Pathologist explains the clear dementia signal in new viral Trump clip

07 May

President Donald Trump seen exiting the official presidential helicopter, Marine One. (Image: Screengrab via ETimes.)

A new clip this week of President Donald Trump seemingly unable to walk a straight line reignited concerns about his health, and now, a speech pathologist has revealed why it appears to be a clear sign of "dementia and cognitive decline."

The clip, initially circulated on Tuesday, shows Trump exiting the official presidential helicopter, Marine One, greeted by two Marines as he proceeds ahead across the tarmac. As he does so, instead of walking straight ahead from the stairs out of the craft, he initially veers slightly to the left, then slightly back to the right, before finally seeming to walk off to the left some more. It is unclear from the clip, as it was circulated across social media, if there was any particular reason for this odd gait, leading to renewed speculation about it being a sign of physical or cognitive decline.

At least one certified speech-language pathologist and outspoken Trump critic, who goes by "Hilary M.A. CCC-SLP," came down on the side of the latter when she examined the footage in a recent video.

In the video, she first dismisses the possibility that the president might be inebriated, given that he famously does not drink alcohol and reportedly dislikes it when his officials get drunk. In her estimation, this seeming inability to walk straight ahead resembled a tendency common in patients dealing with major cognitive decline.

"It is very common for people who have dementia and cognitive decline to no longer be able to walk in a straight line," she explained. "Brain deterioration can affect visual-spatial processing. It can affect depth perception. It can affect proprioception, which is basically... understanding where your body is in space. There are attentional difficulties that come with it. There's things like route-finding, although this route should have been a straight line from here to there."

She continued: "There is no reason that Donald Trump should have not walked a direct path from one to the other. He just couldn't."

She noted that, ultimately, she could not concretely diagnose Trump with any sort specific condition from one video clip. She only meant to point out that his behavior closely resembled a symptom associated with "many types of dementia."

"So, it is a sign that he is having difficulty and that the brain is deteriorating," she continued. "Now, exactly what that diagnosis is can be left up to his doctors... but we all know that this is not right."

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