Genuinely unusual cognitive disarray

A guy who has experience of trying to deal with Trump tells us what that’s like.

When [I was] meeting with Donald Trump in 2018 about a life-or-death homeland security issue in the Oval Office – an impending Category 5 hurricane, the strongest there is – he did something jarring. He started talking about helicopters. Specifically, he wanted to share with us his frustration that helicopters are always breaking down because, in his words, “there are too many parts!” Mid-briefing. We were asking him to issue an urgent warning to Americans to evacuate the affected area, and he went off on a tangent about helicopters. And then another about the election. We finally got him back on track, but the clock was ticking.

I filed it away as a data point. But I now think it was an eye-opening preview.

Of someone who can’t even find the track in broad daylight.

I watched Trump operate at close range from a perch inside the Department of Homeland Security. He spent more time with our department than any other. What I observed was a man of genuinely unusual cognitive disarray. He was disorganised in ways that were structurally alarming for a commander-in-chief. For instance, he appeared to think in sudden associations, not sequences, and he absorbed information through flattery and visual repetition rather than briefings. We were literally told to stop sending him documents to read that were longer than a page in length, and, where possible, to provide information in pictures instead of words.

Yeah. That’s an extremely startling and alarming thing to be told about a person in that particular job. That’s being told he’s mentally about 6 years old.

The machinery of government was largely adapted to these peculiarities. Fifty-page background papers were reduced to one-pager descriptions using Trump’s “winners-and-losers” lexicon to try to help him understand complex topics and to coach him through difficult decisions.

And that was then. It’s much worse now, and will continue to get worse until 1. he blows up the whole planet or 2. he is removed.

I believe Trump’s cognitive decline is self-evident. He rambles more. The tangents have grown longer and stranger: see recent riffs about Hannibal Lecter, the inexplicable detours into shark-related hypotheticals, or the moments where sentences simply stop. Speech pathologists and neurologists have noted the deterioration publicly and while I’m not qualified to diagnose it, what I can tell you is that the contrast with even five years ago is striking. The man I observed in the first term was erratic but the man I observe now is erratic without a safety net.

It’s going to be 1. isn’t it.