Trump's dangerous mental decline is a threat to our nation

Trump's cognitive errors are increasing in frequency

Donald Trump is not the person he was on 2020—and in 2020, he was already awful. This was a guy plotting a coup in front of our eyes while spewing dangerous lies that radicalized people to attack the Capitol on Jan 6. But I’m not referring to that nor Trump saying outrageously incendiary remarks and lying to help himself politically. That we’ve seen.

This is different. We are seeing with increased frequency red flags warning us about Trump’s dangerous mental decline. And while I objectively believe Trump is the best candidate for us to beat in 2024, we still need to put the nation first by raising alarm bells about Trump’s obvious cognitive decline—even if it ends up costing him the GOP nomination and resulting in a more formidable 2024 GOP nominee.

There is no denying that Trump is struggling from a mental point of view in ways we’ve not seen before. In just the past two months since Trump has been actively campaigning, his confusion and errors range from believing he defeated Barack Obama in 2016 to not knowing what state he was in to confusing names, dates, world leaders and worse.

Here is a sample with the dates so you can see the frequency of these episodes:

September 16: Trump in a speech before conservative Pray Vote Stand summit made a series of errors. He twice confused Barack Obama with Biden, first saying, "As you know, crooked Joe Biden and the radical left thugs have weaponized law enforcement to arrest their leading political opponent, and leading by a lot, including Obama.” (Obviously Obama is not running in 2024.) Trump then later declared, “With Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn’t be won.” (Apparently realizing his mistake, Trump then quickly said, “Hillary Clinton,” who was his opponent in 2016.) Trump also bizarrely claimed that Biden would get us into “World War II,” when of course that war already happened decades ago.

September 25:  During a speech in South Carolina, Trump confused Jeb and George W. Bush. But I don’t mean he got their names wrong. It was far more alarming. Trump began to reminisce about his 2016 win in the South Carolina GOP primary, telling the audience with typical Trump gusto that, “When I came here, everyone thought Bush was going to win. They thought Bush because Bush supposedly was a military person. Great.” He then added about Bush, “he got us into the Middle East. How did that work out, right?” 

The reality is that in 2016, Trump defeated Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida who neither served in the military nor led the US into the Iraq war.  The person Trump was referring to—and doing so with absolute confidence-was George W. Bush who Trump never ran against.  This is not a gaffe, this is a person struggling cognitively.

October 23: In a speech in New Hampshire, Trump was confused about what country Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban was the President of, telling the audience “I was very honored — there’s a man, Viktor Orban, anybody ever hear of him? He’s probably like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world,” adding. “He’s the leader of Turkey.” Actually, Orban is the leader of Hungary while Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the president of Turkey. What makes this more concerning is that Trump knows Orban well and has a long history of praising the right wing, autocrat.

In that same speech, Trump then wrongly told the audience that Orban’s nation shared a border with Russia. In reality, neither Hungary nor Turkey share a border with Russia.

October 29: Trump took the stage, bellowing: “Hello to a place where we’ve done very well, Sioux Falls. Thank you very much.” The problem was Trump was not in Sioux Falls, Iowa as he apparently believed but in Sioux City, South Dakota. Given that obvious error, Republican Iowa state Sen. Bradley Zaun appeared on stage, whispering to Trump the correct location. Trump responded by saying "Oh," and then going back to the microphone and correcting himself by saying: "So, Sioux City, let me ask you, how many people come from Sioux City, how many people?...Who doesn't come from Sioux City? Where the hell do you come from?!"

November 11: That takes us to this weekend when Trump again invoked Hungary’s Viktor Orban, stating that “they were interviewing him two weeks ago and they said, ‘What would you advise President Obama? The whole world seems to be exploding and imploding.’” Obviously, Obama is not President now—it’s Biden. 

It’s these types of Trump cognitive errors that have recently caused some of Trump’s 2024 GOP rivals to raise red flags. The most direct has been Florida Gov Ron DeSantis who warned recently, “This is a different Donald Trump than 2015 and ’16,” adding, “Now, it’s just a different guy. And it’s sad to see.”

DeSantis’s campaign even claimed that it was Trump’s cognitive decline was the reason “why his handlers won’t let him debate.” I couldn’t agree more—and in fact made that very point in my article two months ago, noting that Trump’s refusal to debate was both a rejection of democratic norms and a way to hide his mental decline. After all, in a debate, Trump would be on stage for two hours where he would be forced to think on his feet without the benefit of a teleprompter. (Of course, Trump could easily dissuade people of this concern by participating in the next GOP debate.)

It’s true there are times Trump functions as usual. But what we are seeing now with increasing frequency is something alarmingly different. While Trump supporters may not care, the rest of us must be laser focused on Trump’s dangerous mental decline given if he wins in 2024, he will be commander in chief of our military. And that is no place for someone who is confused about where he is, who is the President and what nation’s border others.

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