'Without any doubt': Experts say Trump shows 'staggering' signs of 'cognitive diminishment'

08 August 2024

Former President Donald Trump may very well be in the throes of dementia, according to various experts in the fields of aging and cognitive health.

In a Thursday report for the Daily Beast, several experts opined that the 78 year-old ex-president's mental faculties are in a state of decline, when comparing his rally speeches of the 2024 cycle to his speeches in the White House during his first year in office. Boston University neurology professor told the publication Stat that when analyzing Trump's meandering speech patterns, there is evidence of deterioration in the former president's frontal lobe — the part of the brain that suffers the most from aging.

"There are absolutely changes that are occurring, without any doubt," Budson said, noting that Trump's habit of jumping around to various topics could be an indicator of early Alzheimer's disease.

Another mental health expert pored over transcripts of Trump's speeches dating back nine years. University of Texas at Austin social psychologist James Pennebaker used software to analyze Trump's speech patterns and vocabulary, and deployed a system that grades the quality of a person's speaking abilities using a "linguistic metric of analytical thinking." Pennebaker told Stat that while most presidential candidates score anywhere between 60 and 70 under that method, Trump's speaking scored between 10 and 24.

“I can’t tell you how staggering this is,” Pennebaker said. “He does not think in a complex way at all.”

When comparing Trump's rallies in the 2024 cycle to his speeches seven years ago, clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis said the most noticeable trend is the former president's habit of never staying on-topic when making a point. He pointed to Trump's habit of switching words and using nonsensical words as a symptom of conditions like Alzheimer's.

“There’s reasonable evidence suggestive of forms of dementia,” Michaelis told Stat. “The reduction in complexity of sentences and vocabulary does lead you to a certain picture of cognitive diminishment.”

This isn't the first time experts have signaled that Trump may be experiencing cognitive decline. In May, Dr. John Gartner — who leads the organization Duty to Warn (a coalition of mental health experts warning of Trump's diminishing mental faculties) — pointed out several ways Trump is rapidly aging that can be seen in his speeches.

"Typical of dementia patients, he repeats himself and overuses superlatives and filler words," Gartner told attorney Jay Kuo in an interview for his Substack newsletter. "Based on his current accelerating rate of decline, it seems very unlikely that Trump could see out a second term without falling off the cliff and becoming totally incapacitated."

Click here to read the Beast's report in full (subscription required).

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