How his father’s 'descent into dementia' fueled Trump’s obsession with mental fitness

20 March 2024

2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and right-wing media outlets, including Fox News, have been obsessed with President Joe Biden's mental state — typically conflating his verbal gaffes (the result of a speech impediment he fought hard to overcome) with senility.

But Democrats who have worked closely with Biden, including former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, have confirmed that the president is far from senile. Biden has a reputation for being driven and hard-working behind closed doors and can, according to a July 2023 report in Axios, be very demanding with staff.

Trump, despite his own verbal stumbles — such as confusing former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) during a campaign speech — continues to insist that he is intellectually superior to Biden. And according to the Washington Post's Michael Kranish, the late Fred Trump Sr.'s struggle with Alzheimer's may play a role in the former president's obsession with mental fitness.

Kranish, in an article published on March 20, notes that Donald Trump was "visibly upset" when he witnessed his father Fred Trump Sr.'s "descent into dementia." Mary Trump, the former president's niece, told the Post that at a gathering at Mar-a-Lago in the mid-1990s, Fred Trump Sr. didn't recognize two of his children.

The older Trump was 93 when he died in 1999.

"Today, as the 77-year-old (Donald) Trump seeks to return to the White House," Kranish explains, "he is still focused on the ravages of dementia — but this time, he is using the condition as a political weapon, alleging without medical proof that President Biden, 81, is 'cognitively impaired.' Those attacks follow a long pattern for the former president, who for years, has bashed enemies as mentally frail while boasting in public about 'acing' the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a basic test that flags signs of early dementia."

According to Kranish, Donald Trump's "long fixation on mental fitness followed years of watching his father's worsening dementia."

A former Trump Organization senior executive, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the Post, "Donald is no doubt fearful of Alzheimer’s. He's not going to talk about and not going to admit to it, but it's relevant because every day, he is hitting Biden with whether or not he is capable mentally of doing the job."

That source recalled that Fred Trump Sr.'s decline was obvious during a party in the mid-1990s.

The former Trump Organization exec told the Post, "I remember distinctly he brought his father to the party, and Donald was either holding his hand or close to him physically — and he introduced me to him, and you could see his father wasn't comprehending much of anything. Donald was not the type to show affection. It was just Donald being matter-of-fact that his father had Alzheimer's."

Read the Washington Post's full report at this link (subscription required).

From Your Site Articles