Just say it: Trump has dementia

Donald Trump doesn’t believe in anything. We know this. The one exception is him. He believes he’s big and strong and tough and fully grown, and he believes the rest of us should believe that, too.

When we don’t, he gets quite upset. Instead of using his time on the campaign trail to win over voters, he uses it to moan and pule over the fact that some of us don’t see him as big and strong and tough.

He did this at least twice over the weekend.

Once was in response to a familiar attempt by the Democrats to define him and his vice presidential pick, JD Vance, as “weird.” The other was in response to something unfamiliar, but I think will soon be familiar.

In an appearance in Wisconsin, he said:

“They always have soundbites. And one of the things is JD and I are weird! JD is doing a great job. Smart. Top student. Great guy. He’s not weird and I’m not weird. We’re a lot of things. We’re not weird. But that guy is weird, don’t you think? … He is weird. I’m not weird. He’s weird.”

In Pennsylvania, he said:

“I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things and they all come back brilliantly together. And friends of mine who are, like, English professors, they say: ‘That’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen!’ But the fake news, you know what they say? ‘He rambled.’ It’s not rambling. What you do is you get off a subject, mention another little tidbit, then you get back onto the subject. And you go through this, and you do it for two hours, and you don’t even mispronounce one word.”

Let’s recap.

In Wisconsin, he said, “I’m not weird.”

In Pennsylvania, he said, "I’m not rambling."

Look, I don’t know about you, but this is familiar. I witnessed firsthand the mental decline of a close family member. Trump is showing the same signs. He’s been deteriorating since I don’t know when exactly, but after his attempted assassination, it’s become more noticeable. In these two events over the weekend – the “weird” one and the “rambling” one – we’re seeing more evidence of mental decline.

What’s evidence? The coverup.

The coverup is the tell.

He knows he’s acting weird, so he covers it up by saying he’s not weird. He knows he’s rambling, so he covers it up by saying he’s not rambling.

This is what people with dementia do.

Since his attempted assassination, in late July, every speech, campaign rally and press conference has featured exhausting moments in which Trump appears to be telling a story about something, but what that something is isn’t clear to his audience. There’s a reason for that.

We’re not the intended audience.

He is.

He’s telling himself the ultimate story – that what’s happening to him isn’t happening or if it is, no one can see it, especially his enemies.

He must prove it’s not happening. He does this by repeating himself. It’s as if the sheer volume of verbosity will make it real. It’s as if getting us to believe he’s still big and strong and tough will stop the inevitable.

In Wisconsin, he said JD Vance was “a top student.” In Pennsylvania, he said “you do it for two hours, and you don’t even mispronounce one word.” No one cares about Vance’s grades. No one cares about Trump’s elocution. The only person who does is the man reaching for any detail, no matter how small, to prove he does not have dementia.

Liberals and Democrats tend to believe that calling him “weird” dislodges him and the rest of the Republicans from the center of mainstream American culture. There is something to that, obviously. But I’m beginning to think there’s something more basic going on.

Trump knows he’s deteriorating, so being called “weird” probably hurts in ways more painful than we think. His whole life has been built on an illusion. If he loses his mind in public, that illusion will be gone.

Dementia starts slowly, but over time it moves to a phase in which a person realizes something is gravely wrong and acts to cover it up.

That’s where Trump is.

He’s habitually incoherent, but there’s just enough room in his storytelling to fool us into believing he’s jim-dandy.

Eventually, the awareness it takes to do that will be gone.