It leaves him open to interpretation. Everything he says and does needs to be taken at face value and judged accordingly until there is confirmation of his health. Up to that point everything comes with a qualifier of 'oh he didn't mean it like that' or 'what he meant was.' He's the POTUS, not the last episode of sopranos

It's not the same. He's not smart there, but he's regular dumb arrogant business guy. He can communicate. He doesn't squint up his face straining to just concentrate enough to vaguely understand a question he's asked. He's speaking fluently and in complete sentences. It's night and day.

A widely believed diagnosis of Alzheimer's wouldn't be an excuse. It'd be the end of his presidency.

George W. Bush suffered largely the same fate of sounding far more coherent early in his political career and devolving rhetorically later in it. However, bear in mind Rove and in particular Karen Hughes worked with him on sounding more clipped and slowing down his speech because they were convinced his father lost in 1996 sounding too patrician and cerebral.

I doubt anyone has specifically coached Trump but he is an experienced media jabber. While Trump's devolution of rhetoric may be more subconscious, the important thing to remember is that sounding like a college professor is not necessarily an asset.

Trump is playing to populists. Not sure if y'all have gotten out and talked to say your average old white person that has empowered Trump to great political heights but they also speak in nonsensical incoherent jibber jabber and nod along to Trump-style verbal diarrhea like it's received wisdom from the Heavens.

That is to say: being incoherent is probably a feature, not a bug, and has ultimately served Trump, not held him back. As such it might be 'intentional' even it it merely comes to Trump naturally. He's embracing the tics and mannerisms of his audience. It's a standard thing. It has the added benefit of exhausting or confusing people who interview him so he can dodge or not answer any pointed question and still not alarm his audience that he's clueless. He's frankly so 'skilled' at it that he hasn't suffered like Sarah Palin and Gary Johnson for total ignorance.

I don't see any difference that can't be readily explained by being under a lot of stress unlike anything he has ever experienced, and that he isn't capable of coping with.

There's a moment in the Lester Holt interview where Trump appears to consider linking Comey to Obama but instead says something like "Comey was there a long time before me," seemingly recognizing in real time that writing off white male Republican law enforcement officer Comey as an Obama flunky isn't a good strat. I'm skeptical people with diseases of mental degeneration display this type of cunning. Instead, Trump's behavior now can be explained as in the past as that of a narcissistic conman.

Imo here.

Just look at how hard he strains to stay focused in an interview now. And then when he talks he abandons half his sentences.

That's a good description of my neighbor who for the last few years would trap passersby into long old man tells at Mexican clouds conversations. Now he doesn't recognize family members.

Good post. I like that theory. It reminded me of this book review on evangelicals in the NYRB (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017...als-came-from/) describing revivalist preachers, their movements and then making a parallel with Trump's reception:

Trump gets away with it among Trumpkins because he never ever admits being wrong. He boldly reasserts the original lie or says it's the accuser being dishonest. That's not genius strategy. He's just a narcissist and a liar.

Circa 2007

This is from 1990. This is exactly the same guy who is now the president. He hasn't changed one bit.

I'm mostly with you. Note I'm not arguing it's genius or particularly clever in any way. Simply that he has no incentive to change. His style is effective enough to con enough people to get what he wants. He doesn't need to genuflect to the sensibilities of normal people who want him to make sense. Too much work, not enough return on investment. Easier/better/lazier to simply spout gibberish and collect the applause from Trumpkins.

This is all to say I don't buy the arguments about dementia when simpler, more prosaic explanations exist: Trump sounds stupid because he is stupid, and his audience is dumber still, so he has an incentive to continue babbling, and no one requires more of him. It's like asking why Transformers 5 got made, why are Michael Bay movies so loud and dumb, didn't everyone seen Moonlight, that was beautiful, why aren't all movies Moonlight? ...and then assuming Michael Bay must have dementia. I mean maybe, but the simpler explanation is that Michael Bay likes making ****ty movies with explosions because it's easy and he doesn't have to do anything and you can still make billions doing it.

Is 2007 supposed to be a long time ago?

I don't know if Michael Bay is dumb, has dementia, or is just making movies for children to watch.

I gotta work and will let this thread go. Not to be cruel, but I hope Trump has such rapidly advancing dementia that he has to quickly not be president.

lol, Republicans wouldn't vote to remove a quivering blob so long as said blob was a Republican.

I grew up in the NYC suburbs in the 80's and 90's. I remember once every couple of months, Trump would be the #1 story in NYC because of something stupid he did. A lawsuit, a divorce, a bankruptcy, etc. He was considered a buffoon. It probably never made national news but man in NYC, he was mocked and ridiculed routinely. People would literally say "How can a guy with this much money possibly be this stupid?"

Sometimes I think Trump just shocked and awed everyone else in the country because they had never seen something like this. But for anyone growing up in the NYC area, we all saw through his bombast. 79% of New York City voted for Clinton in the election. That's insane when you consider Trump has been a New Yorker his entire life.

He is incoherent if you listen to his words but not if you pay attention to his attitude, tone, and emotions. That's what Trump fans are listening to. Not what he says, but how he says it.

LOL JFC.

"Japan. Japan is beating the crap out of us. Speaking of Japan, they live like kings in Kuwait."

Come on. I posted another video from 1990. Should I find one from 1980? How far back do I need to go? He has always been dumb, narcissistic, gauche, petty, and mendacious. Sure, aging hasn't diminished those characteristics, but his fundamental personality has changed very little.

It takes a certain chutzpah making a career becoming famous by going to the media and telling them they are being dishonest in order to become more famous.

He has always been like that but it's much worse now. He's more famous and powerful than ever and that feeds into his psychosis.

This poster had a ****ing LABORIOUSLY PREPARED timeline of Hillary's email crimes and claimed to support Bernie.

I feel so helpless. Trump is forcing normalization on us knowing that we can't do **** as long as the GOP is protecting him. It's obvious we're going down a very bad path (Trump supporters think things are basically remaining constant right now) but the real problem seems to be the rate of acceleration. If he wanted to be relentless at exploiting all the legal loopholes and breaking all the ethics rules, how far can he go without consequences? Cause you know he's gonna keep going.

I'm still confused by the responses yesterday on the subject of impeachment, and what it would take to make this stop already. It doesn't make sense that Trump can do whatever he wants and there's no way to remove him without a 2/3 Congress vote. There have to be lots of exceptions:

Murder
Mental health
Torture/war crimes
Rape

To name a few, no? I refuse to believe that if he decided to start George Carlin's Monday night crucifixions on prime time TV, law enforcement would need to wait for a 2/3 vote before stopping it. Or...
Should be obvious. But GOP could just claim they don't buy it (even though they aren't qualified to decide) if they wanted to stick to their guns unconditionally.

Can someone clarify? Unparalyze us.

Reagan was an idiot in 1968. That doesn't mean he didn't have Alzheimer's in 1986.

And supposedly there's a correlation between things like not reading and early Alzheimer's as well.