by Dan Burns

Dec 18, 2024, 12:00 PM

Regarding Trump’s mental health

I consider myself able to offer some insight on this (though I emphasize that it is opinion, not any effort to claim certain knowledge), because I was a co-caregiver, along with my mother, when my father had the long, slow kind of Alzheimer’s. We were able to keep him at home throughout. (Though with invaluable help from the VA in St. Cloud. I can’t say enough good things about those people. Ditto regarding the local Elim Oasis senior day care program.) And he did make it to 88 before dying in 2021, so, no sorrow.

After that experience it’s as obvious to me as green on grass that Trump is experiencing symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, that it’s been going on for a while, and that it’s not the long, slow kind but moving along with considerably more alacrity. It’s important to note that Trump’s father had Alzheimer’s, and that a genetic component in the disease has been well-established.

The flagrant example is his inability to maintain mental consistency and express himself with clarity for any length of time. People try to blow it off as “Trump being Trump.” And of course with him the bar of mental functioning was already set so low that it took a while for the added factor of dementia to really manifest. But that he can’t seem to remember what he said from one day to the next, along with his often-incoherent babbling and ever-widening mood swings, go well beyond the symptoms expected from his preexisting conditions of malignant narcissism and delusional and paranoid disorders. The guy’s living in his own world, more than ever.

What else to look for? My family was fortunate that while he could certainly be stubborn Dad wasn’t subject to the episodes of uncomprehending rage that some experience. If those do start to happen with Trump I doubt that his handlers, and his protectors/enablers in corporate media, will be able to keep it quiet for long.

Sundowning is a more complex issue here. That’s where things worsen in the evenings. In Dad’s case it took the form of constantly asking when we were going to go home, despite constant explanations that we were already at home. (If you ever are a caregiver for someone with dementia, the top three rules are 1. Patience 2. Patience 3. Patience.) Since Trump never gives state dinners or anything, but rather apparently spends his evenings being fawned over by craven sycophants and “rage-tweeting” we’ll get no real opportunity to look for those kinds of symptoms.

As far as other things from the campaign that haven’t had the publicity they deserve given that this guy is going to be president, like the microphone-fellatio simulation incident and missing the bus door handle and almost falling over backward, individually they could be regarded as not meaning all that much. Nobody’s perfect, most certainly including myself. But in combination with the above it’s all adding up, at least for me. I’ll have further remarks from time to time.

Comment from Joe Musich: I hope this column inspires others to look more closely. His outspokenness about the funding bill and raising the debt fall in the category of WTF. And then saying publicly he wanted it done so it could be blamed on Biden should ring plenty of alarm bells. But to your comments it would be interesting to see the time of day they were either posted or said. Thanks.