Biden’s fitness for a second term

You can keep repeating the same laundry list of gaffes, mistakes, mis-steps etc for Biden and ignoring when Trump does the same and worse. The reality that most of us see is that Trump is the one with real issues and a potential mental decline. No one who meets with Biden with the exception of Hur who is a political hack has mentioned anything about Biden’s memory or inability to do his job.

A psychologist is seriously questioning Trump’s mental state, with good reason. As he points out, the mistakes the 2 men make are not the same. Trump is substituting non words for words, engaging in tangential speech and not just mixing up names, actually he’s forgetting and combining people. Also consider their baselines. If you look at where Trump was years ago and compare it to now, he’s obviously slipping beyond the normal aging process. Trump used to be articulate and polished. In comparison, President Biden has always made mistakes, gaffes etc and he suffers from a speech impediment.




www.salon.com/2024/02/23/dr-john-gartner-on-a-tale-of-two-brains-bidens-brain-is-aging-brain-is-dementing/

Dr. John Gartner on a tale of two brains: "Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing"
"This is a fundamental breakdown in the ability to use language," the renowned mental health expert says of Trump

The claim that President Biden is old and therefore so diminished mentally and physically that he is incapable of being an effective leader has taken on a life of its own. In many ways, this narrative is immune to the facts and evidence and may be a deciding factor in the outcome of the 2024 election and the future of the United States.

Dr. John Gartner is a psychologist and former professor at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Gartner was a contributor to the 2017 bestseller "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President."

In this conversation, Gartner argues that it is actually Donald Trump and not President Biden who is showing diminished mental acuity and dangerous behavior related to aging. Gartner explains that Donald Trump’s escalating dangerousness is connected to what he believes is a diseased mind that will only get worse. Gartner warns that given Trump’s dangerous personality and emotional state, (Gartner describes this as “hypomanic” behavior) he is almost certainly plotting revenge and how to make his “enemies” suffer as revenge for finally being held accountable by the courts and the rule of law. At the end of this conversation, Gartner explains how even on his worst day as an older person, President Biden is a far superior leader and decision-maker (and human being) than Donald Trump.

There is also this focus on Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing.

"Phonemic paraphasias" —the substitution of non-words for words that sound similar—are not normally seen until a patient enters the moderate to severe stages of Alzheimer’s.

Some examples of Trump’s non-words: Beneficiaries becomes “benefishes.” Renovations become “renoversh.” Pivotal became “pivobal." Obama became “obamna.” Missiles became “mishiz.” Christmas became “Crissus.” Bipartisan became “bipars.”

This is a fundamental breakdown in the ability to use language. If you were talking to your father on the phone and he did this you would think he is having a stroke. There is no healthy older person who speaks that way.

Trump also engages in what we call "tangential speech." He just becomes incomprehensible when he engages in free association word salad speech that is all over the place. Again, that's a sign of real brain damage, not being old, not being slow, not losing a step not being, but of severe cognitive deterioration.

Biden has been excoriated for forgetting names, which can be a normal part of aging. But Trump isn’t just forgetting names, he’s forgetting and combining people. Trump believes Nikki Haley is Nancy Pelosi. He has said repeatedly that Obama is still president. He said his father was born in Germany when that was his grandfather.

There is also a person's baseline. This is an essential tool for evaluating a person's mental decline. If you look at Trump's interviews and speeches from the 1980s for example, he may have always been a bit of a jerk, but he was articulate and polished. Now if you look at Trump there is great deterioration. By comparison, Biden has never been the most articulate person; he always had a stutter. He always made gaffes. But Biden has a good heart and good judgment. Over the decades we have not seen much evidence of deterioration in Biden's speaking.

Trump is what we would clinically describe as "hypomanic." Trump is a man who is sending out messages on what used to be Twitter and also on his Truth Social platform at three in the morning, sometimes dozens of them in a row. A hypomanic personality has certain strengths and weaknesses. But a lot of it is like a vector of force that depends on where you direct it. Trump has directed his energy in purely destructive and hateful ways. What appears to be endless reserves of energy feeds the incorrect impression that somehow Trump is stronger because he has the vitality of someone who is in a crazed state, who's running amok. There's energy in that apparent crazy behavior. But in the end that is not the type of person who we want as a leader. Such a person will not keep us safe. Trump and people who act like him are not going to have good judgment.

Even if he was demented, I would rather have Biden than Trump as President of the United States. Dementia brings out the worst in people's character. They become 10 times worse. If Biden really were to mentally decline — and I'm not saying he has or will or is — but he's basically a benign person with good judgment. Biden cares about his fellow human beings. Biden is patriotic, and he actually believes in defending the Constitution and the United States of America. So even if Biden were to become diminished in his cognitive abilities, he's still not going to do something evil or crazy. He just might need more help. By comparison, Donald Trump unleashed would be like Satan unbound.

www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/us/politics/biden-seth-meyers.html

President Biden has come up with a new defense against claims that he is too old to run for another term: At least he knows who his wife is — as opposed to “the other guy.”

As he expands his efforts to reassure voters that he is fit for another four years, Mr. Biden took a turn on the talk show circuit, using an appearance on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” on NBC to poke his challenger, former President Donald J. Trump, on his own struggles with memory.

In a playful but pointed interview aired early Tuesday morning, Mr. Meyers sought to help the president address the age issue, which polls show is an important drawback in the minds of most voters. Mr. Meyers jokingly told the president that he had obtained classified information indicating that “you are currently 81 years old.”

Mr. Biden went along with the joke. “Who the hell told you that?” he asked. “That’s classified!”

He then went on to jab Mr. Trump, who is 77, over a video in which he seems to call his wife, Melania Trump, by another name. “You got to take a look at the other guy,” Mr. Biden said. “He’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name.”

Turning more serious, Mr. Biden added that the contest is not about how old the candidates are. “It’s about how old your ideas are,” he said. “Look, this is a guy who wants to take us back. He wants to take us back on Roe v. Wade. He wants to take us back on a whole range of issues that are — 50, 60 years, they’ve been solid American positions.”

The president has been on the defensive about his memory in recent weeks, particularly since a special counsel, in a report on Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents, explained that one reason he would not charge Mr. Biden is because he would come across to a jury as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” During his interview with the special counsel, the report said, Mr. Biden could not remember key dates of his vice presidency or the year his son Beau died. Mr. Biden’s defenders assailed the special counsel for mentioning that.

Mr. Trump has had plenty of moments of confusion in recent weeks as well. Among other things, he has mixed up his Republican opponent Nikki Haley with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, claimed to have beaten Barack Obama in 2016 rather than Hillary Clinton and warned that the country is on the verge of World War II.

The moment Mr. Biden was referring to came during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland over the weekend when Mr. Trump was praising Mrs. Trump and then, as the audience applauded, said, “Oh, look at that, Mercedes — that’s pretty good.”
Mr. Meyers played that clip before Mr. Biden came out on the show, mocking Mr. Trump for seeming to have forgotten Mrs. Trump’s name. But Mr. Trump was addressing Mercedes Schlapp, a former White House adviser whose husband, Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, hosts the conference, according to the former president’s spokesman, Steven Cheung. “The clips were taken out of context by disingenuous people,” Mr. Cheung said.

Still, Mr. Trump has in the past misspelled Melania’s name on Twitter as “Melanie.” And during a deposition in the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, Mr. Trump mistakenly identified a picture of Ms. Carroll as Marla Maples, his second wife. A jury found that Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll in the 1990s, and a separate jury ordered him to pay $83.3 million for defaming her.

Mr. Biden joined Mr. Meyers to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the late-night show, a decade after appearing on the program’s debut episode in 2014 when he was vice president. It was Mr. Biden’s fourth appearance on a late-night talk show since becoming president. He was a guest of Jimmy Fallon in 2021, of Jimmy Kimmel in 2022 and on “The Daily Show” in 2023.

The audience was an important one for Mr. Biden, who relied on strong support among younger voters to defeat Mr. Trump in 2020 and needs them again despite surveys showing disenchantment among that generation. But he slipped when asked about his 2024 agenda. “The 2020 agenda is to finish the job,” he said.

Mr. Meyers asked the president about the “Dark Brandon” meme that his younger aides have promoted online, a laser-eyed version of the president intended to make him seem cool and hip. Asked if he enjoys the meme, Mr. Biden quipped, “No, I resent the hell out of it,” and then put on Ray-Ban sunglasses.

When Mr. Meyers noted that many on the political right have embraced a bizarre conspiracy theory that he and Taylor Swift “are working in cahoots,” Mr. Biden playfully snapped: “Where are you getting this information? It’s classified. That’s classified information.”

“But,” he quickly added, “I will tell you she did endorse me in 2020.”

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/confessions-presidential-cheat-sheet-writer/677573/

I Wrote George W. Bush’s Cheat Sheets. Here’s What I Learned.
Even the most youthful commanders in chief use them.
By David Frum

Axios recently reported that President Joe Biden carries cheat sheets with him into meetings with supporters and donors. Some of these supporters have expressed alarm that a president would do such a thing. Perhaps these cards—aide-mémoire, after all—are a sign of age and frailty?

From 2001 to 2002, I had the job of writing speeches for President George W. Bush. Bush was 54 years old when I started working for him—almost 10 years younger than I am now. He was a president of extraordinary physical vigor. He delighted in mountain biking down the plunging slopes of Catoctin Mountain at Camp David. When he did middle-distance runs, he’d be disappointed if his speed slowed much below seven minutes a mile. He lifted weights. He chopped brush. And when he spoke to groups at White House events, he relied on note cards.

The life of a presidential speechwriter may seem glamorous from a distance: selecting the words that could sway the destiny of the nation, even the world. But the unglamorous truth is that about two-thirds of my time was spent preparing such cards for the president’s meetings, both public and private, with constituents and supporters.

David Frum: The enduring lessons of the ‘axis of evil’ speech

President Bush had—and has—phenomenal recall of names and faces. Contrary to some negative reports, he had a deep mastery of policy detail. But like everybody in a highly demanding job, sometimes stress and exhaustion overpowered his active mind. I remember one White House meeting early on in the administration in which Bush discussed his hopes for good economic results from his plan for a tax cut. He talked about the benefits of lowering the top tax rate to … and then he blanked.

This, from a man who could easily name every county judge in Texas.

So the president took to using note cards. The notes for Bush were printed on large cardboard cards in 14-point Arial font—he was not trying to hide his reliance on them; there was no way he could.

On the first card, we would describe the group he was meeting with. For the members of the National Pork Producers Council, this day at the White House would be an experience they would never forget; for the president, it was one of as many as 18 such meetings in a week. After the pork council might come the American Medical Association, then the Persian Gulf ambassadors, then major donors to the Republican National Committee, then a delegation of Great Lakes mayors, then the Teamsters union. You might imagine that you’d never mix them up if you had the job of speaking to them. You’d be wrong.

On the second card, we’d list the names of the event’s attendees, each spelled out phonetically. Calling the president of the Indiana Bar Association “Elaine” when her name is “Eileen” might seem the pettiest of small mistakes, but that little error might cost the president her support, and the support of all her family and friends—which could possibly cost the reelection campaign a crucial margin of victory. How many hours did our small team spend double-checking, then triple-checking, the pronunciation of the names of spouses and children? Many, many.

On the third card, we’d list relevant facts and figures. You may happen to carry in your head the electrical capacity of the New Jersey power grid or the names of the ships in the U.S.’s Mediterranean battle group or a list of the children whom Thomas Jefferson fathered with Sally Hemings. But all of those facts? With one set of them required to be summoned at 3 p.m., the next at 3:30, the third at 4? While also negotiating with the leaders of the House and the Senate, and preparing for an urgent phone dialogue with the president of Brazil?

The fourth card would offer a selection of jokes and quips. Presidential humor should be mildly amusing but not laugh-out-loud funny. Laughter is typically the human mind’s mechanism for resolving discomfort; the more acute the discomfort, the louder the laughter. Consider the way that President Donald Trump destroying a 7-year-old’s faith in Santa Claus was excruciating-funny. Presidential humor should soothe, not shock. Kimmel, not Chappelle.

The fifth card would be the key page: the talking points. What was the message we were driving home? Believe it or not, presidents are not equally interested in every measure that lands on their desk. The new highway bill might be very important to the fortunes of the president’s party in Congress, but it might not seem the uppermost priority compared with advice from NASA that a giant meteor would soon pass perilously close to Earth.

So, for the cheat sheet, we’d itemize how many new bridges the bill would support, how many new interchanges in which key states—all to support a president whose attention might well be preoccupied with some other matter entirely.

Card No. 6 was to me the most interesting: options for making news if the president wanted to make news in that place, that day. As the saying goes, you make news by attacking an enemy, surprising a friend, or announcing a new program. We’d pile those options one atop another. Four times out of five, the president would choose to ignore them entirely.

President Barack Obama preferred a teleprompter to cards, if he was having the sort of meeting where one could be used. His critics liked to mock this—as if Obama, of all people, couldn’t speak coherently and fluently unprompted. But if a misplaced word from you could knock 20 percent off the S&P 500 within minutes, wouldn’t you want a cheat sheet or a teleprompter yourself?

I once had an idea for a movie scene about the work of the presidency. From the point of view of an aide, you’d see the president backstage, behind a curtain, speaking urgently into a mobile phone. Then the curtain would part. The president would say “Hold on,” pass the phone to someone else in his entourage, and step out beyond the curtain. From backstage, you’d hear snatches of a speech to a group or an association. Applause. Then the president would step behind the curtain again, retrieve the phone, and resume his urgent conversation.

Being the president is a tough job. It’s the center of everything. It comes with a huge staff for a reason. Winging it is not a virtue.

Yeah, your 140 number doesn't stand. You can take off those numbers, who are probably not "red"where 16 voted not enough to affect his ability to lead and 40 who don't care. So you're down to 84 probably red AND blue peas. I'm sure not all 84 are on the right. 

And do you seriously think you are going to change someone's mind with all your hate spewing when we're fighting for democracy??? Just like our grandfathers who fought the Nazis abroad we're fighting them on our turf now and will not be swayed. I know I want to live in a country that's decent and run by competent people vs a dictatorship where rights are being ripped away every day. 

You're leaving out important context again.  All of those posts were in response to actual Nazis at a CPAC conference and the white Christian nationalist, fascist agenda of Project 2025.  Really should not be hard to condemn that.  Instead, you chose to deflect, insult all of us and leave out important context, proving our point.

She’s pulling your plonker now surely😁

Not supporting any of your exaggerated claims. But I understand why you won't answer my questions.

He's really grasping at straws here

Well sign me up as one with diminished capacity. And my husband, and my children and all the people I saw at the ice cream shop yesterday afternoon.  God these people are really stretching here.

Posting these here because they are responses to racist remarks made by Trump. Although one pea is in denial, I think the rest of us are aware of his racist and xenophobic behavior and comments.










BREAKING: White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre absolutely torches Donald Trump for his "divisive and repugnant" remarks in which he said that his criminal indictments have made him popular with Black Americans.

"Just being very candid here, it’s repugnant, and it’s divisive to traffic in racist stereotypes," said Jean-Pierre at a briefing. "That’s what we have seen and that affects all Americans, right? You’re tearing up all Americans by doing this. It is, again, divisive and repugnant, and it’s coming from obviously a former president of the United States."

"And in any context, it is profane to compare the long, painful history … of abuse and discrimination suffered by Black Americans … to something that is totally different than self-serving purposes. That’s what we saw from the former president," she went on.

Trump made the offensive remarks at an event for Black conservatives in South Carolina—

"I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing," he said. "And a lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing, but possibly, maybe, there’s something there."

Absolutely disgusting. Bravo to Karine Jean-Pierre for calling out this racist rhetoric — which is unfortunately in perfect keeping with the bigot that we know Donald Trump to be.



www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2024/02/26/press-gaggle-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-en-route-queens-ny/

Q Karine, is there a White House response to the former President’s comments on Friday that his indictments appeal to Black voters because he’s been discriminated against, as Black Americans have been?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: So, as you know, I’m going to be really careful. He’s a candidate as well, and he was speaking at a political event, and it’s an election — 2024 — so I need to be really mindful. And then, I think we have to sit down.

So, speaking separately, it is — it is a repugnant and dis- — and divisive — it is repugnant and dis- — divisive to traffic in racist stereotypes that have the re- — that have the effect of — of tearing — tearing all Americans down. And in any context, it is profa- — profane to compare the long, painful history of — of abuse and discrimination suffered by Black Americans to something totally different for self-serving purposes.

President Joe Biden has been always very clear on this, that we must give hate no safe harbor. Instead, we need to bring Americans together around our shared values about the rights and — and dignity of everyone.

That’s what the country needs to hear right now: a unity for the sake of all Americans — to unify in the sake of all Americans, not division for the sake of one person.