'Trump is exposed': Columnist speculates who 'will deliver the final blow' to president

A columnist Wednesday described the "awkward déjà vu" in Washington, D.C. as President Donald Trump shows visible decline and the question arising: who, or what, will push him out or succeed him.

The Daily Beast's Joanna Coles, Chief Creative and Content Officer, described in a column how Trump, who has repeatedly attacked former President Joe Biden's cognitive abilities, frequently suggested that Biden was mentally unfit to serve as president, mockingly portrayed Biden as senile, referenced his age and apparent moments of confusion, has now faced the same concerns and criticism over his own mental and health capacity.

Only this time it's not quite the same.

"But here’s the real difference between Biden then and Trump now: Biden was hidden; Trump is exposed," Coles wrote. "Biden’s aides did the talking; Trump insists on ad-libbing his own decline. Biden’s true deterioration emerged during the debate when he was isolated from all the people who routinely covered for him."

Biden's team described watching the former president "diminish in real time," she said.

"They managed him like a fragile museum artifact: curated angles, limited exposure, a protective choreography the press reluctantly accepted," Coles added. "Trump offers no such choreography."

Between the physical signs — bruised hands, swollen ankles, dragging his right leg — and the verbal signs — saying the wrong words, repeating stories and grunting, it's clear Trump is slipping, she explained. And in the past, it was viewed as impolite to comment on someone's health and to avoid appearing ageist, but this hasn't been the case with Trump.

"But it’s not nasty to remark on what we see. It’s accurate. Acting presidential isn’t a feeling, it’s a function. And right now the man running the country is showing all the signs of someone flailing at a job that he believes he’s performing flawlessly," Coles wrote.

Coles compared this particular moment to a bullfight, as a picador on a horse waits for the next bull's next move before it charges, pants and circles.

"The picador has taken away the bull’s escape, its dignity, its power," Coles wrote. "The crowd knows. And the bull, swaying under the weight of its own failing strength, knows it, too."

Trump, like the bull, she argued, will have to face what comes next.

"Agitated and angry, the bull may still have some fight left in him," Coles wrote. "But the outcome is already a certainty. The only question left is which matador–Marjorie Taylor Greene? Mitch McConnell? Jeffrey Epstein? JD Vance?–will deliver the final blow."