
news.”
But
just because Trump has shown mental instability in the past doesn’t make his
mental problems any less relevant now. They’re more relevant.
He appears even more delusional than before.
If
Biden’s difficulties were fair game, why isn’t Trump’s apparent mental decline
front and center?
The
growing evidence of Trump’s dementia and paranoia poses a clear potential
danger to the future of America — if he’s reelected.
At
the least, the media should be investigating and reporting on it. Right?
Robert
Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of
labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
