theatlantic
Tuesday’s presidential debate was, among other things, an excellent real-world test of the candidates’ cognitive fitness—and any fair-minded mental-health expert would be very worried about Donald Trump’s performance, Richard A. Friedman writes.
Friedman, a psychiatrist, has not examined either of the candidates, but he did watch the debate “with particular attention to the candidates’ vocabulary, verbal and logical coherence, and ability to adapt to new topics—all signs of a healthy brain.” Although Kamala Harris “certainly exhibited some rigidity and repetition, her speech remained within the normal realm for politicians, who have a reputation for harping on their favorite talking points,” he writes. “By contrast, Donald Trump’s expressions of those tendencies were alarming. He displayed some striking, if familiar, patterns that are commonly seen among people in cognitive decline.”
For much of the debate, Friedman notes, Trump’s train of thought was difficult, if not impossible, to follow. His answers went beyond evasiveness, into circumstantial and tangential speech. His repetitions “seemed compulsive, not strategic,” and he was repetitive in not just his form but also his content. After praising the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, for instance, “Trump spoke unprompted, at length, and without clarity about gas pipelines in the United States and Europe, an issue unlikely to connect with many voters. A few minutes later, he brought up the pipelines again.”
“If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness,” Friedman continues at the link in our bio. “Only careful medical examination can establish whether someone indeed has a diagnosable illness—simply observing Trump, or anyone else, from afar is not enough. For those who do have such diseases or conditions, several treatments and services exist to help them and their loved ones cope with their decline. But that does not mean any of them would be qualified to serve as commander in chief.”