President Donald Trump will grow increasingly angry and erratic in the coming weeks, particularly if Republicans suffer heavy losses in next month’s midterm elections, according to a longtime critic.
Kurt Andersen, a novelist and co-founder of Spy magazine, which relentlessly mocked Trump in the 1980s, told The Daily Beast Podcast with host Joanna Coles that the 80-year-old president’s mental state is visibly deteriorating, comparing his behavior to a phenomenon seen in some dementia patients.
“He’s obviously beyond whatever cognitive decline he had and has, and more manifest craziness, I think the kind of elderly kind of as they call it in dementia sundownerism where people who are with dementia late at late in the day like just get angry,” Andersen said.
“In his case and in old people’s case, like a kind of the sun, the sunset itself is a daily foreshadowing of you’re gonna die soon,” he added.
Andersen, who often targeted Trump for mockery in his magazine through the 1980s and 1990s, said a Republican loss of Congress would only intensify that anger.
“He will be more angry, you know, more himself, and God knows what forms that will take in terms of anger and depression,” he said.
The author also described Trump as a man who has gotten everything he ever wanted yet remains “so manifestly miserable,” which he said shapes how the president responds to political setbacks.
Andersen pointed to divisions within the GOP, including turmoil surrounding Texas Senate nominee Ken Paxton’s campaign, as a factor that could further fuel Trump’s volatility.
Still, he predicted that under pressure after the election, Trump would fall back on familiar tactics.
“He’ll say it’s rigged and he’ll do all that stuff that we know and thank goodness, you know, we’ve had some years to build a legal apparatus to that’s prepared for that,” Andersen said.
Even so, Andersen said, Trump will ultimately be blamed for Republican losses.