Jay Kuo interviewed John D. Gartner, psychologist and psychotherapist, who leads a group called Duty to Warn. The group consists of mental health professionals who are concerned about Trump’s cognitive decline. Gartner told Kuo: there are increasing signs the former president is heading fast down the road toward dementia.
I’m offering excerpts from this fascinating interview.
Kuo asks, Gartner answers:
We hear a lot about Biden’s age and gaffes, to the point where most Americans cite Biden’s age but not Trump’s as a big issue for the election, even though they are only three years apart. Based on what you and other experts have observed, why are you sounding the alarm about Trump, but not about Biden?
I call it the “double lie.” Pathologizing Biden’s normal aging is the first lie. Normalizing Trump’s dementia is the second. The sorts of small lapses we’ve seen in Biden are part and parcel of normal aging. Forgetting names and dates doesn’t make us seniors less competent. What we lack in memory we more than make up for in judgment, experience, and wisdom. Other cultures revere their elders, but America in 2024 mocks and devalues theirs. The problem isn’t old people in government—the dreaded “gerontocracy.” It’s age-ism.
Joe Biden’s calling the current president of France by the old president of France’s name is like me calling my youngest daughter by my oldest daughter’s name, which I do all the time. When I get together with my fellow senior citizens, the topic of forgetting often comes up. Sure, I forget names and even appointments sometimes. But I’m a better psychologist now than I’ve ever been. I actually pity the patients who had the young Dr. Gartner. He didn’t know anything, and, honestly, I can’t even imagine why anyone paid him. I would argue that Biden, too, has objectively performed well at his job, despite, or maybe even because, of his age. Don’t judge us senior citizens by how fast we walk, or if we stumble over a name or two. Judge us by our performance.
And hello. Forgetting the name of the president of France isn’t the same as thinking Obama is president or that Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi are one person. Can we introduce a sense of proportion and some common sense here?…
Here are some of Gartner’s examples of Trump’s strange language in public:
Trump shows formal signs of disordered speech we typically see only in organically impaired dementia patients:
A) “phonemic aphasia”
Trump uses non-words in place of real words, that usually include a fragment of the actual word. For example saying “mishuz” instead of missile, or “Chrishus” instead of Christmas. You can look at supercut reels assembled by Ron Filipkowski on Twitter, The Daily Show, and now by the Democratic House Judiciary Committee, as well. Both Chairman Nadler and Rep. Swalwellshowed their own supercuts of Trump’s cognitive decline at the Hur hearings, to counteract Hur’s partisan slur about Biden’s “poor memory.”
To demonstrate how pervasive these errors are, I present this long but far from exhaustive list of Trump’s phonemic aphasias:
“President U-licious S Grant” (For Ulysses S. Grant)
“space-capsicle” (for space capsule)
“combat infantroopen”(for combat infantry)
“sahhven country”(for sovereign country)
“renoversh” (For renovations)
“Anonmmiss” (for anonymous).
“transpants” (for transplants)
“lawmarkers” (for lawmakers)
“supply churn” (for supply chain)
“Rusher” (for Russia)
“raydoh” (for radio)
“Liberal-ation (for liberation”)
“benefishers” (for benificiaries)
“con-ducking” (for conducting)
“stat-tics, suh-tic-six” (for statistics)
“crimakle” (for criminal)
“armed forsiva” (for armed forces)
“internate” (for Internet)
“transjija” (for transition)
“stanktuary” (for sanctuary)
That last example took place during Trump’s State of the Union Address, just to contrast that with the SOTU we just witnessed. In recent rallies in GA, NC, and VA over the course of just a few days Trump evidenced more examples:
“We have becrumb a nation”
“All comp-ply-ments” to Joe Biden.
“I know Poten.”
“He can’t cam-pay. He can’t campaign.”
“We will expel the wald-mongers.”
But of course, this is exactly what we should expect. As he deteriorates, these deficits will make themselves apparent more and more often. Now he can’t get through a rally without an example. Cornell psychologist Harry Segal speculated Trump may be “sundowning” and hence most vulnerable to going off the rails at night-time rallies.
Some have argued that Trump’s impaired speech could be an articulation problem, rather than a brain problem. Some have argued he could be slurring from a variety of causes, from loose dentures to drug toxicity (indeed many have speculated that Trump might be abusing or even snorting Adderall or some other stimulant.)
But all those competing explanations are disproven by one fact. Trump commits these aphasic errors in his written posts, as well, proving the problem is in his brain, not his articulation.
For example, he recently posted:
“Joe Buden DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES”
B) “Semantic aphasia”
Semantic aphasia is using a real word, but in a way that doesn’t correspond to its meaning. For example, when Trump referred to the “oranges of the investigation.” Another example would be “midtown and midturn elections.” Recently, when apparently trying to say “three years later,” Trump said:
“Three years, lady, lady, lady.”
More recently Trump said at a rally:
“We’re going to protect pro-God…”
In mid-sentence he goes blank and looks at the ceiling. When he reboots, the words he uses to complete the sentence don’t make sense:
“…context and content.”
C) Complete loss of all verbal language
Like an infant sometimes, Trump just makes sounds:
“Gang boong. This is me. I hear bing.”
Until finally, he is reduced to silence.
“Saudi Arabia and Russia will re-ve-du. Ohhh…”
Trump’s face went blank, followed by a sigh, and a silent pause while he looked at the ceiling.
D) Tangential Thinking
Trump evidences “tangential thinking” where he drifts from one unrelated thought fragment to another, and sometimes tries to “confabulate” them into a story. But the narrative is literally incoherent. When the press describes Trump’s speeches as “rambling,” they are gaslighting us with a euphemistic word that normalizes the grossly abnormal. Trump regularly degenerates into
incomprehensible strings of words.
Just recently outside a New York courtroom, Trump declared:
“We can’t have an election in the middle of a political season. We just had Super Tuesday. And we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.”
Other examples would be:
“We are an institute in a powerful death penalty. We will put this on.”
“I could tell you about aircraft carriers, where they use electric catapults. They couldn’t go to the steam, which works better for about 1/100th the price, you know? The electric catapult, you know that story? I could tell you about the elevators on a tremendous carrier, the Gerald Ford, and they decided not to use hydraulic like the John Deere tractor, they decided to use magnets, ‘we’re gonna use magnets!’ to lift up the elevators with seven planes.”
In a recent string of rallies in GA, SC, and VA he said:
“They say I’m cognitively impaired. I’m not cognitively.”
“They don’t want illegal immigrants knocking on their front door and saying I’m going to use your kitchen. And I’m going to use your bedroom and there’s not a damn thing. And that’s the nice ones, okay?”
“They raided my house in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, they raided. With no raid, they had no reason to do so.”
Some of his utterances are incomprehensible for a different reason. They suggest Trump is so disoriented he’s occupying a different reality than everyone else.
For example:
“They’re weaponizing law enforcement for high-level interference against Joe Biden’s top and only political appointment. A guy named me. A guy named me.”
At a recent rally, he said:
“Biden beat Barack Hussein Obama. Ever heard of him?”
Biden never beat Obama. So we have to conclude that Trump is confused about basic reality, and living in a different reality that changes unpredictably. When a confused patient is evaluated in an emergency room, a standard psychiatric question to determine if a patient is disoriented is:
“Who is President of the United States?”
If you get that wrong the most probable explanations are dementia, psychosis or drug toxicity, and most probably you’d be admitted for observation in any case.
From Diane: since writing this post, I saw this clip of Trump speaking about the border. Please watch it.
It’s a tweet from Republicans Against Trump.
Donald Trump on the border crisis:
“People are pouring over. It’s sort of known as Steak Mountain. Steak Hill. Snake. Snakes…a lot of snakes…rattlesnakes…”
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