When I mentioned Reagan in another thread, people misunderstood the reference. Others will make the same mistake with Trump. People keep thinking in terms of now. But, this really isn't about now.
How Close Did Lesley Stahl Come to Reporting Reagan Had Alzheimer’s While in Office? Very Close. This Mother Jones article is from Janunary 20, 2011, long before anyone thought that Donald Trump would run for office.
In a new memoir, his son Ron suggests that Reagan suffered from the beginning stages of this disease while he was commander in chief, pointing out that his father became “lost and bewildered” during the 1984 presidential debates with Democratic nominee Walter Mondale and that in 1986 Reagan could not remember the names of familiar landmarks.
Michael Reagan claims there is no evidence his father had developed Alzheimer’s while in office: “I saw my father on and off and I never saw anything that looked like that.” And the Ronald Reagan Library and Foundation has issued a statement noting that “this subject has been well documented over the years by both President Reagan’s personal physicians, physicians who treated him after the diagnosis, as well as those who worked closely with him daily.
That's the issue. And this seems to settle it.
In her book, Leslie Stahl noted that she “had come that close to reporting that Reagan was senile. I had every intention of telling the American people what I had observed in the Oval Office.
Because Reagan seemed to “recover”—I decided I could not go out on the White House lawn and tell the public what his behavior meant. So I never did a report."
Later, when I would ask White House officials if they had ever seen him float away like that, they’d say yes, but that, as with me, he always pulled himself together. It was confusing for everyone.
Indeed, in her book—published 14 years after she left the White House beat—Stahl noted that after Reagan had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she asked one of his chief advisers if Reagan had been senile when he was president. “Maybe there were symptoms,” this aide told her, “though I say that in hindsight. He would come to life for the cameras. He was on/off, on/off.”
Maybe others here have dealt with this. I dealt with it some when my wife was dying of congestive heart failure. She took narcotics and when the doses increased she wouldn't be lucid. And then later she would be. The person is just gone. Then they're back. I don't think you can see it without thinking about that person's mortality. I suppose it's even harder when that person is supposed to be strong and in charge.
So, this is interesting. I don't like Donald Trump and have no respect for him whatsoever. He's obviously not qualified to be president. But, could I say that he's crazy or irrational? I don't know. He has a sales background and I knew salesmen that were the same way. They would answer questions that they knew nothing about. They would speak in exaggerated terms. They were supremely self-confident and arrogant.
Trump is used to being in charge in his own company. He's used terrorizing his staff so that everyone knows that he is in charge and not to be questioned. So, now he's in way over his head and he can't understand why everyone doesn't just defer to him like he's used to. He doesn't understand why everyone isn't afraid of him and doesn't show him the supreme respect that he thinks he deserves. So, he makes threats. Remember that in his company, having Trump raise his voice would have had people hopping. He can't grasp why he now has so much authority and yet no one is doing what he wants. Keep in mind that job number one in Trump land was making Trump look good. Now that isn't working. He assumed that he understood what the problems were and how to fix them. That was probably true in a very superficial way. There's no indication that he has ever understood the full depth or complexity of the problems.
In the past Trump has told himself that his vision and leadership were enough and that his judgement was beyond reproach and of course he was very smart. And when US banks stopped lending him money because he had so many failures he told himself that they just didn't understand the markets or didn't recognize a good opportunity or maybe were just jealous of Trump's ability. There's a million ways to rationalize your failure. When he had to go to China and Russia for cash to prop up his sagging empire I'm sure he didn't admit to any ulterior motive. Naturally they just recognized what a great business man he was and how much the Trump brand was worth.
As far as I can tell, Trump is doing what he has always done, but this time he is out of his depth and there is no one to bail him out or cover up for him. Notice that the things he has tried are typical. Shuffle the staff, call in the lawyers, make threats, find someone else to blame, spin the news. These things worked for him before. He is expecting that any day now, the media will start praising him, that congress will stop fighting him, that things will get done because of his great leadership and vision, and public opinion will soar, even the people who didn't vote for him will see how lucky they are that he is president. When it doesn't work, he doubles down. It worked before; surely it will still work. He thinks he's a world class player. He doesn't grasp that these are bush league tactics in a much bigger league.
Unless you can point out something that is different from how he was in the past where the case that he is out of his mind? I'm sure Trump is tired of this process, tired of the grind, tired of being wrong, tired of failing. But, I think the last thing he's going to do is resign and admit that he is incapable of doing something that a Kenyan born pretender could do and did do for 8 years.
