"We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him, and we shouldn't have listened to him. And we can't let that ever happen again."The look on Biden's face during the presidential debate was one that I was very familiar with"
- Nikki Haley, February 2021
My Dad was a workaholic who usually came home from work hours after the rest of the family had finished dinner. On nights when I saw his car pull into the driveway, I would head for the front door and wait for his key to open the first lock. Then as he put it into the second one I would quietly relock the first one. He nudged the door but it would not open.
"Damn," I would hear my Dad exclaim just as he once again put the key into the deadbolt and turned it. The knob would turn but the door would not budge. I had already relocked its companion.
"CARL!"
With the jig up, I unlocked the door and opened it. My tired, exasperated father had the same look on his face that Biden had on his during last month's debate. My Dad was dealing with a teenager who craved his attention; the President was dealing with his 78-year-old predecessor who s any attention at all and who responded to the questions being asked with answers that grew further detached from reality as the night went on.
Trump and his advocates had been setting the stage for months with a narrative that Biden was cognitively impaired; a fiction made easier by his lifelong stutter and his propensity for gaffes. When Biden clearly showed that this narrative was unfounded, like during his strong State of the Union speech, Trump's forces would explain it away with the preposterous claim that Biden had used "performance-enhancing drugs." However, Biden's disastrous performance at last month's debate gave the narrative the whiff of truth it needed to allow it to spread. His departure from the race became inevitable.
Since he first descended the escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, Trump's record of lies and outlandishness has been well documented. Biden and his team should have been well-prepared for the debate. Clearly, they were not. As the lies became more and more outlandish, Biden became increasingly flustered and let himself look like the stumbling old man that Trump had portrayed him as. In the aftermath, the mainstream press ignored the insanity of Trump's debate performance and focused exclusively on Biden's responses.
With Biden now out of the race, Trump will become the oldest man to seek the presidency but is this Septuagenarian up to another four years in the White House? The evidence seems to suggest otherwise:
- Are these signs of cognitive decline?
During the 2024 campaign, Trump has confused Barack Obama with Biden on numerous occasions. This includes one speech where he not only said he was leading Obama in the current polls but he beat him in 2016 when he ran against Hilary Clinton). Four times in one speech he confused Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley, inserting his former UN ambassador into the lie that Pelosi was responsible for his mob's attack on the Capitol. He warned that Biden's actions were leading us on the path to World War 2. Trump tried to excuse his not paying attention to a statement of financial condition he had certified by claiming his focus was on China and Russia and "keeping our country safe." He was already out of office by the time he signed the document.
Also concerning are the numerous times that Trump has slurred words in the middle of his speeches without any explanation. There are examples of this happening at rallies in New Jersey, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire.
- Sleepy Don?
While Trump had a good laugh labeling Biden as "Sleepy Joe," he has been the one who has been having trouble keeping his eyes open. He fell asleep numerous times during his trial in New York as the jury heard the evidence they used to convict him of 34 felonies. Is there an underlying health reason for this inability to stay awake or was the court schedule just interfering with the ability to snort Adderall according to his normal schedule?
- Are they lies or has he lost touch with reality?
The evidence suggests that even though Trump has always lied as easily as others breathe, he at least knew what the truth was. For example, witnesses told the committee investigating the insurrection on January 6, 2021, that even as he was publicly preaching the "Big Lie" to his followers, in private he was acknowledging his humiliating loss.
One of the reasons Trump is so successful as a liar is that he is very good at operating in a grey zone, carefully choosing his words so that there is plausible deniability. For instance, in trying to take credit for killing Roe Vs. Wade while trying not to aliene the majority of the electorate who support the right to an abortion, Trump claims that "everybody wanted to get it back to the states, everybody, without exception. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, everybody wanted it back. Religious leaders." This blurs the opinion of those, like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who thought that the right to abortion services should have been based on gender equality, not the right to privacy. However, RBG and all the justices currently sitting on the court agreed during their confrimation hearings that Roe was settled law and that, under the doctrine of stare decisis, should have been respected, not sent back to the states.
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