Trump Physical Ailment Reminds Us to Check Mental Acuity, Too

Updated Aug. 1:  A month ago, the President's circulatory system was diagnosed as having difficulty overcoming gravity to return blood to his heart, resulting in swelling at the extremities. The President's doctor deems it non-serious and treatable with medication that stimulates circulation.

We've been through four years of President Biden's diminishing mental status only to learn of the accusation that the White House kept the seriousness of his condition from the public. In a time of mounting precarity, we need to be wary of that being the case again by keeping tabs on not just Donald Trump's physical fitness but on his mental acuity as well.

Donald Trump is the oldest president ever to be sworn in, older by a few months than when Joe Biden began his presidency, yet you can bet that the loyalty-chosen crew at the current White House will do its utmost to keep any slippage in Trump's mental acuity from our learning of it.

Trump took a cognitive test in April as part of an overall medical exam and was eager to report from Air Force One right afterward...

"I got every answer right. I've taken it, I've taken the cognitive test I think four times, the number, and I've got nothing wrong."

Days later in the Oval Office he was like a child awarded a gold star:

"I took my cognitive exam as part of my physical exam, and I got the highest mark, and one of the doctors said, 'Sir, I've never seen anybody get that kind of -- that was the highest mark.'"

Coming from Trump and not the examiners, who knows? But assuming that, for baseline continuity, it was the same cognitive test as the one administered in 2018, its 30 questions are very simple, testing for marked dementia as in the inability to draw a picture of a clock. NBC News took a swipe at his bragging, writing,

"Trump somehow convinced himself, however, that it was akin to a Mensa exam and that his ability to get a perfect score was proof of his genius."

So it's up to us to be vigilant, and a few incidents lately give cause for worry.

In Pittsburgh, speaking at an “Energy and Innovation” event, Mr. Trump said,

“I want to introduce Dan Meuser. Dan Meuser is here. Where’s Dan?”

He had to be told that Meuser had not been on the plane, had stayed behind in Washington.

He then launched into a story about his uncle, John Trump, a professor at MIT, having taught Ted Kaczynski, who would become the Unabomber who sent explosive packages through the postal system that murdered three people and injured 23 others. "Kaczynski was one of his students", Trump said. He told the audience that he had asked his uncle what kind of a student Kaczynski was, and that the professor had said, "Seriously good..he'd go around correcting everybody".

Except, Kaczynski's undergraduate degree was from Harvard and his Master’s and Doctoral degrees in mathematics were from the University of Michigan. He never attended MIT.

More serious, Trump's uncle died in 1985. Not until eleven years later was Kaczynski found to be the perpetrator of the bomb attacks. So Trump could not have known of a Ted Kaczynski to ask his uncle about while his uncle was alive.

It's a strange and hallucinatory story that leads to wondering what is amiss with the president.

Trump has been railing against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for months. At the same time that he intends to raise tariffs against countries the world wide, he wants the Fed to lower interest rates, which are the agency's go-to weapon against the inflation steep tariffs will inevitably bring. Just days ago he said,

"He's a terrible Fed chief. I was surprised he was appointed. I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in."

Biden didn't "put him in". Trump did. Trump appointed Powell — in 2017.

To counter right-wing media's constant ridiculing of Joe Biden for his mental lapses, the left-wing finally began picking away at Trump's slip-ups around mid-2024. This page ran “America in Trouble: Trump Showing Heightened Levels of Incoherence” last September. It is over ten months later, so it is reasonable to bring this subject up again.

In Trump's case, it was not so much slurring words and mixing up country names as in Biden's case, but Trump's on-and-on incoherent ramblings. That hasn't been in daily evidence as he sits in the Oval Office saying a sentence or two that we get to hear on news programs. What we don't know is whether there is more we should hear that the media blocks in fear that Trump will take action against them, as he already has against several news outlets.

Anyway, here's one example we tediously transcribed when we fund all that he said. A couple of commentators picked up on it but, as usual, they quoted just a sentence or so of what Trump said, which serves to smother any persuasive point that his mind has become disordered.

Trump went down for the opening of Alligator Alcatraz, a celebratory move that itself says a lot, but here's how he responded to a Fox reporter's question even after the question was repeated, worth taking notice of both for his not grasping the very clearly enunciated question, but for his then wandering off incomprehensibly. Only if you spend a little time to read to the end will you appreciate that Mr. Trump is not all there:

Reporter Danamarie McNicholl from Fox News Channel: "Mr. President, is there an expected time-frame that detainees will spend here — days, weeks, months — and does that have anything to do with the immigration judges you just spoke about being trained and staffed here?"

The President asked for the first part of the question to be repeated.

McNicholl: "Is there a specific time-frame you expect the detainees to spend here — days, weeks, months.”

Trump: “In Florida?"

McNicholl: “Yes”

Trump: "I'm going to spend, I'm going to spend a lot — okay, this is my home state. I love it. I love your government, I love all the people around, these are all friends of mine, they know 'em very well. I mean I'm not surprised that they do so well. They're great people. Ron has been a friend of mine for a long time. I feel very comfortable in this state. I'll spend a lot of time here. I want to, you know, for four years I've gotta be in Washington. I'm OK with it because I love the White House. I even fixed up the little Oval Office. I made it, it's like a diamond, it's beautiful, it's so beautiful. It wasn't maintained properly, I will tell you that, but even when it wasn't, it was still the Oval Office, so it meant a lot, but I'll spend as much time as I can here, you know. My vacation is generally here because it's convenient. I live in Palm Beach. It's my home, and I have a very nice little place, nice little cottage to stay at, right? But we have a lot of fun and I'm a big contributor to Florida, you know, I pay a lotta tax*, and a lot of people moved from New York and I don't know what New York is gonna do. A lot of people moved to Florida from New York and it was for a lot of reasons, but one of them was taxes. The taxes are so high in New York, they're leaving. I don't know what New York is gonna do about that because some of the biggest, wealthiest people, and some of the people who pay the most taxes than anyone in the world, for that matter, they're moving to Florida and other places so we're going to have to help some of these states out, I think, but thank you very much. I'll be here as much as I can. Very nice question."