Donald Trump Is Mentally Unfit for Office. Here’s the Evidence
Why is the media giving a pass to a 78-year-old who keeps making delusional and unhinged remarks?
The press coverage of the president was brutal. The Washington Post said he should do some "soul searching" after a "calamitous" performance raised “legitimate questions about whether he’s up for another four years in the world’s toughest job.”
The Chicago Tribune called him “a man now struggling to maintain a line of thought and keep track of complex facts, a man who gets flustered under deadline pressure” and who is protected by aides who have “painted a picture of fictional cognitive vitality.”
The Economist described him as “befuddled and incoherent—too infirm, frankly, to cope with another four years in the world’s hardest job.”
The president, of course, was Joe Biden. In June 2024, a “befuddled and incoherent” Biden embarrassed himself in front of tens of millions of television viewers in a live presidential debate. “We beat Medicare,” he bizarrely declared, at the end of a rambling answer to a moderator’s question about the national debt. His onstage meltdown became the biggest news story in the world. The New York Times editorial board called for him to step aside from the race. So did senior members of his own party. So did I.
Almost a year later, however, I have to ask: Where are the headlines and editorials from mainstream media outlets such as the Times and the Post calling on Donald Trump to step down as president? Where is the media chatter about Trump’s seeming dementia, or the round-the-clock panels on cable news discussing the current president’s mental competence? Why do we continue to give a pass to a 78-year-old who we can all see is in cognitive decline, and who now comes across as more “befuddled and incoherent” than Biden ever did?
Don’t believe me? Consider three recent episodes from the past couple of weeks alone, in which Trump exhibited shocking signs of delusion, ignorance, and mental incompetence.