'Trump appears lost, confused, and frozen on stage,' said Kamala Harris's campaign team on X after the Republican candidate's appearance in Pennsylvania
(Image credit: Illustration by Stephen Kelly / Shutterstock / Getty Images)
Questions about Joe Biden's mental acuity ultimately "forced" the 81-year-old president out of the 2024 election race. Now Democrats are now "trying to flip that script" on Donald Trump.
It's not just Democrats doing that either. Medical professionals, political commentators and even former Trump allies have increasingly been alleging cognitive decline in the former president, who at 78 would be the oldest president ever elected if he wins in November.
A Trump town hall event in Pennsylvania on Monday took a "bizarre turn", said NBC News, after two attendees had to seek help for medical issues. Instead of taking questions as scheduled, Trump instructed staff to play music and then spent 40 minutes "swaying on stage".
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"Hope he's okay," said Kamala Harris on X. The Democratic candidate's campaign team posted that "Trump appears lost, confused, and frozen on stage", stoking growing concerns that the former president is losing his grip.
What did the commentators say?
At the Pennsylvania event, Trump visibly retreated to a "comforting place in his mind, like being wrapped in a warm blanket", said political consultant Eric Schmeltzer in Newsweek. For "those of us" with family members suffering from dementia, "it was a familiar sight", he said.
"What's alarming is how the rate of Trump's bizarre speech and political decisions have been increasing," said Harry Segal, senior lecturer in psychology at Cornell University. He is now "avoiding events where he has to respond coherently and spontaneously", and has refused a second presidential debate. His "abrupt decision to play DJ is yet another sign of his accelerating cognitive decline".
Trump is "beginning to make Biden look like Oscar Wilde", said Lee Siegel in The New Statesman, but there is a "tacit prohibition against discussing Trump's obvious mental incapacity in public". There are "sound reasons" for declining to allege medical conditions in the absence of a diagnosis, but it is also simply harder to discern Trump's cognitive decline than Biden's because of Trump's documented history of eccentric and outlandish behaviour. Ultimately, "the liberal media cried wolf" about Trump's mental acuity in 2016 and now they are "afraid to ring the alarm bells".
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That's beginning to change, said The New York Times. It's just that so often has Trump seemed "confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality" that it "no longer even generates much attention".
An NYT analysis of Trump's rallies, interviews, statements and social media posts since 2015 shows a distinct change. His speeches have grown "darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past", and uses swear words 69% more often, a trend that "could reflect what experts call disinhibition".
Trump "dismisses any concerns and insists that he has passed cognitive tests", characterising his digressions as a rhetorical device he terms "the weave". His campaign team has cited Trump's "extremely busy and active campaign schedule" as evidence of his "stamina".
What next?
Trump said in August he would "gladly" publish his medical records – but with less than three weeks to go until the election, his campaign team has yet to release "any basic health data", said Axios.
More than 230 doctors and healthcare professionals have publicly called for Trump to be "transparent" with his medical status given his "advancing age". Trump is "displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity", said the letter organised by "Doctors for Harris", which is not connected to the vice-president's campaign, obtained by CBS News.
Harris shared her medical reports on Saturday in "a thinly veiled challenge to Trump to do the same", said The Independent. "It makes you wonder, why does his staff want him to hide away?" Harris said.
The Trump campaign insisted he was "in perfect and excellent health", and included links to medical reports from almost a year ago, and two about the wound to his ear after he was shot at in July.
Trump retorted on Truth Social that Harris should be the one to take a cognitive test. Her actions "have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her", he claimed.
Harriet Marsden is a senior staff writer and podcast panellist for The Week, covering world news and writing the weekly Global Digest newsletter. Before joining the site in 2023, she was a freelance journalist for seven years, working for The Guardian, The Times and The Independent among others, and regularly appearing on radio shows. In 2021, she was awarded the “journalist-at-large” fellowship by the Local Trust charity, and spent a year travelling independently to some of England’s most deprived areas to write about community activism. She has a master’s in international journalism from City University, and has also worked in Bolivia, Colombia and Spain.
