A progressive political newsletter argued this weekend that the press is close to breaking a long-standing taboo and saying out loud that President Donald Trump may have dementia.
In a piece headlined “The taboo against naming Trump’s dementia is fading,” John Stoehr, who writes The Editorial Board newsletter, argued that Trump’s political weakness is emboldening commentators to speak plainly about his mental state.
Stoehr pointed to a run of grandiose claims as evidence that Trump believes his own fantasies. He cited the president’s insistence that “there’s never been anybody” more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, his boast that he “settled eight wars,” and his claim that he stopped “the total obliteration of the world” by going to war with Iran.
“I can do whatever I want,” Trump told reporters last week. Stoehr argued the president now expects others to go along with what he called Trump’s “delusions of grandeur.”
Stoehr argued that questions about Trump’s cognitive health have mostly been confined to his critics. In his view, the boldest mainstream remark came from MS NOW contributor Mike Barnicle, who called Trump a “damaged, delusional old man,” stopping short of the word dementia. Others have also raised alarms about Trump’s mental sharpness and a fading presence on the trail.
Stoehr called the strongest sign of change a recent dispatch by New York Times reporter Katie Rogers, who wrote that Trump’s rallies now “feel like the first stops of a farewell tour,” with empty seats at half-empty venues and the president’s words drifting away from “actual, logical sense.”
He also highlighted MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell, who he said may have gone furthest of all.
“If the president of the United States is insane, that is the biggest news of the day or any day,” O’Donnell said Thursday.
Stoehr tied the shift to Trump’s political slide, citing a new Pew poll that put the president’s approval at 30%. As Trump loses clout, he argued, critics will feel freer to break the silence.
“Normalized insanity won’t last much longer,” he wrote.