Trump's health appears to be declining rapidly

It wasn't that long ago that I noted not just that Donald Trump is beginning to show clear signs of dementia, but that his symptoms were becoming obvious enough that his aides and handlers might begin to limit his public appearances in order to hide what could be a rapid decline from here on in.

That would of course presume that there was anyone in the now-always-raging criminal's orbit who could convince him to shun a television camera or two, which was always a dodgy bet. Donald Trump cannot exist without television; he is it and it is he. But I also think I failed to account for another complication: It is not clear whether there is anyone, among the collected bunglefucks who manage the presidency on his foggy behalf, who could tell the difference between a hallucinating dementia patient and the usual Trump.

In any event, the question was always "is there a point at which Donald Trump's obvious unfitness for office can no longer be covered up, finally culminating in an on-camera, globally broadcast, and publicly devastating video of a sitting United States president coming undone for all the world to see?"

Well, we have our answer. There's no hiding this.

Oh, but there was so much more.

By now you've probably heard all the particulars. Trump raged about a United Nations escalator not working (it appears one of his staffers accidentally hit the emergency stop button); about his teleprompter not working (his staff was in charge of that); about all sorts of things, like "sharia law" in London(???), and of course his own alleged brilliance.

And you could have heard a pin drop, during most of it, as the world's top diplomats looked at him like he'd grown three heads. It was obvious to all that the United States "president" was losing his marbles in realtime, and by the end of the day the bizarre spectacle was being singled out as one of the worst and most embarrassing moments in U.N. history.

So congratulations goes out to all involved here; the rest of the world now has no remaining uncertainty as to whether the United States president is completely out of his mind. On the plus side, he appears to still be aware of where he is, on any given day. But he's lost all situational filters; no matter what he is doing or where he is doing it, every speech is an ad-libbed festival of personal grievances and invented conspiracies.

We saw it before the U.N. speech as well. The trio of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump, and "Dr. Oz" were wheeled into one of the few White House rooms with books in it to announce that in just a few short months of trying, they had allegedly outdone all the world's health professionals by discovering both the cause of autism and a potential cure for it.

I want to focus less on the supposed revolutionary discovery that, according to three known fabulists and grifters, a certain pain medication might be linked to a certain medical diagnosis despite multiple scientific studies determining that not to be true. I'd like to instead wonder why, if we are to take these claims as the supposed breakthrough that Bear Corpse, Snake Oil, and Captain Financial Fraud claim they are, Donald wandered into the presser to make an announcement without ever once inquiring how to say the word the announcement would revolve around.

There was no prep? No glancing at the paper beforehand? No conversation at all? About the word around which the whole press conference would revolve, and which has been in common household usage for decades now?

No. For whatever reason, the sitting president cannot do such preparation. He can't stay on topic. He can't not invent strange alternate realities that are based on scattered things he heard, all turned into hallucinations and fever dreams. Amish people don't get autism! There is no autism in Cuba, because they can't afford pain medicines! And, of course, the ... Vaccine Vat?

And the repetition. Dear god, the repetition. It is not that his vocabulary is shrinking as he ages; his entire world is narrowing into a smaller and smaller set of hallucinations and catch phrases. Which is, I repeat, one of the most commonplace symptoms of dementia.

It's not that Trump doesn't know what percentages mean anymore. It's that he doesn't know and can't remember that he's been widely laughed at, on news and comedy shows, on the past occasions he's said it.

I do not know what the final straw will be, the public appearance that even the complicit toadies heading the major media companies will not be able to cover as anything but our "president" having a visible on-camera breakdown. But this? This can't possibly hold. The man appears to be confusing public and private messaging systems at this point, which is probably one of the worst medical conditions a supposed commander in chief could have.

There does seem to be a break in the fever, the last few weeks. The military campaign against uncharged alleged "drug smugglers" is so brazenly illegal and murderous that few in the press can stomach covering for it. Trump picking a fight with late night host Jimmy Kimmel and losing makes him look weak and petty. The ostentatious pageantry of the Charlie Kirk "memorial," with fireworks and merchandize and a lineup of top White House officials, may have been intended to catapult a Trump-friendly influencer into martyrdom, but instead it came off as creepy state-managed faux grief.

Mostly, though, the consequences of Trump's bumbling actions are beginning to be made plain in grocery stores, and in farm country, and in video of skull-masked ICE agents roughing up immigrants and citizens alike. There is no good news, there is no plausible case that good news is around the next corner, and there seems to be nothing Trump's top officials can't botch catastrophically. The man is profoundly unpopular, his policies are unpopular, and his fellow Republicans are caught between continuing to express the usual fawning adoration—chaining their own fates to his own—and piping up with the occasional mumble that no, actually, it's probably bad if the government is in charge of policing the tone of late night shows or of declaring any random boat carrying an ice box a "terrorist" vessel.

The more disasters Trump's collected team of idiots create, the more impetus there is for corporate leaders, media executives, and even the must gutless Republicans to notice that Donald Trump is not right in the head. It might take Trump dropping his pants in the middle of a speech; it might be a news conference in which Trump suddenly can't remember where he is or what he's supposed to be doing.

Those things do happen, as dementia begins to worsen. It is frightening to witness—and it happens to people who can feign far, far more coherence during the rest of their day than Trump is currently able to.