NY Times finally covers Trump’s dementia but still sanewashes Trump

The media is failing us!!

Since April, I’ve been pressing the corporate media in my articles and media appearances to cover Donald Trump’s cognitive slide. And not because I was trying to score political points, but because voters are entitled to know this vitally important information before voting.

That is why I wrote in April, “Doctors are warning of Trump’s dementia—it’s time corporate media report on this!” For that article, I interviewed Dr. John Gartner--the founder of “Duty to Warn”—and quoted from a petition signed by more than 500 licensed mental health professions raising red flags that Trump is exhibiting signs of dementia.

In August, again I wrote an article on this issue titled, “Trump’s dementia is getting worse--and it’s long past time corporate media cover it.” At the time my focus was  an article published days before in the medical publication “Stat” that featured a group of experts in memory, psychology and linguistics who detailed Trump’s cognitive decline over the past few years. 

That is why I was so heartened to see the NY Times on Sunday finally wrote an article about Trump’s mental slide titled, “Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age.” The Times rightly noted that Trump appears more frequently “confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality lately,” adding, “In fact, it happens so often these days that it no longer even generates much attention.” (That last part is actually corporate media sanewashing their golden ratings goose to keep him in this race.)

But the NY Times buried what should’ve been the gripping material that could’ve shamed other corporate media outlets into covering Trump’s apparent dementia. Instead, they began the article with less compelling info that didn’t take a strong stand on the issue. For example, they featured near the top of the piece a computer analysis by The New York Times of Trump’s rally speeches noting he now “uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age.”

What should have the NY Times opened with? Two things buried in their article. First, was the Stat article that was the thrust of my August piece. This Stat article featured a group of experts in memory, psychology and linguistics who detailed Trump’s cognitive decline over the past few years. They noted the changes they observed of Trump could be attributed to causes “including mood changes, natural aging, or the “beginnings of a cognitive condition like Alzheimer’s disease.” One expert, Ben Michaelis, a clinical psychologist, noted Trump was exhibiting “a certain picture of cognitive diminishment” and more alarmingly, “There’s reasonable evidence suggestive of forms of dementia.”

Yes, a clinical psychologist in a medical publication concluded Trump was showing “reasonable evidence suggestive of forms of dementia.” But when it came to the NY Times, they only parenthetically referred to it with the line, “A study by Stat, a health care news outlet, produced similar findings” when referring to Trump showing what experts call “disinhibition” –which can be a sign of cognitive decline in older adults as they lose the ability to censor thoughts before speaking.

If the NY Times had made the report the center of their reporting, there is little doubt cable news outlets would’ve invited the mental health experts on air to discuss what they saw in connection with Trump and dementia.

The NY Times also buried near the end of their long article a real-life example of Trump’s mental decline that was jaw-dropping. That is when they quote Ramin Setoodeh, author of a new book on Trump’s days hosting, “The Apprentice.” Setoodeh told the NY Times that he was surprised at how much Trump “had changed when he arrived at Mar-a-Lago for the first of six interviews for the book, “Apprentice in Wonderland.”

Setoodeh went on to explain that Trump could remember things about the early years of The Apprentice—which premiered in 2004---in great detail. However, “he struggled with more recent events.” Anyone exposed to people with dementia—as I was with my late mother—knows this is one of the red flags of the condition.

But then Setoodeh added something that should have been the first paragraph of the NY Times article.  As the paper wrote, Trump’s memory was “so foggy, in fact, that he forgot Mr. Setoodeh himself.” Yep, Trump didn’t even recognize Setoodeh despite interviewing Trump five times before—including at Mar-a-Lago in May 2021. As Setoodeh noted, when he returned in August of this year, Trump had no idea who he was.

The article then continues to this shocking quote of Setoodeh speaking to Trump: “When I said, ‘Do you remember sitting down with me?’ he said, ‘No, that was a long time ago.’” He added, “It was like we started from square one. He started telling me the exact same stories. He didn’t remember what we had talked about. He didn’t remember me.”

Why would that exchange be buried?! That should have been the top of their article.

But we aren’t done. While the NY Times did interview a few people like Setoodeh who raised concerns about Trump’s mental state, they also included quotes from Trump campaign staffers saying he’s fine. In other words, the NY Times “both sided” an issue that does not have two sides!

A person they should have interviewed was Donald’s own nephew, Fred Trump III, who I spoke to a few weeks ago.  He noted that dementia “runs in the family.” Fred added: “You know, Donald said, ‘Oh, my father was tiptop until the end.’ I can assure you, that was not the case.”  He continued, “I know what I saw in my grandfather. I know what I saw in Donald’s older sister, my aunt Maryanne, who in the end…and Donald’s cousin, John Walters, had dementia.”

Fred explained, “I am not a doctor, I don’t pretend to be. I just, I know the warning signs from both of my grandfathers.” As to a change in his Uncle Donald, Fred shared, “the things he’s spewing and the craziness, and he just can’t stick to a message. And he used to be able to stick to a message.” (You can watch the interview below which did get a fair amount of press converge when it was released so the NY Times must know what Fred was saying.)

The NY Times covering this issue is months late—especially given how they hammered President Biden on his cognitive issues. If the NY Times coverage would have sparked a media frenzy to address this issue, that would have at least been a positive development. But as of now, the wishy-washy way the Times addressed it does not appear to be prompting that type of media examination.

But putting politics aside: We all are entitled to know whether the potential next commander in chief is afflicted with dementia before election day. Yet here we are less than 29 days out and corporate media has again failed us.

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