Some Of My Oldest Friends Are Losing Their Minds— But None Of Them Are The Commander-in-Chief

Anyone not part of the MAGA cult who watched Trump address to the graduating cadets at West Point last week would certainly have walked away thinking that the commander-in-chief is struggling mentally. Watch. The friend with the “trophy wife” he was referring , William Levitt, was the virulent racist real estate developer— and a Trump role model— who institutionalized apartheid in the suburbs in the 1950s. Anyone buying one of his shitty prefab houses in a Levittown on Long Island, in New Jersey, Pennsylvania or Maryland was forced to sign a restrictive covenant agreeing to never sell the house to a Black family. Trump didn’t mention that— just some psycho-babble about trophy wives (like Trump, Levitt had 3, so no telling which one Trump meant) and yachts.

We’ve been commenting on Trump being mentally ill for a number of years. We even have a much-used tag devoted to the topic. Over the weekend, after the West Point speech, Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett noted that it’s time for Republicans to start taking concerns about Trump’s mental acuity seriously. “I don’t think that those who have gone through West Point expected to have their commander in chief address them and start talking about trophy wives or start talking how he has so many investigations. What a great reminder that you are not qualified to be the person that potentially will command troops to go into war. That is not instilling confidence whatsoever. It is time for Republicans to start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally. We know when it comes down to his criminality, he is not qualified to serve, but this is just absolutely deplorable.”

Earlier this month, USA Today columnist Rex Huppke did a column on Trump’s increasingly serious and obvious mental decline. He based much of his column on Trump’s deranged interview last month with Time Magazine, concluding that Señor Trumpanzyy “isn’t making much sense these days [and]… seems to know little, and he has grown increasingly incoherent and rambling, often wholly detached from reality.”

During an April 30 interview with NewsNation, Trump was asked by Stephen Smith about his war against Harvard University. The president proceeded to describe imaginary riots in Harlem:

“Well, I say this. We had riots in Harlem, in Harlem, and frankly if you look at what’s gone on— and people from Harlem went up and they protested, Stephen, and they protested very strongly against Harvard. They happened to be on my side.”

Trump continued, Bafflingly, “You know I got a very high Black vote. You know that? Very, very high Black vote. It was a very great compliment to me.” [A Pew Research Center analysis of exit polls, estimates that Trump won around 12% of Black voters, around the same as George W. Bush in 2004, slightly less than Reagan in 1980.]

Again, the question was about Harvard, not Harlem. The “riots in Harlem” refers to nothing in our present reality, and nobody asked Trump anything about Black voters.

… His Truth Social posts are unspeakably unhinged, including recent lines like: “Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”

This man’s brain is filled with spiders. He seems to, at best, have one toe planted in reality.

So where, I ask, is the fury? Where are the hours upon hours of Fox News coverage? Where is the extensive New York Times coverage? 

Trump’s brain melt gets a pass, for reasons I’ll never understand.

None of this is in defense of Biden. I’m all for younger, sharper minds leading the country. But Trump isn’t younger or sharper.

If we’re being honest, this aging president is barely making sense at all.

Tell me if you disagree, but watching those clips of Trump at West Point, you don’t see a “strongman”— you see a deeply unwell man, meandering through foggy anecdotes with no apparent point, confusing names, forgetting basic facts and drifting into bizarre tangents like he’s trying to entertain a nursing home crowd that’s long since nodded off. It’s not simply aging; plenty of people his age maintain more mental sharpness than he does. What we’re witnessing with Trump is something more disturbing: a cocktail of narcissistic delusion, malignant self-obsession and what increasingly looks like very severe cognitive impairment.

Trump's long history of pathological lying, his inability to distinguish fantasy from reality and his obsessive need for validation aren't just character flaws; they’re symptoms. Malignant narcissism, sociopathy and probably frontotemporal dementia have all been floated by professionals brave enough to speak publicly. He’s incapable of empathy, incapable of taking responsibility and incapable of understanding or articulating complex ideas. His speeches are riddled with repetition and non sequiturs. His vocabulary has visibly shrunk over the years and his fixation on past grievances now consumes nearly every public appearance.

What’s especially scary about this world leader is that unlike many people who struggle with cognitive decline, Trump has an entire personality disorder wrapped around it. His speech isn’t as much just confused as it is paranoid. He rants about “rigged” everything, resurrects decades-old slights and paints himself as a messianic victim fighting omnipotent enemies. This isn’t standard old-man crankiness. This is a very delusional man, visibly unraveling under the weight of his lies and failures, auditioning to be dictator-for-life before an audience he knows is ready to believe anything he says. Yes, he’s old… but he’s also broken, more so than Biden was at his age.