Now that President Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race more people are questioning Donald Trump’s recent memory lapses according to a prominent academic. At 78, he’s only three years younger than Biden and we’ve seen him create words that don’t exist in the English language, and scramble his sentences well before the president began having problems.
In her Substack blog, Letters from An American, Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson explains there are signs that more attention will be focused on Trump’s apparent lapses since the focus is no longer on Biden. And since Biden dropped out, this means Trump is now the oldest presidential nominee in U.S. history. Of course, if Trump wins November’s election he’ll overtake Biden as the oldest-ever sitting U.S. president, according to Newsweek.
Trump hasn’t faced the same level of public scrutiny over his mental status that Biden was subjected to, which is sad, because this man has also made his share of gaffes.
Richardson points to recent reports from CNN that Trump said he doesn’t know who mentioned that he would consider JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as his next Treasury Secretary. Even though he did say this in a Bloomberg interview in July. There’s more than a good chance that this will lead to increased scrutiny about his cognitive abilities going forward. This makes perfect sense because he’s only going to continue to grow older.
Richardson notes:
“His lack of visibility highlights that the Republicans are now on the receiving end of the same age and coherence concerns they had used against Biden, and there might be more attention paid to Trump’s lapses now that Biden has stepped aside.”
“CNN’s Kate Sullivan noted today, for example, that ‘Trump said he’d consider Jamie Dimon for Treasury Secretary, but now says he doesn’t know who said that.’”
On Tuesday Trump denied he had considered Dimon or BlackRock CEO Larry Fink as possible Cabinet picks.
“I don’t know who said it, or where it came from, perhaps the Radical Left, but I never discussed, or thought of, Jamie Dimon or Larry Fink for Secretary of the Treasury,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
But CNN notes the claim comes directly from Trump, who told Bloomberg News in an interview published on July 16 that he has a “lot of respect” for Dimon, who, he said is “somebody that I would consider” for the position of Treasure Secretary.
Even though Biden is no longer running Trump has continued his attacks on the president’s mental and physical fitness and is now focusing his criticism on Biden’s decision to remain in office through the end of his term while simultaneously attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee.
“Does Lyin’ Kamala Harris think Joe Biden is fit to run the U.S.A. for the next six months? She must answer the question,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Now it appears Joe is delegating his Presidential Authority to unelected Washington Bureaucrats! He doesn’t even trust his Vice President. WHO IS RUNNING THE COUNTRY?”
We could have asked Trump that same question during his time as president. When he was busy running the country into the ground. When the economy lost 2.9 million jobs. The unemployment rate jumped by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3 percent. If you remember, Trump also promised to reduce the international trade deficit but didn’t see that through. Instead, the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008, increasing 40.5 percent from 2016.
That’s not all. Not even close — the number of Americans without health insurance rose by three million. And illegal immigration, which Trump rarely shuts up about, increased during his presidency. Apprehensions at the Southwest border rose 14.7 percent last year as compared to 2016.
I’ll be honest here and note that I cherry-picked those numbers, but this information comes from FactCheck.org, which assiduously researches topics. You can check those numbers out as well.
These next few months are going to be fun (note the sarcasm). Kamala Harris has enough stamina to make Trump’s head spin and he’ll be kvetching constantly and coming up with dumb nicknames for her. I hope Kamala blows him out of the water and becomes our next president. I’m going to note that if Trump wins he’ll be older than Biden is right now when he leaves office. Harris is a youthful 59, which, when you compare this with Biden and Trump, will make her seem quite young. And she’ll be able to talk coherently, unlike Trump, who is far more gaffe-prone than Biden ever was, to my way of thinking.
That would be a refreshing break.
