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It’s About Time

The media is finally reporting on Trump’s mental decline

Dan Rather and Team Steady Oct 16

Credit: Getty Images

It is no secret to anyone who has been paying attention that Donald Trump is declining. He gives increasingly incoherent non-answers. He struggles to string words together to make a sentence. He regurgitates paranoid fantasies. He often appears to be downright unhinged. 

Any regular reader of this newsletter knows we have been calling attention to this issue for months. Now other media outlets that previously disregarded it are finally doing their jobs and covering what is perhaps the most underreported story of this election. 

Here are some headlines from this week:

“Trump is 78 and barely coherent. Where’s everyone who questioned Biden’s age and fitness?” - USA Today (Where, indeed.)

“Dancing Donald Trump Is Clearly in a Steep Decline” - Newsweek

“Let’s Talk About Trump’s Mental Acuity” - The Washington Post

And then there is this from Sunday’s New York Times: “Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age.” 

The piece is excellent and well researched, if a bit late in coming. But I take exception to the headline. When was the question of age in play? With President Biden, surely. But by and large, much of the mainstream media hasn’t just ignored Trump’s deterioration, it has “sane-washed” it, meaning it has minimized Trump’s erratic behavior, including cleaning up his quotes so they make sense, to make him appear coherent. Sane-washing is a disservice at best, a dereliction of duty at worst.

It took a truly remarkable town hall meeting in Pennsylvania this week to push many in the media to finally report on this issue. After only a few minutes on stage, Trump stopped taking questions and decided to listen to music instead. For 39 minutes. Everything from “Ave Maria” (several versions) to “It’s a Man’s World.” He danced and waved as the music played over the sound system. He left the stage while “Memory” from Cats played on. 

Not everyone thought this was incredibly strange behavior for a presidential nominee. The Wall Street Journal’s headline was “Trump’s Pennsylvania Town Hall Ends in Concert.” As someone on X commented, that’s akin to saying the Hindenburg landing ended in a light show. 

Before Biden dropped out, most of the media harped on his age while basically giving Trump a pass. The blatant double standard is worth a look. 

Biden at times appeared frail during his campaign, and his speaking voice was diminished, though what he was saying made sense. In contrast, Trump appears vigorous and energetic. He speaks with authority even if he makes little to no sense. This is a classic example of style over substance. 

Trump’s crazy has worn us down. “Our tolerance for the previously intolerable has grown immensely as Trump has exhausted our ability to be shocked,” explains Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who is working to defeat Trump.

Let me give you an example. Here is a direct quote from Trump trying to talk about child care last month:

“It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that – because, look, child care is child care. It’s — couldn’t — you know, it’s something — you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.”

He went on for several more incoherent minutes. Rather than reprinting the quote, the Times sane-washed it by saying, “In a jumbled answer, he said he would prioritize legislation on the issue but offered no specifics and insisted that his other economic policies, including tariffs, would ‘take care’ of child care.”

Come on! The electorate doesn’t need to be spoon-fed — it needs to be informed about what is actually going on with the person who could be the next president of the United States.

I would argue that if Biden had said anything that unintelligible, the mainstream media would have been calling for the 25th Amendment disability clause.

This is why Kamala Harris suggested people go to Trump rallies to see for themselves.

Will much of the media finally reporting on Trump’s cognitive decline make a difference on November 5? It could. Lower-turnout voters, people who identify with a political party but tend to be inconsistent or infrequent voters, will likely have a big impact on this election. Serious questions about a candidate’s mental fitness for office could influence their decision about going to the polls.

However that turns out, the fitness issue is finally getting the attention it deserves. 

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Stay Steady,
Dan