Non sequiturs, made-up stories and bizarre, meandering rants about windmills have led some to conclude the President’s mental acuity has hit a new low
Few jobs are as mentally or physically demanding as that of president of the United States.
Rahm Emanuel, one-time chief of staff to Barack Obama recently half-joked that every year in the White House was a “dog year”, suggesting it was seven times the equivalent to a life outside the walls.
The “before and after” photographs of presidents show the pressure all too well , most recently the toll endured by Joe Biden after just one term. At the age of 82 years and two months when he left in January, Biden was the oldest president in history.
Most of the time Donald Trump has managed to upend the traditions of a president, both through his combative style and his seemingly limitless energy. Even critics acknowledge that up until this point he has presented himself as someone younger than his 79 years.
That is changing.
While Democrats and commentators were already pointing to his meandering style of speaking on the campaign trail last year – something he himself referred to as his “weave” – more pressing questions are now being asked with Trump back in front of the cameras, sometimes several times a day.
Non sequiturs, rants about windmills, his seeming inability to give an answer on topics such as Israel’s war in Gaza, have led some to conclude his mental acuity has hit a new low.
And now the California Governor, Gavin Newsom – admittedly engaged in a bitter online feud with the President – has even suggested he has dementia.
However, the usual suspects aside, even Trump’s supporters say his physical decline is apparent, seven months into his second term.
Alex Jones, a Trump-supporting conspiracist who hosts the InfoWars podcast, recently suggested the President was facing a full blown health “crisis”.
“I’ve seen a lot of signs of Trump declining,” he said. “And so he’s on a lot of the time, but like a light bulb is starting to go out. It gets brighter, it gets dim; it goes in and out.”
He said Trump’s ankles appeared to be “giant”. He urged the President to cut back his workload because he appeared to be “declining, faster and faster”.
In recent months, Trump has talked off script about the “danger” of wind farms while meeting in Scotland with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, to talk about trade.
Earlier this month, Trump held an Oval Office meeting to celebrate a new investment by Apple in the US. He offered praise to several people before adding: “Thanks as well to Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick wherever you may be.” As it was, Lutnick was right there. “I’m right behind you,” the Commerce Secretary said.
Asked this week about comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell about the potential to cut interest rates, Trump delivered a meandering response and added: “We call him ‘Too Late’ for a reason. He should have cut him a year ago. He’s too late.”
He even told an apparently entirely made-up story in which he claimed his uncle, who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, taught the US terrorist Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber. This was despite the fact Kaczynski never attended MIT. Asked about the lack of evidence, the White House press secretary avoided the question.
Newsom has been the most outspoken of the Democrats when it comes to Trump’s false claims. In the Oval Office, Trump had claimed the nation was sending “hundreds of millions of gallons of water per day into the Pacific Ocean”, re-sparking claims rejected by Newsom that the state’s water policies had left Los Angeles without sufficient water to fight last year’s fires.
Newsom posted the exchange on X and then set a question for the AI chatbot, Grok, developed by Elon Musk.
“Do people with dementia repeat false things over and over again?” Newsom asked.
The bot responded: “Yes, people with dementia can repeat false statements or beliefs, a behaviour often linked to memory impairments and cognitive changes.”
There have also been a lot of questions asked also about Trump’s seemingly bruised hand and what might be the use of make-up to cover it.
In July the White House said the mark was the result of “chronic venous insufficiency”, that also affects blood flow in the legs.
The White House has moved to shut down any claims about Trump’s flagging health, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reading out a letter from Trump’s doctor saying he was in “excellent health”.
“Recent photos of the President have shown minor bruising on the back of his hand,” she said. “This is consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent hand-shaking and the use of aspirin.”
While Trump and his supporters often mocked Biden as “Sleepy Joe”, Trump will himself set a new record when he completes his second term. At 82 years, seven months, and six days old he would be older even than Biden.
To date, Democrats have tended to focus criticism of the President on what he has done since returning to the White House – a huge executive power grab, the authoritarian-like moves to send troops to Democrat-run cities such as Los Angeles and Washington, DC, and his confused economic policies – largely centred around tariffs – that have failed to bring down prices of goods such as food and gasoline. Trump in large part won a second term as voters believed he would be a better shepherd of the economy.
With the exception of Newsom, Democrats have tended to avoided making Trump’s health a major issue, and with good reason. They know all too well the crisis Biden’s very obviously declining health created for them last year, so much so the president was effectively forced to end his bid for a second term and was replaced by Kamala Harris.
That remains a sensitive issue for the party and senior Democrats know they could be forced to answer questions from Republicans about what they personally knew about Biden’s decline. Nobody wants to be accused of being part of a cover-up.
But if someone such as Alex Jones will do their dirty work for them, there will be few Democrats rushing to Trump’s defence.
