A demanding test of cognitive health
The debate as a test of cognitive fitness:
A 90-minute debate that involves unknown questions and unanticipated rebuttals requires candidates to think on their feet. It is a much more demanding and representative test of cognitive health than a simple mental-status exam you take in a doctor’s office. Specifically, the debate serves as an evaluation of the candidates’ mental flexibility under pressure—their capacity to deal with uncertainty and the unforeseen…Donald Trump’s expressions of those tendencies were alarming. He displayed some striking, if familiar, patterns that are commonly seen among people in cognitive decline.
I don’t suppose that will come as a surprise to anyone. He’s always been stupid, but not this stupid.
He replied to a question about the attempted coup:
I have said “blood bash—bath.” It was a different term, and it was a term that related to energy, because they have destroyed our energy business. That was where bloodbath was. Also, on Charlottesville, that story has been, as you would say, debunked. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Jesse—all of these people, they covered it. If they go an extra sentence, they will see it was perfect. It was debunked in almost every newspaper. But they still bring it up, just like they bring 2025 up. They bring all of this stuff up. I ask you this: You talk about the Capitol. Why are we allowing these millions of people to come through on the southern border? How come she’s not doing anything—and I’ll tell you what I would do. And I would be very proud to do it.
Mmm yes. It leaps from fragment of a thought to fragment of a thought, making no sense of any kind.
Eleven days before the debate, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Trump responded to criticism of his rambling speech by claiming that it is part of a deliberate strategy to frustrate his opponents. “I do the weave,” he told the audience. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like—and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say: ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
No they don’t. No they don’t. He doesn’t have any English professor friends, but even if he did, they wouldn’t say that. Even if they were fans they wouldn’t say that. They would change the subject to batteries or MIT or Laura and Sean and Jesse. Also no they don’t come back brilliantly together. They remain random idiotic splinters of half-formed pseudo-thoughts.
He can vomit words for hours, but he can’t do no weave.
Trump: looks at chess board, knocks over all the pieces and flings the board into the corner. Also Trump: “I’m playing n-dimensional chess”.
It does sort of resemble the Gish Gallop, except that the Gish Gallop usually involves complete sentences, and full thoughts, just coming too rapidly for anyone to answer everything. Then they have the “gotcha” at whatever point is not answered. It’s unfortunately too effective with audiences who are impressed with glib fast-talking.
But Trump isn’t glib; he’s incoherent. He will pick up on one or two words in the question, repeat them, and then ramble to something else. The attack on the capitol wasn’t about energy. It wasn’t about anything but a cheap huckster in a bad suit and tie, wearing a bad toupee. It wasn’t a bloodbath, though several people died, and it might have been a bloodbath if the rioters could have gotten to the senators.
As for mental health tests – it only requires a bit of education to pass them. An uneducated person in perfect mental health may not be able to do serial sevens, for instance, or name the presidents of the US backwards. An educated person who is in cognitive decline (or just mentally or emotionally impaired) may be able to pass it while not being as healthy mentally as the uneducated person who just failed. I’ve taken enough of them to know.
The bloodbath thing repeated everywhere was pretty clear in context to refer to economics. It’s strategically useful to pretend otherwise much like Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment. Wouldn’t surprise me if he occasionally means literal bloodbath now.