Tom Scocca: If you paid attention to Trump's side of the debate, he had the same underlying problem Biden did, where over and over he would start a sentence and realize he couldn't say or remember the words that would come next, but where Biden stalled out, Trump just switched to blurting something unrelated

If you paid attention to Trump's side of the debate, he had the same underlying problem Biden did, where over and over he would start a sentence and realize he couldn't say or remember the words that would come next, but where Biden stalled out, Trump just switched to blurting something unrelated

Donald Trump has good days and bad days but increasingly only bad days. He's lost it - he can't focus and his brains are leaking out his ears, but the press is very impressed with him because HE CAN STILL SHOUT

Trump is good at faking competence because *he has been taught how to do it* for the sake of entertainment by people who wanted to make money off of his image.

He's also a pathological liar, so he's spent his entire adult life speaking without a single concern whether what he's saying is truthful or not.

To be unfair, the press seems to largely let him lie unchallenged.

An incredibly depressing percentage of Americans cannot differentiate between 'competence' and 'confidence'. Like, they think those are the exact same things.

Better to be *loud* and wrong than just wrong

You can substitute “AI” for “Trump” in that post and it would still be true.

Yes! Narcissists are brilliant at masking, plus: www.msn.com/en-gb/health...

Trump has a "complain about immigrants" failure mode that suits him well because most everyone in TV news is a virulent racist

Constantly steer back to your core issues is actually pretty good debate strategy. Trump’s brain does it by default.

It’s absolutely shit if the moderators care, like, at all but the moderators were apparently fully content to let their questions be released harmlessly in the aether without anyone interacting with them

Was the terms of the debate. Ridiculous, but that’s what it was

The belligerent asshole parts of the brain are probably the last ones to go

Glad people are finally recognizing this.

Trump has developed coping mechanisms for his brain farts. If he catches himself being confused, he often says, "Look" and then changes the subject. Or, he'll go off teleprompter and tell some ridiculous story. His patterns are obvious.

I'm not an expert or a doctor but my maternal and paternal grandmothers and my paternal grandfather died with some degree of dementia and my mom is kind of early-mid progression with dementia or Alzheimer's. My grandmothers were incredibly old- 103 and 107- and I think theirs was akin to any kind of

geriatric organ breakdown. Occasional hallucinations, disordering of deep memory, loss of conversation and eventual a few extremely sleepy years. My grandfather was anesthesia injured and spiraled downwards over a decade into mental isolation and weird bouts of lucidity where he'd dress himself and

Go to Karl Ehmer for liverwurst when no one was looking. The last thing he said to me, straight-faced, was that he'd had four hotdogs and wasn't hungry at all when he had been refusing food on and off for weeks. He described the cookout and its attendees in detail. My mom falls into conversational

Loops. She's good a step at a time but extended conversations require a lot of questions and answers to build enough memory to go through a full story. She forgets where she is if she isn't at home. I have a neighbor who's dad died of Alzheimer's- he declined to where he needed round the clock care

For years. Like seven or eight where he was largely unresponsive. Again I'm not an expert but none of these people who have actually had dementia were like Biden was last week. My dad's 83. He's a lifelong athlete, still does 20+ mile rides on his bike, solo. Sharp-witted but where he used to lead

Wordplay, he's now likely to listen, laugh and chime in. He's still running a food pantry which involves a lot of physical and mental work and he's having to lean on volunteers more. He's liable to nap when he sits down and he goes up early and sleeps til 830 most days after a life of 6am mornings

Trump maintained gibberish momentum, which is enough for political reporters.

That’s because they don’t actually understand substance.

Glad people are finally recognizing this.

Is the argument to keep Biden in the race even if he seems to be in early stages of dementia that Trump is also in early stages of dementia?

That's senescence, not dementia

I'm certainly not a doctor, but I've been around a lot of 70 and 80 year olds. They didn't act like Biden during the debate unless they had serious cognitive issues like strokes or dementia.

You should try to widen your experience and be around more elderly people without diagnoses of dementia to get a better idea of what is normal.

Maybe you should?

Congratulations, we both acknowledge we're not doctors!

No. Hope that helps.

Thanks for answering for Tom.

No,. Numbers are ;) Also , the media are starting to admit that they did the same old trick again and that they might've exaggerated. A bit.

whats the argument for him to drop out??

That his cognitive decline doesn't allow him to lead the most powerful country in the world and that this became obvious during the debate leading to a collapse of confidence among voters, meaning he's also very unlikely to win re-election.

He's up in the polls.

???

!!! www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Biden Narrows Gap With Trump in Swing States Despite Debate Losswww.bloomberg.com The incumbent trails his GOP rival by just 2 points across key states, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult shows, even as three in 10 Democrats say he should leave the race.

would u still vote for him?

Americans seems susceptible to the car salesman archetype where projection of personality is what matters and facts are of little importance to be glossed over making the sale - the finance guy can get into those after the mark has been manipulated into committing to the purchase

I honestly believe that if Trump stopped coloring his hair, the dynamics of this discussion would change a ton. The attitudes of coverage wouldn't necessarily change, but the way the age argument is perceived by regular people would.

Yes! That turned trump into a Hydra. He'd be asked about one thing, then lose the plot and start two lies about Biden's record. In the next question, Biden felt he had to correct the past two lies, which made him sound less coherent.

There’s no question that the unhinged felon presents significant cognitive decline. But. That hasn’t harmed his support. Unfortunately, presenting weakness has harmed the support of the decent, good guy. So the question is - do we want 2016 again - and to be in the right, but lose?

Exactly. We need momentum and we're not going to get it with the current ticket. I know that nearly everyone Democrat on here will vote for Biden, but that alone will not bring a win.

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