He's Decompensating before Our Eyes

Evening Dispatch

This is not what anybody signed up for.

I don’t know if you remember this, but one of the reasons people gave for supporting Donald Trump in 2016 was that “he tells it like it is.” That was alarming for two reasons: one, he almost always lies; two, the few things he is honest about are his hatreds—of people of color, of immigrants, of women.

Over time, we learned that, as far as the corporate media were concerned, all of that—the mendacity and the bigotry—was baked in. Eventually, the list of egregious things we were supposed to ignore grew to include Donald’s two impeachments, the big lie, an attempted insurrection against his own government, the theft of highly sensitive government documents, 93 indictments in four jurisdictions, being found liable for sexual assault and defamation, being found guilty of 34 felonies, his cruelty, his viciousness, his fascism and stochastic terrorism . . . I could go on, but you get the idea.

It seemed unthinkable, but it was as if Donald had committed so many horrors, that instead of their being additive (which is generally how these things work), each new transgression replaced the one that came before, therefore, somehow canceling it out.

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Do you remember when the media was deeply concerned about the cognitive wellness of Joe Biden? It was almost an obsession. Every time President Biden opened his mouth, there was some analysis of his age-related cognitive decline. Based on Biden's debate performance in June there was reason for concern (although in the days after the debate it seemed pretty clear that the “problem” was that Joe Biden was an eighty-one-year-old man with a bad cold who had a terrible night).

The relentless coverage of every single one of Biden’s missteps overshadowed the fact that his opponent spent the entire debate lying, engaging in delusional conspiracy theories, and promoting his fascist agenda. Now that Biden has dropped out of the race, Donald Trump is the oldest person in American history ever to run for the presidency. So of course, the corporate media has brought all of its experience and expertise to bear on the issue of Donald Trump's potential age-related cognitive decline, right?

No, of course not. When it comes to Donald and his emotional, psychological, and/or neurological unfitness, there is nothing to see here. It seems not to matter that he can't pronounce words or stay on topic, or that he engages in a worrisome degree of tangential thinking. All of these are potential signs of cognitive impairment, but none of it engages the sustained attention of the media. Why not? How bad does it need to be before they sit up and take notice?

Last night, I thought we finally had an answer to that question. Donald held one of his faux-Town Halls during which he answers pre-selected questions from a vetted audience. The event was held in what looked like a storage locker with no air-conditioning. About half-way through, somebody in the audience fainted. Shortly after that, another person needed medical attention. At that point, Donald decided he didn’t want to answer questions anymore.

“Who the hell wants to hear questions?” he asked, a fascinating thing to say at a town hall, the whole point of which is for the candidate to answer people’s questions.

But Donald can do whatever he wants, right? Nothing sticks, nothing matters. And then things took a turn. Donald asked for music and for the next 39 minutes, which is a very long time, he stood on the stage, listened to an odd mix of songs, sometimes swinging his body around, sometimes standing stock still, on occasion mouthing the lyrics, and mostly seeming lost, broken, and beyond reach.

Here's just 40 seconds of the event. While you watch, just imagine what 39 minutes of that must have been like:

This should be a five-alarm fire across all media organizations, and yet the AP headline read, “Trump turned his town hall into an impromptu concert.” The write-up in The New York Times was, if possible, worse:

And so Mr. Trump, a political candidate known for improvisational departures, made a detour. Rather than try to restart the political program, he seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned—and, it appeared, for himself—to just listen to music instead.

Mr. Trump had his staff fire up his playlist, standing on the stage for about half an hour and swaying to songs as the crowd slowly dwindled.

In what universe would it be reasonable to conclude that watching Donald Trump decompensate while listening to canned music would be “more enjoyable” for anybody? And if by firing up his playlist, the Times means pressing play and then watching as the Republican candidate for the presidency stood there without seeming to know where he was, why was there, or who he was with—mission accomplished.

This is serious, serious stuff and yet the media are, once again, falling down on the job. If nothing else matters—the criminality, the cruelty, the misogyny, the racism, the viciousness, the freaking fascism—than surely the steep cognitive decline of a man who is running to be the leader of the free world should matter.

In order to underscore how perilous this moment is, media outlets should just play the uncut video from that event beginning to end so the American people can see who the Republican Party thinks is a viable candidate for the most important job on the planet.

And then they need to have a panel of experts, including psychologists, psychiatrists, neuropsychologists, neurologists, gerontologists, and anybody else who could give us insight into what is happening with Donald Trump—emotionally, psychologically, and neurologically.

This isn't a joke; this isn't one more thing we can sweep under the rug. This issue, which is infinitely more important and serious than the fucking emails, needs to be on the front page of every newspaper every day from now until the election. And it won’t be.