Over the last month, Trump’s mental decline has appeared to worsen. Consider:
- On Sunday, he posted an image claiming that Barack Obama had been collecting millions in taxpayer dollars from “royalties linked to Obamacare.” (The bogus item was from a satirical website called the “Dunning-Kruger Times,” a reference to the Dunning-Kruger effect — the well-observed tendency of stupid people to vastly overestimate their abilities or intelligence.)
- After last Tuesday’s elections, he called “affordability” a “new word” and said Republicans had not talked enough about it, but then blasted it as a Democratic “con job” and declared “I don’t want to hear about the affordability.”
- Seemingly oblivious to the economic struggles Americans find themselves in, he has posted incessantly about the new Lincoln bathroom, remodeled in black and white marble with gold faucets and light fixtures; his new White House ballroom, to be built in marble and gilded in gold; and renovations at the Kennedy Center, which he said would be outfitted in marble and “magnificent high end carpeting.”
- When responding to a question about his mental acuity, he confused a dementia screening test for an IQ test.
- When he addressed America’s top military brass, he veered abruptly from discussing Marine morale to “Biden’s autopen” and said, “I have to sign for a general because we have beautiful paper, the gorgeous paper. I said, ‘Throw a little more gold on it, they deserve it.’ Give me — I want the A paper, not the D paper. We used to sign a piece of garbage.”
- He claimed that he had halted a “nuclear” war between Iran and Pakistan, repeatedly confusing Iran and India without noticing his mistake.
- He insisted he had “solved” an imaginary conflict between Cambodia and Armenia — two nations 4,000 miles apart. Days before, he bragged he’d stopped a showdown between Azerbaijan and Albania, apparently meaning Armenia.
- Speaking to reporters one day after meeting with Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to avert a shutdown, Trump discussed his talks with “Chuck Schumer, who was here yesterday, along with ... uhh, the, a very nice gentleman who I didn’t really know. You know who I’m talking about.”
- On October 18, when more than 7 million Americans protested against him, he posted an AI video depicting him bombing the protesters with feces.
I could go on, but you get the point. Trump appears to be rapidly losing his mind.
Yet the media isn’t covering his mental deterioration. Why not? When I ask in the media, I usually get one of the following responses:
1. There’s been no noticeable decline in Trump’s mental faculties. They tell me that Trump has always been incoherent. He’s always veered off script into bizarre tangents. He’s always made bonkers factual mistakes (along with his ubiquitous lies). So, they say, there’s been no noticeable decline in recent months.
2. His decline can’t be substantiated. A second response I get is that Trump’s declining mental condition can’t be substantiated. Yes, there are abundant anecdotes, such as those I listed above, but no hard evidence. Unless or until he says or does something totally and dangerously bonkers or his decline is substantiated, this isn’t news.
3. Media owners are blocking stories about his mental decline. A third response I get is that yes, his mental faculties have been in free fall, but no media owner wants to cover this for fear of retribution. The owners of all major media are either being sued by Trump for defamation or have recently settled with him, or are dependent on Trump’s FCC or fear Trump’s FTC and don’t want to risk his wrath.
4. Journalists don’t want to cover this. A final response is that, while the evidence of his decline is overwhelming, reporters themselves are self-censoring. There are so many other important Trump stories to cover, and his mental condition is such a controversial topic, that they’ve put any investigation into his mental deterioration on the back burner.
Hence, today’s Office Hours question: Why in your view is the media not reporting on Trump’s mental decline?
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/."
