President Donald Trump has lost a long-time talent because of his "cognitive decline," one of his family members said.
During an episode of Fast Politics, host Molly Jong-Fast spoke with Mary Trump, who is the president's niece, a psychologist, and a frequent critic. The two were talking about Trump's speech at Lindsey Graham's funeral and the White House Correspondents' Dinner when Jong-Fast asked if Trump had lost the ability to read the room.
"Did he used to be able to not say the quiet part out loud?" Jong-Fast asked.
"Donald did have the ability to read the room better," Mary Trump said. "He was good at pushing the envelope in ways and then recalibrate in real time."
As an example, Mary Trump pointed to a time when Trump was speaking at one of his MAGA rallies shortly after the COVID vaccine came out. "He was speaking positively about the vaccine, and he got booed," Mary Trump recalled. "And we never heard him say that again."
However, she sees that her uncle has lost the ability to change what he's saying to appease an audience, and she blamed it on his declining cognitive health.
"Now we're seeing that he does not have the ability to do that. What that means is he's losing impulse control," Mary Trump said. "And that's a part of his overall cognitive decline."
Jong-Fast said Trump also "really bombed" at his White House Correspondents' Dinner speech and "didn't recalibrate. He just criticized the speech and kept going."
"You've got this very old man who's clearly not doing well in every category of being human, psychologically, emotionally, cognitively, physically," Mary Trump said.