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Comment by mitthrowaway2

5 hours ago

Oh wow, I never truly realized it before, but his speech really used to be a lot more coherent across long sentences than it is these days.

People should be able to separate the man from his politics and look at this apolitically. I don't see how anyone can see the way his speech patterns have changed over the years and not conclude that he has had a sharp cognitive decline. It's baffling that we don't talk about it, especially after we just went through this with Biden and had the whole retrospective about how that was ignored. Now here we are doing the exact same thing again immediately.

  • Anybody who has observed somebody age over decades knows that there is a huge difference between being 70 and 80. And it’s another big decline when they approach 90.

    The democrats denied this with Biden and now the republicans are denying it with Trump.

    Maybe we should get people that are way beyond normal retirement age out of political Leadership?

    • Voters primarily vote for people that look and act like them, and retired people are a massive voting block. Chris Christie saying off-the-cuff that if young people voted in any significant numbers then he would care about what they had to say was a huge money quote. We get geriatrics because people moan about how our vote doesn't matter while not voting.

  • See, it's okay if it's the person you voted for and he's doing things you like. But when it's someone you didn't vote for and you don't like what he's doing then the cognitive decline is suddenly a huge problem.

    • I objected to Biden running in the first place because he was too old, and I very much objected to him running for re-election, and consider that my concerns were fully validated. I also think there should be a mandatory retirement age for politicians and judicial officers of 75 or less, because they're not going to be around long enough to experiences the consequences of their policy decisions. If they're still mentally acute they can contribute to public discourse via books and oratory.

      Now that that baseline is established, the idea that Trump is mentally fit to be President is absurd.

    • I understand that you're making some political statement about the voters but it has to be pointed out the mental health of a president is a problem or not a problem independently of what the voters think. Sorry for pointing out the obvious, it just seems to me that many people nowadays fall into some kind of polarization trap that hinders their understanding of the world.