Joe Biden was hounded for his age-related gaffes, but Trump’s increasingly strange behavior has largely been ignored

 

 

Trump’s Public Comments Raise Renewed Concerns Over Mental Fitness in Second Term

Washington, D.C. – August 2025
President Donald Trump is once again facing scrutiny over his mental sharpness following a string of unusual public remarks and factual misstatements during recent official appearances.

 

In July, while on an overseas visit to the UK, Trump abruptly changed the subject during a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, launching into an unprompted speech about wind turbines. “We will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery,” he said, later adding that wind turbines were disturbing whales and killing birds—claims that lack scientific backing.

 

The moment was one of several recent examples prompting renewed public and expert concern about Trump’s cognitive condition during his second term. At age 79, the president has frequently veered off-topic during speeches, meetings, and interviews. Earlier this summer, he spent over ten minutes at a cabinet meeting discussing furniture and light fixtures, rather than the scheduled topics of global conflict and domestic crises.

 

Mental health professionals observing his behavior have cited signs such as sudden digressions, confusion over facts, and a pattern of confabulation—where real memories are combined with fictional details. Dr. Harry Segal, a lecturer in psychology and psychiatry at Cornell and Weill Cornell Medicine, said Trump often changes topics “without self-regulation or a coherent narrative.”

 

In another widely noted moment last month, Trump claimed that his late uncle, Dr. John Trump, had taught domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski at MIT. The claim is not possible—Kaczynski never attended MIT, and John Trump died in 1985, more than a decade before Kaczynski’s identity was publicly revealed.

 

Trump also made unverified claims about U.S. foreign aid. Speaking about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, he said the United States had provided $60 million in aid “two weeks ago,” and suggested no other countries had contributed. However, no official record of such a recent U.S. donation exists, while both the UK and the European Union have provided tens of millions in aid to Gaza over the past two months.

 

Despite the growing list of public missteps, the White House has pushed back on the criticism. Spokesperson Liz Huston called concerns about Trump’s mental acuity “politically motivated attacks,” and described the president as “mentally sharp and working tirelessly for the American people.”

 

Supporters have also defended Trump. Congressman Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician, described Trump as “the healthiest and most mentally fit president this country has ever had.” Another physician, Dr. Sean Barbabella, issued a statement in April affirming that Trump “exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health.”

 

Still, mental health experts outside the administration have expressed growing concern. Dr. Richard A. Friedman, a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell, said Trump's public behavior—including rambling speech, off-topic answers, and repetition—would typically warrant a full neuropsychiatric assessment.

 

Psychologist Dr. John Gartner, who has studied Trump’s public communication for years, said the president's verbal and cognitive decline is marked compared to footage from past decades. “He used to speak in organized, structured thoughts. Now he often struggles to complete a single thought coherently.”

 

The issue has drawn comparisons to former President Joe Biden, whose own public missteps during the 2024 campaign led to widespread speculation about his fitness for office and contributed to his decision not to seek re-election.

As the Trump administration continues into its second year of this term, questions about the president’s cognitive state are becoming harder to ignore. Lawmakers and commentators from both parties are now openly discussing the implications for leadership, policy, and national security.

 

 

  Adapted by ASEAN Now from Analysis by Adam Cabbatt - The Guardian  2025-08-04

 

 

The story about his uncle and the Unabomber appears to be an example of a neurological phenomenon known as confabulation. 

 

According to the article below from Medical News Today: 

 

Quote

People who experience confabulation may create memories of events that have never happened.

[...]

Confabulation is a sign of the early stages of dementia. Confabulation is significantly more common in dementia than in other illnesses that can affect a person’s cognitive functions, such as Alzheimer’s disease and brain tumors or injuries.

 

Understanding confabulation in dementia

 

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/confabulation-dementia

Unhinged and going off the rails

22 minutes ago, CharlieH said:

Trump’s Public Comments Raise Renewed Concerns Over Mental Fitness in Second Term

RIGGED!

Not only his mental acuity, his compulsive lying without any clear reason is a personality disorder. 

Interesting. I can't emember any article on AN bringing Biden's mental aquity into question when he was POTUS and when questions were being raised. Maybe I'm incorrect and there were articles. Indeed it sure seems to me that there are very few positive aricles about Trump rather there's a plethora of anti-Trump articles such as this one from The Guardian with CNN, BBC and other legacy media outlets contributing to many other articles.

Not only doubts about his mental acuity but his compulsive lying is a personality disorder. 

"You may be right

I may be crazy

Oh, but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for

Turn out the light

Don't try to save me

You may be wrong for all i know

But you may be right

Now think of all the years you tried to find someone to satisfy you

I may be as crazy as you say

If I'm crazy then it's true

That it's all because of you

And you wouldn't want me any other way",

   Go Trump!

Nixon and Henry the K only feigned madness in foreign policy.

You're the real deal.

Make America Great Again.

This is cute, in real life it's a head shaking event

He hires all the best people.  They all want to work for him.  Ask anyone.  Everyone says so.

 

Posts with derogatory nicknames, intentional misspellings, or personal remarks will be removed. Spell names correctly for all sides of the debate.

Trump is a fake and the arse licking Muppets that surround him are too cowardly to stand up to him, Trump is a laughing stock around the world, speaks like a 3 year old girl

 

10 minutes ago, Andycoops said:

Trump is a fake and the arse licking Muppets that surround him are too cowardly to stand up to him, Trump is a laughing stock around the world, speaks like a 3 year old girl

 

Well, all the time he spent 'socialising' with young girls on Lolita Island, and his running of teen beauty pageants, may have affected the way he speaks.

His call into CNBC on Tuesday was an illustration that his mental decline is precipitous.

 

He said immigrants were "naturally, naturally" built for manual labor.

 

And that people in the "inner city" were too lazy to work on the farms.

 

 

On 8/4/2025 at 3:59 PM, CharlieH said:

Despite the growing list of public missteps, the White House has pushed back on the criticism. Spokesperson Liz Huston called concerns about Trump’s mental acuity “politically motivated attacks,” and described the president as “mentally sharp and working tirelessly for the American people.”

 

Well said.

 

These politically motivated attacks are disgraceful, especially as they come from the same people claiming Biden was "sharp as a tack" as he stumbled/tripped across various stages, calling out dead people in a slurred voice.

 

On 8/4/2025 at 10:41 AM, kwonitoy said:

This is cute, in real life it's a head shaking event

 

Yeah, and now let's see you run the country.

And let's see how many people will be mocking you. 

 

5 minutes ago, JonnyF said:

These politically motivated attacks are disgraceful, especially as they come from the same people claiming Biden was "sharp as a tack" as he stumbled/tripped across various stages, calling out dead people in a slurred voice.

 

 

 

We'll see your "dead people" and raise it to dead, fictional people.

 

 

 

Trump has gone off the rails. Senility is setting in, big time. 

Some quotes - "It must be because of M.I.T., my relationship with M.I.T., very smart. I say, 'What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you're in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater, and there's a shark that's approximately 10 yards over there?" Trump said. "By the way, lot of shark attacks lately. Did you notice that?"

 

During a meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, abruptly switched from discussing immigration to saying this: “The other thing I say to Europe: we’ve – we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery.”

Trump proceeded to speak, non-stop and unprompted, for two minutes about windmills, claiming without evidence that they drive whales “loco” and that wind energy “kills the birds” (the proportion of birds killed by turbines is tiny compared with the number killed by domestic cats and from flying into power lines).

 

The abrupt changes in conversation are an example of Trump “digressing without thinking – he’ll just switch topics without self-regulation, without having a coherent narrative”, said Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in the psychology department at Cornell University and in the psychiatry department at Weill Cornell Medicine. Segal said another characteristic of Trump’s questionable mental acuity is confabulation. “It’s where he takes an idea or something that’s happened and he adds to it things that have not happened.”

 

A high-profile example came in mid-July, when Trump claimed his uncle, the late professor John Trump, had taught Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, at MIT.

Trump recalled: “I said: ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John? Dr John Trump.’ I said: ‘What kind of a student?’ And then he said: ‘Seriously, good.’ He said: ‘He’d correct – he’d go around correcting everybody.’ But it didn’t work out too well for him.”

 

The problem is: that cannot possibly be true. First, Trump’s uncle died in 1985, and Kaczynski was only publicly identified as the Unabomber in 1996. Second, Kaczynski did not study at MIT. "The story makes no sense whatsoever, but it’s told in a very warm, reflective way, as if he’s remembering it,” Segal said. “This level of thinking really has been deteriorating.”

 

I got rid of – just one I got rid of the other night, you buy a house, they have a faucet in the house, Joe, and the faucet the water doesn’t come out. They have a restrictor. You can’t – in areas where you have so much water they don’t know what to do with it. Uh, you have a shower head the shower doesn’t uh, the shower doesn’t, you think it’s not working. It is working. The water’s dripping out and that’s no good for me. I like this hair lace and [sic] – I like that hair nice and wet. Takes you – you have to stand in the shower for 20 minutes before you get the soap out of your hair. And I put a, a thing – and it sounds funny but it’s really not. It’s horrible. And uh, when you wash your hands, you turn on the faucet, no water comes out. You’re washing whole – water barely comes out it’s ridi – this was done by crazy people. And I wor – wrote it all off and got it approved in Congress so that they can’t just change it.”

 

“Any fair-minded mental-health expert would be very worried about Donald Trump’s performance,” Richard A Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College.

He added: “If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness.”

 

If you have the stomach for it, find a video of Trump talking to reporters in the first six months of his first term and compare with his speech and demeanor now.

 

The contrast is stark.

He is going full gaslight: grocery prices are shooting up, and he is telling them otherwise, and is coming up with a new wave of "official numbers."  

Faith-based governance, but not by the usual use of that word.

 

They have overlooked his inability with maths.He regularly makes rediculous statements like "Price reductions of 1,000/1,400/1,500 percent" the goods have no market value once they are discounted by 100%. Insanity at its best.

On 8/4/2025 at 6:09 AM, dinsdale said:

Interesting. I can't emember any article on AN bringing Biden's mental aquity into question when he was POTUS and when questions were being raised. Maybe I'm incorrect and there were articles. Indeed it sure seems to me that there are very few positive aricles about Trump rather there's a plethora of anti-Trump articles such as this one from The Guardian with CNN, BBC and other legacy media outlets contributing to many other articles.

Well, this forum is akin to CNN and MSNBC.... don't report it if it doesn't align to their agenda 🤨. The objective is to appease to the majority of the members 😉

Seen from abroad, by a non-American, Trump seems to be doing a good job.

He right about wind turbines killing wildlife and wrecking the scenery.

 

They are an abomination and totally unnecessary...... but a vital prop for the geoengineering climate change shamsters.

Raise doubts?   There has been no doubt in any rational thinking person's mind since his first term in office.  It makes perfect sense that he was elected again.

" The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled. "

~Aldous Huxley

 

On 8/4/2025 at 5:09 PM, dinsdale said:

Interesting. I can't emember any article on AN bringing Biden's mental aquity into question when he was POTUS and when questions were being raised.

 

Clearly you suffer from the same mental disorder as Trump, because there were plenty of articles about it in the world news forum.

50 minutes ago, Paul Henry said:

They have overlooked his inability with maths.He regularly makes rediculous statements like "Price reductions of 1,000/1,400/1,500 percent" the goods have no market value once they are discounted by 100%. Insanity at its best.

Pharmaceutical prices have come down by 1500%!

 

I like that kind of discount, I mean that's definitely within the range of my kind of discounting. I will buy nearly anything for 1500% off. 

 

He is a genius at math too. 

18 minutes ago, howlee101 said:

don't report it if it doesn't align to their agenda

 

More like, don't read it if it doesn't align with your agenda.

19 minutes ago, Thingamabob said:

Seen from abroad, by a non-American, Trump seems to be doing a good job.

well. I am an American and I have friends and family still living in the US in many different states.  None of them are happy with his performance and all complain about how the cost of everything they want including food continues to rise instead of getting cheaper.  Housing is a joke now, with hardly anyone able to afford buying a new house while rents' costs are climbing rapidly.  Once the tarrifs get going, no one will be able to afford a new vehicle either.  Just passing on the complaints from those I trust still in the states.

trump invokes "the late, great Davey Crockett" in an attempt to insult Rep Jasmine Crockett.

 

"I won the election in a landslide," Trump said. "And obviously that’s only, you know, we’re only six months in, but my poll numbers are better now, much better than during the election. Part of that is because the Democrat Party is self-destructing. I mean, when you have low IQ, people like Crockett, I wonder if she’s any relation to the late, great Davy Crockett, who is a great, great, a great gentleman. I wonder if she’s got any relationship to Davy Crockett, the great old Davy Crockett." 

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/president-trump-hits-back-jasmine-crockett-calls-her-a-very-low-iq-person