March 26, 2021
Age-related mental decline is a real issue. For both Biden and Trump.
President Trump decided to build his campaign on the accusation that Joe Biden is suffering a mental decline that makes him unfit for the presidency. Unlike many of the claims Trump makes, this one is not completely without evidence. So we all have to decide what we think of it and how it factored into the e******n.
The first thing to understand is that this isn’t a matter of a joke or jab here or there. Trump and his allies mounted a comprehensive and coordinated effort to paint Biden as senile. A sampling of examples:
Trump began attacking Biden’s mental fitness at every opportunity. “They’re going to put him into a home, and other people are going to be running the country,” he said at a rally. “Sleepy Joe doesn’t know where he is, or what he’s doing. Honestly, I don’t think he even knows what office he's running for!”
One night, Sean Hannity ranted for almost 10 minutes about Biden’s mental state. This has been a regular topic of discussion for Hannity; he recently said Biden “seems to be in a rapid state of decline and not up to the rigors needed, even on a campaign.”
Tucker Carlson says Biden has “clearly lost it” and has a “fading intellect.”
Fox personality Brit Hume said Tuesday that Biden, “like so many people his age, is losing his memory and is getting senile.”
Rudy Giuliani said Biden is showing “obvious signs of dementia.”
Of course, coming from Trump and his allies, this is utterly bonkers. Trump regularly gives remarks full of bizarre digressions, puzzling illogic, garbled words and slurred speech. He says his father was born in Germany (actually it was New York), says “oranges” when he means “origins,” thinks windmills cause cancer and appears to believe that stealth planes are literally invisible to the naked eye.
Trump’s entire staff treats him like a toddler, with whims so volatile and infantile that they have to constantly tiptoe around him lest he fly off the handle and do something crazy. He reportedly didn’t get into the office until 11 a.m. and blocked out large portions of his day for “executive time,” i.e., watching television.
And just as Trump accuses his opponents of being corrupt to counter the weighty evidence of his own corruption, the attack on Biden’s mental state is in part an attempt to distract people from the fact that Trump himself is temperamentally, intellectually and morally unfit to manage a 7-Eleven, let alone the country.
To be clear, I’m not saying that discussion of Biden’s mental acuity should be off-limits (and we shouldn’t forget that some on the left, including advocates for Bernie Sanders, have aggressively promoted the idea that Biden is experiencing cognitive decline). While Biden has always had a propensity for rambling stories and cringe-worthy statements, in this campaign they have become more frequent. It’s undeniable.
But the danger is that we’ll overstate the importance of trivial mistakes that could happen to anyone (like Biden calling Chris Wallace “Chuck” after he had just done an interview with Chuck Todd), and more importantly, that Trump and the right will convince everyone in the media to stop asking about Trump’s own cognitive issues.
Now here’s the reality: Biden was the nominee, we had two candidates in their 70s, neither one of whom seemed quite as sharp as they were in earlier years. You can see it with Biden on the stump every day, and you can see it by comparing the Trump of today to the one you’ll find in old interviews, in which he’s far more articulate and able to see a thought through from beginning to end.
We should also keep in mind that this isn’t a binary, yes-or-no issue. Everyone experiences certain kinds of cognitive decline as they age. Ask anyone in their 50s and they’ll tell you about it. But the fact that you misplace your keys more often or have trouble remembering the names of people you went to high school with — or if you get momentarily tongue-tied when making an extemporaneous speech, as both Trump and Biden often do — doesn’t mean that your ability to make sound judgments is necessarily c*********d.
But having an older president, whether it’s Trump or Biden, does suggest certain things we’d want to have around him.
He should have a capable vice president ready to step in should it become necessary. He should have a strong chief of staff able to steer the flow of information, tasks and decisions to make the cognitive load on him as manageable as possible. He should have staff with the ability and willingness to be frank with him when his decisions are questionable or problematic. And he should have the self-awareness to understand his own weaknesses and make allowances for them, to constantly ask whether he knows what he needs to know, has understood each issue from all relevant angles and is making the best decisions.
Any president, younger or older, should have those things. And with the exception of a reasonably well-prepared vice president, Trump had none of them.
Which means that although both Biden and Trump may be facing cognitive issues that could affect their performance in office, the dangers are much more profound for Trump. We’ve already seen it play out over the past three years, and if he had been re-elected, it was likely to get worse.
If we’re going to talk about age-related cognitive decline, that ought to be at the forefront of the discussion.
Parky60
Loc: People's Republic of Illinois
slatten49 wrote:
March 26, 2021
Age-related mental decline is a real issue. For both Biden and Trump.
President Trump decided to build his campaign on the accusation that Joe Biden is suffering a mental decline that makes him unfit for the presidency. Unlike many of the claims Trump makes, this one is not completely without evidence. So we all have to decide what we think of it and how it factored into the e******n.
The first thing to understand is that this isn’t a matter of a joke or jab here or there. Trump and his allies mounted a comprehensive and coordinated effort to paint Biden as senile. A sampling of examples:
Trump began attacking Biden’s mental fitness at every opportunity. “They’re going to put him into a home, and other people are going to be running the country,” he said at a rally. “Sleepy Joe doesn’t know where he is, or what he’s doing. Honestly, I don’t think he even knows what office he's running for!”
One night, Sean Hannity ranted for almost 10 minutes about Biden’s mental state. This has been a regular topic of discussion for Hannity; he recently said Biden “seems to be in a rapid state of decline and not up to the rigors needed, even on a campaign.”
Tucker Carlson says Biden has “clearly lost it” and has a “fading intellect.”
Fox personality Brit Hume said Tuesday that Biden, “like so many people his age, is losing his memory and is getting senile.”
Rudy Giuliani said Biden is showing “obvious signs of dementia.”
Of course, coming from Trump and his allies, this is utterly bonkers. Trump regularly gives remarks full of bizarre digressions, puzzling illogic, garbled words and slurred speech. He says his father was born in Germany (actually it was New York), says “oranges” when he means “origins,” thinks windmills cause cancer and appears to believe that stealth planes are literally invisible to the naked eye.
Trump’s entire staff treats him like a toddler, with whims so volatile and infantile that they have to constantly tiptoe around him lest he fly off the handle and do something crazy. He reportedly didn’t get into the office until 11 a.m. and blocked out large portions of his day for “executive time,” i.e., watching television.
And just as Trump accuses his opponents of being corrupt to counter the weighty evidence of his own corruption, the attack on Biden’s mental state is in part an attempt to distract people from the fact that Trump himself is temperamentally, intellectually and morally unfit to manage a 7-Eleven, let alone the country.
To be clear, I’m not saying that discussion of Biden’s mental acuity should be off-limits (and we shouldn’t forget that some on the left, including advocates for Bernie Sanders, have aggressively promoted the idea that Biden is experiencing cognitive decline). While Biden has always had a propensity for rambling stories and cringe-worthy statements, in this campaign they have become more frequent. It’s undeniable.
But the danger is that we’ll overstate the importance of trivial mistakes that could happen to anyone (like Biden calling Chris Wallace “Chuck” after he had just done an interview with Chuck Todd), and more importantly, that Trump and the right will convince everyone in the media to stop asking about Trump’s own cognitive issues.
Now here’s the reality: Biden was the nominee, we had two candidates in their 70s, neither one of whom seemed quite as sharp as they were in earlier years. You can see it with Biden on the stump every day, and you can see it by comparing the Trump of today to the one you’ll find in old interviews, in which he’s far more articulate and able to see a thought through from beginning to end.
We should also keep in mind that this isn’t a binary, yes-or-no issue. Everyone experiences certain kinds of cognitive decline as they age. Ask anyone in their 50s and they’ll tell you about it. But the fact that you misplace your keys more often or have trouble remembering the names of people you went to high school with — or if you get momentarily tongue-tied when making an extemporaneous speech, as both Trump and Biden often do — doesn’t mean that your ability to make sound judgments is necessarily c*********d.
But having an older president, whether it’s Trump or Biden, does suggest certain things we’d want to have around him.
He should have a capable vice president ready to step in should it become necessary. He should have a strong chief of staff able to steer the flow of information, tasks and decisions to make the cognitive load on him as manageable as possible. He should have staff with the ability and willingness to be frank with him when his decisions are questionable or problematic. And he should have the self-awareness to understand his own weaknesses and make allowances for them, to constantly ask whether he knows what he needs to know, has understood each issue from all relevant angles and is making the best decisions.
Any president, younger or older, should have those things. And with the exception of a reasonably well-prepared vice president, Trump had none of them.
Which means that although both Biden and Trump may be facing cognitive issues that could affect their performance in office, the dangers are much more profound for Trump. We’ve already seen it play out over the past three years, and if he had been re-elected, it was likely to get worse.
If we’re going to talk about age-related cognitive decline, that ought to be at the forefront of the discussion.
March 26, 2021 br br Age-related mental decline ... (
show quote)
L*****ts are quite stupid.
slatten49 wrote:
March 26, 2021
Age-related mental decline is a real issue. For both Biden and Trump.
President Trump decided to build his campaign on the accusation that Joe Biden is suffering a mental decline that makes him unfit for the presidency. Unlike many of the claims Trump makes, this one is not completely without evidence. So we all have to decide what we think of it and how it factored into the e******n.
The first thing to understand is that this isn’t a matter of a joke or jab here or there. Trump and his allies mounted a comprehensive and coordinated effort to paint Biden as senile. A sampling of examples:
Trump began attacking Biden’s mental fitness at every opportunity. “They’re going to put him into a home, and other people are going to be running the country,” he said at a rally. “Sleepy Joe doesn’t know where he is, or what he’s doing. Honestly, I don’t think he even knows what office he's running for!”
One night, Sean Hannity ranted for almost 10 minutes about Biden’s mental state. This has been a regular topic of discussion for Hannity; he recently said Biden “seems to be in a rapid state of decline and not up to the rigors needed, even on a campaign.”
Tucker Carlson says Biden has “clearly lost it” and has a “fading intellect.”
Fox personality Brit Hume said Tuesday that Biden, “like so many people his age, is losing his memory and is getting senile.”
Rudy Giuliani said Biden is showing “obvious signs of dementia.”
Of course, coming from Trump and his allies, this is utterly bonkers. Trump regularly gives remarks full of bizarre digressions, puzzling illogic, garbled words and slurred speech. He says his father was born in Germany (actually it was New York), says “oranges” when he means “origins,” thinks windmills cause cancer and appears to believe that stealth planes are literally invisible to the naked eye.
Trump’s entire staff treats him like a toddler, with whims so volatile and infantile that they have to constantly tiptoe around him lest he fly off the handle and do something crazy. He reportedly didn’t get into the office until 11 a.m. and blocked out large portions of his day for “executive time,” i.e., watching television.
And just as Trump accuses his opponents of being corrupt to counter the weighty evidence of his own corruption, the attack on Biden’s mental state is in part an attempt to distract people from the fact that Trump himself is temperamentally, intellectually and morally unfit to manage a 7-Eleven, let alone the country.
To be clear, I’m not saying that discussion of Biden’s mental acuity should be off-limits (and we shouldn’t forget that some on the left, including advocates for Bernie Sanders, have aggressively promoted the idea that Biden is experiencing cognitive decline). While Biden has always had a propensity for rambling stories and cringe-worthy statements, in this campaign they have become more frequent. It’s undeniable.
But the danger is that we’ll overstate the importance of trivial mistakes that could happen to anyone (like Biden calling Chris Wallace “Chuck” after he had just done an interview with Chuck Todd), and more importantly, that Trump and the right will convince everyone in the media to stop asking about Trump’s own cognitive issues.
Now here’s the reality: Biden was the nominee, we had two candidates in their 70s, neither one of whom seemed quite as sharp as they were in earlier years. You can see it with Biden on the stump every day, and you can see it by comparing the Trump of today to the one you’ll find in old interviews, in which he’s far more articulate and able to see a thought through from beginning to end.
We should also keep in mind that this isn’t a binary, yes-or-no issue. Everyone experiences certain kinds of cognitive decline as they age. Ask anyone in their 50s and they’ll tell you about it. But the fact that you misplace your keys more often or have trouble remembering the names of people you went to high school with — or if you get momentarily tongue-tied when making an extemporaneous speech, as both Trump and Biden often do — doesn’t mean that your ability to make sound judgments is necessarily c*********d.
But having an older president, whether it’s Trump or Biden, does suggest certain things we’d want to have around him.
He should have a capable vice president ready to step in should it become necessary. He should have a strong chief of staff able to steer the flow of information, tasks and decisions to make the cognitive load on him as manageable as possible. He should have staff with the ability and willingness to be frank with him when his decisions are questionable or problematic. And he should have the self-awareness to understand his own weaknesses and make allowances for them, to constantly ask whether he knows what he needs to know, has understood each issue from all relevant angles and is making the best decisions.
Any president, younger or older, should have those things. And with the exception of a reasonably well-prepared vice president, Trump had none of them.
Which means that although both Biden and Trump may be facing cognitive issues that could affect their performance in office, the dangers are much more profound for Trump. We’ve already seen it play out over the past three years, and if he had been re-elected, it was likely to get worse.
If we’re going to talk about age-related cognitive decline, that ought to be at the forefront of the discussion.
March 26, 2021 br br Age-related mental decline ... (
show quote)
Biden. But not because of what Trump has to say about it. Both are but Biden’s is more onvious.
Another “but Trump” opinion. They can “but Trump” all day long but at the end of the day Biden is still in obvious decline.
Bottom line - people know he was a bad choice for the democrats and they are trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear
Parky60 wrote:
L*****ts are quite stupid.
All they have is B.S. conjecture and looking back. What else can they post about. Biden’s already the worst, weakest President in my life time.
slatten49 wrote:
March 26, 2021
Age-related mental decline is a real issue. For both Biden and Trump.
President Trump decided to build his campaign on the accusation that Joe Biden is suffering a mental decline that makes him unfit for the presidency. Unlike many of the claims Trump makes, this one is not completely without evidence. So we all have to decide what we think of it and how it factored into the e******n.
The first thing to understand is that this isn’t a matter of a joke or jab here or there. Trump and his allies mounted a comprehensive and coordinated effort to paint Biden as senile. A sampling of examples:
Trump began attacking Biden’s mental fitness at every opportunity. “They’re going to put him into a home, and other people are going to be running the country,” he said at a rally. “Sleepy Joe doesn’t know where he is, or what he’s doing. Honestly, I don’t think he even knows what office he's running for!”
One night, Sean Hannity ranted for almost 10 minutes about Biden’s mental state. This has been a regular topic of discussion for Hannity; he recently said Biden “seems to be in a rapid state of decline and not up to the rigors needed, even on a campaign.”
Tucker Carlson says Biden has “clearly lost it” and has a “fading intellect.”
Fox personality Brit Hume said Tuesday that Biden, “like so many people his age, is losing his memory and is getting senile.”
Rudy Giuliani said Biden is showing “obvious signs of dementia.”
Of course, coming from Trump and his allies, this is utterly bonkers. Trump regularly gives remarks full of bizarre digressions, puzzling illogic, garbled words and slurred speech. He says his father was born in Germany (actually it was New York), says “oranges” when he means “origins,” thinks windmills cause cancer and appears to believe that stealth planes are literally invisible to the naked eye.
Trump’s entire staff treats him like a toddler, with whims so volatile and infantile that they have to constantly tiptoe around him lest he fly off the handle and do something crazy. He reportedly didn’t get into the office until 11 a.m. and blocked out large portions of his day for “executive time,” i.e., watching television.
And just as Trump accuses his opponents of being corrupt to counter the weighty evidence of his own corruption, the attack on Biden’s mental state is in part an attempt to distract people from the fact that Trump himself is temperamentally, intellectually and morally unfit to manage a 7-Eleven, let alone the country.
To be clear, I’m not saying that discussion of Biden’s mental acuity should be off-limits (and we shouldn’t forget that some on the left, including advocates for Bernie Sanders, have aggressively promoted the idea that Biden is experiencing cognitive decline). While Biden has always had a propensity for rambling stories and cringe-worthy statements, in this campaign they have become more frequent. It’s undeniable.
But the danger is that we’ll overstate the importance of trivial mistakes that could happen to anyone (like Biden calling Chris Wallace “Chuck” after he had just done an interview with Chuck Todd), and more importantly, that Trump and the right will convince everyone in the media to stop asking about Trump’s own cognitive issues.
Now here’s the reality: Biden was the nominee, we had two candidates in their 70s, neither one of whom seemed quite as sharp as they were in earlier years. You can see it with Biden on the stump every day, and you can see it by comparing the Trump of today to the one you’ll find in old interviews, in which he’s far more articulate and able to see a thought through from beginning to end.
We should also keep in mind that this isn’t a binary, yes-or-no issue. Everyone experiences certain kinds of cognitive decline as they age. Ask anyone in their 50s and they’ll tell you about it. But the fact that you misplace your keys more often or have trouble remembering the names of people you went to high school with — or if you get momentarily tongue-tied when making an extemporaneous speech, as both Trump and Biden often do — doesn’t mean that your ability to make sound judgments is necessarily c*********d.
But having an older president, whether it’s Trump or Biden, does suggest certain things we’d want to have around him.
He should have a capable vice president ready to step in should it become necessary. He should have a strong chief of staff able to steer the flow of information, tasks and decisions to make the cognitive load on him as manageable as possible. He should have staff with the ability and willingness to be frank with him when his decisions are questionable or problematic. And he should have the self-awareness to understand his own weaknesses and make allowances for them, to constantly ask whether he knows what he needs to know, has understood each issue from all relevant angles and is making the best decisions.
Any president, younger or older, should have those things. And with the exception of a reasonably well-prepared vice president, Trump had none of them.
Which means that although both Biden and Trump may be facing cognitive issues that could affect their performance in office, the dangers are much more profound for Trump. We’ve already seen it play out over the past three years, and if he had been re-elected, it was likely to get worse.
If we’re going to talk about age-related cognitive decline, that ought to be at the forefront of the discussion.
March 26, 2021 br br Age-related mental decline ... (
show quote)
I don't know if you wrote this or someone else did, Slatts, but it is an attempted distraction for the mess we now find ourselves in all over the U.S. Try as they might, the left will not cease trying to paint Trump as bad. I fail to see how this excuses Biden for the disaster of his 2 month old presidency. It's a true train wreck. What a difference from 2 or 3 years ago. The media has let up on their questioning and seem to be content with asking Biden easy questions.(that is whenever Bien is allowed to face them which isn't very often.) In the meantime, how do you account for what is currently going on in our Country? Are you going to resort to the answer that it is somehow Trump's fault? That just isn't working.
JFlorio wrote:
All they have is B.S. conjecture and looking back. What else can they post about. Biden’s already the worst, weakest President in my life time.
It is my opinion that the Marxists in control of the Democrat party intentionally put Biden in office, knowing that he was totally unfit to serve. All along their goal was to put him in office and have the vice president, a self proclaimed socialist, be the real controlling force, the man behind the curtain , like the Wizard of OZ. After a short while they plan to have Biden resign, or have him die of an unknown illness, much like the number of people who have gotten in the way in the Kennedy era and in the Obama administration.
NPP
slatten49 wrote:
March 26, 2021
Age-related mental decline is a real issue. For both Biden and Trump.
President Trump decided to build his campaign on the accusation that Joe Biden is suffering a mental decline that makes him unfit for the presidency. Unlike many of the claims Trump makes, this one is not completely without evidence. So we all have to decide what we think of it and how it factored into the e******n.
The first thing to understand is that this isn’t a matter of a joke or jab here or there. Trump and his allies mounted a comprehensive and coordinated effort to paint Biden as senile. A sampling of examples:
Trump began attacking Biden’s mental fitness at every opportunity. “They’re going to put him into a home, and other people are going to be running the country,” he said at a rally. “Sleepy Joe doesn’t know where he is, or what he’s doing. Honestly, I don’t think he even knows what office he's running for!”
One night, Sean Hannity ranted for almost 10 minutes about Biden’s mental state. This has been a regular topic of discussion for Hannity; he recently said Biden “seems to be in a rapid state of decline and not up to the rigors needed, even on a campaign.”
Tucker Carlson says Biden has “clearly lost it” and has a “fading intellect.”
Fox personality Brit Hume said Tuesday that Biden, “like so many people his age, is losing his memory and is getting senile.”
Rudy Giuliani said Biden is showing “obvious signs of dementia.”
Of course, coming from Trump and his allies, this is utterly bonkers. Trump regularly gives remarks full of bizarre digressions, puzzling illogic, garbled words and slurred speech. He says his father was born in Germany (actually it was New York), says “oranges” when he means “origins,” thinks windmills cause cancer and appears to believe that stealth planes are literally invisible to the naked eye.
Trump’s entire staff treats him like a toddler, with whims so volatile and infantile that they have to constantly tiptoe around him lest he fly off the handle and do something crazy. He reportedly didn’t get into the office until 11 a.m. and blocked out large portions of his day for “executive time,” i.e., watching television.
And just as Trump accuses his opponents of being corrupt to counter the weighty evidence of his own corruption, the attack on Biden’s mental state is in part an attempt to distract people from the fact that Trump himself is temperamentally, intellectually and morally unfit to manage a 7-Eleven, let alone the country.
To be clear, I’m not saying that discussion of Biden’s mental acuity should be off-limits (and we shouldn’t forget that some on the left, including advocates for Bernie Sanders, have aggressively promoted the idea that Biden is experiencing cognitive decline). While Biden has always had a propensity for rambling stories and cringe-worthy statements, in this campaign they have become more frequent. It’s undeniable.
But the danger is that we’ll overstate the importance of trivial mistakes that could happen to anyone (like Biden calling Chris Wallace “Chuck” after he had just done an interview with Chuck Todd), and more importantly, that Trump and the right will convince everyone in the media to stop asking about Trump’s own cognitive issues.
Now here’s the reality: Biden was the nominee, we had two candidates in their 70s, neither one of whom seemed quite as sharp as they were in earlier years. You can see it with Biden on the stump every day, and you can see it by comparing the Trump of today to the one you’ll find in old interviews, in which he’s far more articulate and able to see a thought through from beginning to end.
We should also keep in mind that this isn’t a binary, yes-or-no issue. Everyone experiences certain kinds of cognitive decline as they age. Ask anyone in their 50s and they’ll tell you about it. But the fact that you misplace your keys more often or have trouble remembering the names of people you went to high school with — or if you get momentarily tongue-tied when making an extemporaneous speech, as both Trump and Biden often do — doesn’t mean that your ability to make sound judgments is necessarily c*********d.
But having an older president, whether it’s Trump or Biden, does suggest certain things we’d want to have around him.
He should have a capable vice president ready to step in should it become necessary. He should have a strong chief of staff able to steer the flow of information, tasks and decisions to make the cognitive load on him as manageable as possible. He should have staff with the ability and willingness to be frank with him when his decisions are questionable or problematic. And he should have the self-awareness to understand his own weaknesses and make allowances for them, to constantly ask whether he knows what he needs to know, has understood each issue from all relevant angles and is making the best decisions.
Any president, younger or older, should have those things. And with the exception of a reasonably well-prepared vice president, Trump had none of them.
Which means that although both Biden and Trump may be facing cognitive issues that could affect their performance in office, the dangers are much more profound for Trump. We’ve already seen it play out over the past three years, and if he had been re-elected, it was likely to get worse.
If we’re going to talk about age-related cognitive decline, that ought to be at the forefront of the discussion.
March 26, 2021 br br Age-related mental decline ... (
show quote)
If we were to adopt universal, mandatory mental evaluations......................the whole country would end up in a "home".
slatten49 wrote:
March 26, 2021
Age-related mental decline is a real issue. For both Biden and Trump.
President Trump decided to build his campaign on the accusation that Joe Biden is suffering a mental decline that makes him unfit for the presidency. Unlike many of the claims Trump makes, this one is not completely without evidence. So we all have to decide what we think of it and how it factored into the e******n.
The first thing to understand is that this isn’t a matter of a joke or jab here or there. Trump and his allies mounted a comprehensive and coordinated effort to paint Biden as senile. A sampling of examples:
Trump began attacking Biden’s mental fitness at every opportunity. “They’re going to put him into a home, and other people are going to be running the country,” he said at a rally. “Sleepy Joe doesn’t know where he is, or what he’s doing. Honestly, I don’t think he even knows what office he's running for!”
One night, Sean Hannity ranted for almost 10 minutes about Biden’s mental state. This has been a regular topic of discussion for Hannity; he recently said Biden “seems to be in a rapid state of decline and not up to the rigors needed, even on a campaign.”
Tucker Carlson says Biden has “clearly lost it” and has a “fading intellect.”
Fox personality Brit Hume said Tuesday that Biden, “like so many people his age, is losing his memory and is getting senile.”
Rudy Giuliani said Biden is showing “obvious signs of dementia.”
Of course, coming from Trump and his allies, this is utterly bonkers. Trump regularly gives remarks full of bizarre digressions, puzzling illogic, garbled words and slurred speech. He says his father was born in Germany (actually it was New York), says “oranges” when he means “origins,” thinks windmills cause cancer and appears to believe that stealth planes are literally invisible to the naked eye.
Trump’s entire staff treats him like a toddler, with whims so volatile and infantile that they have to constantly tiptoe around him lest he fly off the handle and do something crazy. He reportedly didn’t get into the office until 11 a.m. and blocked out large portions of his day for “executive time,” i.e., watching television.
And just as Trump accuses his opponents of being corrupt to counter the weighty evidence of his own corruption, the attack on Biden’s mental state is in part an attempt to distract people from the fact that Trump himself is temperamentally, intellectually and morally unfit to manage a 7-Eleven, let alone the country.
To be clear, I’m not saying that discussion of Biden’s mental acuity should be off-limits (and we shouldn’t forget that some on the left, including advocates for Bernie Sanders, have aggressively promoted the idea that Biden is experiencing cognitive decline). While Biden has always had a propensity for rambling stories and cringe-worthy statements, in this campaign they have become more frequent. It’s undeniable.
But the danger is that we’ll overstate the importance of trivial mistakes that could happen to anyone (like Biden calling Chris Wallace “Chuck” after he had just done an interview with Chuck Todd), and more importantly, that Trump and the right will convince everyone in the media to stop asking about Trump’s own cognitive issues.
Now here’s the reality: Biden was the nominee, we had two candidates in their 70s, neither one of whom seemed quite as sharp as they were in earlier years. You can see it with Biden on the stump every day, and you can see it by comparing the Trump of today to the one you’ll find in old interviews, in which he’s far more articulate and able to see a thought through from beginning to end.
We should also keep in mind that this isn’t a binary, yes-or-no issue. Everyone experiences certain kinds of cognitive decline as they age. Ask anyone in their 50s and they’ll tell you about it. But the fact that you misplace your keys more often or have trouble remembering the names of people you went to high school with — or if you get momentarily tongue-tied when making an extemporaneous speech, as both Trump and Biden often do — doesn’t mean that your ability to make sound judgments is necessarily c*********d.
But having an older president, whether it’s Trump or Biden, does suggest certain things we’d want to have around him.
He should have a capable vice president ready to step in should it become necessary. He should have a strong chief of staff able to steer the flow of information, tasks and decisions to make the cognitive load on him as manageable as possible. He should have staff with the ability and willingness to be frank with him when his decisions are questionable or problematic. And he should have the self-awareness to understand his own weaknesses and make allowances for them, to constantly ask whether he knows what he needs to know, has understood each issue from all relevant angles and is making the best decisions.
Any president, younger or older, should have those things. And with the exception of a reasonably well-prepared vice president, Trump had none of them.
Which means that although both Biden and Trump may be facing cognitive issues that could affect their performance in office, the dangers are much more profound for Trump. We’ve already seen it play out over the past three years, and if he had been re-elected, it was likely to get worse.
If we’re going to talk about age-related cognitive decline, that ought to be at the forefront of the discussion.
March 26, 2021 br br Age-related mental decline ... (
show quote)
Let the evidence speak for itself~~
https://youtu.be/1Vw5nSewF6Ehttps://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-kamala-harris-gaffe-mental-state-poll-1577270%3famp=1Who is running the country??
Where is biden and harris and what are they doing about the border crisis they invited?
slatten49 wrote:
March 26, 2021
Age-related mental decline is a real issue. For both Biden and Trump.
President Trump decided to build his campaign on the accusation that Joe Biden is suffering a mental decline that makes him unfit for the presidency. Unlike many of the claims Trump makes, this one is not completely without evidence. So we all have to decide what we think of it and how it factored into the e******n.
The first thing to understand is that this isn’t a matter of a joke or jab here or there. Trump and his allies mounted a comprehensive and coordinated effort to paint Biden as senile. A sampling of examples:
Trump began attacking Biden’s mental fitness at every opportunity. “They’re going to put him into a home, and other people are going to be running the country,” he said at a rally. “Sleepy Joe doesn’t know where he is, or what he’s doing. Honestly, I don’t think he even knows what office he's running for!”
One night, Sean Hannity ranted for almost 10 minutes about Biden’s mental state. This has been a regular topic of discussion for Hannity; he recently said Biden “seems to be in a rapid state of decline and not up to the rigors needed, even on a campaign.”
Tucker Carlson says Biden has “clearly lost it” and has a “fading intellect.”
Fox personality Brit Hume said Tuesday that Biden, “like so many people his age, is losing his memory and is getting senile.”
Rudy Giuliani said Biden is showing “obvious signs of dementia.”
Of course, coming from Trump and his allies, this is utterly bonkers. Trump regularly gives remarks full of bizarre digressions, puzzling illogic, garbled words and slurred speech. He says his father was born in Germany (actually it was New York), says “oranges” when he means “origins,” thinks windmills cause cancer and appears to believe that stealth planes are literally invisible to the naked eye.
Trump’s entire staff treats him like a toddler, with whims so volatile and infantile that they have to constantly tiptoe around him lest he fly off the handle and do something crazy. He reportedly didn’t get into the office until 11 a.m. and blocked out large portions of his day for “executive time,” i.e., watching television.
And just as Trump accuses his opponents of being corrupt to counter the weighty evidence of his own corruption, the attack on Biden’s mental state is in part an attempt to distract people from the fact that Trump himself is temperamentally, intellectually and morally unfit to manage a 7-Eleven, let alone the country.
To be clear, I’m not saying that discussion of Biden’s mental acuity should be off-limits (and we shouldn’t forget that some on the left, including advocates for Bernie Sanders, have aggressively promoted the idea that Biden is experiencing cognitive decline). While Biden has always had a propensity for rambling stories and cringe-worthy statements, in this campaign they have become more frequent. It’s undeniable.
But the danger is that we’ll overstate the importance of trivial mistakes that could happen to anyone (like Biden calling Chris Wallace “Chuck” after he had just done an interview with Chuck Todd), and more importantly, that Trump and the right will convince everyone in the media to stop asking about Trump’s own cognitive issues.
Now here’s the reality: Biden was the nominee, we had two candidates in their 70s, neither one of whom seemed quite as sharp as they were in earlier years. You can see it with Biden on the stump every day, and you can see it by comparing the Trump of today to the one you’ll find in old interviews, in which he’s far more articulate and able to see a thought through from beginning to end.
We should also keep in mind that this isn’t a binary, yes-or-no issue. Everyone experiences certain kinds of cognitive decline as they age. Ask anyone in their 50s and they’ll tell you about it. But the fact that you misplace your keys more often or have trouble remembering the names of people you went to high school with — or if you get momentarily tongue-tied when making an extemporaneous speech, as both Trump and Biden often do — doesn’t mean that your ability to make sound judgments is necessarily c*********d.
But having an older president, whether it’s Trump or Biden, does suggest certain things we’d want to have around him.
He should have a capable vice president ready to step in should it become necessary. He should have a strong chief of staff able to steer the flow of information, tasks and decisions to make the cognitive load on him as manageable as possible. He should have staff with the ability and willingness to be frank with him when his decisions are questionable or problematic. And he should have the self-awareness to understand his own weaknesses and make allowances for them, to constantly ask whether he knows what he needs to know, has understood each issue from all relevant angles and is making the best decisions.
Any president, younger or older, should have those things. And with the exception of a reasonably well-prepared vice president, Trump had none of them.
Which means that although both Biden and Trump may be facing cognitive issues that could affect their performance in office, the dangers are much more profound for Trump. We’ve already seen it play out over the past three years, and if he had been re-elected, it was likely to get worse.
If we’re going to talk about age-related cognitive decline, that ought to be at the forefront of the discussion.
March 26, 2021 br br Age-related mental decline ... (
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Trump spent 4 years in the White House totally and completely mentally unhinged. Biden is a professional. He is simply trying to do his job amidst the mess that Trump left him. Age has nothing to do with it--Biden at 100 will be 10 times the mental intellect that Trump is. This is a red herring not worth chasing...
PeterS wrote:
Trump spent 4 years in the White House totally and completely mentally unhinged. Biden is a professional. He is simply trying to do his job amidst the mess that Trump left him. Age has nothing to do with it--Biden at 100 will be 10 times the mental intellect that Trump is. This is a red herring not worth chasing...
Of course Trump was mentally unhinged by your definition of mentally ill. Anyone who is not a Socialist Marxist is, mentally ill, as is anyone who is Christian.
NPP
PeterS wrote:
Trump spent 4 years in the White House totally and completely mentally unhinged. Biden is a professional. He is simply trying to do his job amidst the mess that Trump left him. Age has nothing to do with it--Biden at 100 will be 10 times the mental intellect that Trump is. This is a red herring not worth chasing...
If there ever was a case for calling black white and white black, your post has to be tops. I truly believe you are above this, Pete. At least I hope so. At any rate, this kind of total BS is what is hurting the Democrat party. Why not just admit that you made a mistake since everybody knows it and it is becoming more obvious as each day passes.
PeterS wrote:
Trump spent 4 years in the White House totally and completely mentally unhinged. Biden is a professional. He is simply trying to do his job amidst the mess that Trump left him. Age has nothing to do with it--Biden at 100 will be 10 times the mental intellect that Trump is. This is a red herring not worth chasing...
You can’t “but Trump” your way out of Biden’s obvious mental decline. Its pathetic really.
Rose42 wrote:
You can’t “but Trump” your way out of Biden’s obvious mental decline. Its pathetic really.
Apparently they're not going to stop trying, Rose, at least until they realize that continually attacking Trump isn't going to help Biden.
bylm1-Bernie wrote:
I don't know if you wrote this or someone else did, Slatts, but it is an attempted distraction for the mess we now find ourselves in all over the U.S. Try as they might, the left will not cease trying to paint Trump as bad. I fail to see how this excuses Biden for the disaster of his 2 month old presidency. It's a true train wreck. What a difference from 2 or 3 years ago. The media has let up on their questioning and seem to be content with asking Biden easy questions.(that is whenever Bien is allowed to face them which isn't very often.) In the meantime, how do you account for what is currently going on in our Country? Are you going to resort to the answer that it is somehow Trump's fault? That just isn't working.
I don't know if you wrote this or someone else did... (
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No, Bernie, not my article but by an unknown writer. However, as I align with the majority of his/her thoughts on this particular matter, it is just one in which we disagree. Politics, like life, is cyclical and Trump squandered his time in the spotlight. Time will tell how Biden fares with the overall general public. For the moment...at least according to favorable approval ratings...he's doing well.
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