Donald Trump has long mocked his former opponent in the US presidential race, Joe Biden, because of his age. But it seems, according to a survey published Sunday October 6 by the American daily The New York Timesthat the former Republican president is also caught up by his own – 78 years old.
His sometimes disjointed remarks during his meetings, his digressions, his confused and backward-looking remarks would show a certain form of cognitive decline, whether linked to age or something else, notes the newspaper which carried out an analysis statistics of his last speeches. And if this is not the first time that his confusions have raised questions, they now reach “new levels of absurdity”, laments The Guardian.
Worrying signals compared to 2016
According to the computer analysis carried out by the New York TimesDonald Trump’s speeches during his rallies have become longer, around 82 minutes compared to 45 minutes in 2016. He uses 13% more absolute terms (like “always” and “never”) than eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of aging, writes the author of the article. He also uses 32% more negative words than positive words, compared to 21% in 2016, “which may be another indicator of cognitive change”, according to the daily, and 69% more insults than in 2016 This phenomenon would be linked to disinhibition.
Finally, he refers more and more often to the past in his speeches, sometimes with reference errors (for example, he cited Hannibal Lecter from the film “Silence of the Lip”, instead of Silence of the Lambs, The Silence of the Lambs in French.) Last sign of age noted by the New York Times : a certain incomprehension of technology, when he declares in front of his supporters that “most people have no idea what a smartphone application is”.
Incoherent speeches
These last weeks of the campaign have also been marked by very confusing stories, off-topic anecdotes about shark attacks and electric boats, or the relay of a conspiracy theory claiming that Haitian immigrants eat cats and cats. dogs (a statement that was quickly ridiculed before becoming an internet meme and song).
American news agency Associated Press noted on September 29, during a meeting of the Republican candidate in Wisconsin, that “Mr. Trump moves from one subject to another so quickly that it is sometimes difficult to understand what he means”, affirming that he made “asides about climate change, about Ms. Harris’s father, about how her beach body was better than President Joe Biden’s, and about a fly buzzing near him.”
THE New York Times further notes that Donald Trump regularly mispronounced names and places during his campaign, mentioning “Charlottestown” instead of “Charlottesville”, “Minnianapolis” instead of “Minneapolis”, or even “Leon” Musk instead of “Elon Musk”.
Donald Trump rejects all accusations
Richard A. Friedman, professor of clinical psychiatry and director of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College, also recently considered in the American journal The Atlantic that Donald Trump would have “failed” if the presidential debate, which pitted him against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris on September 10, had been a “cognitive test”. According to him, after carefully examining the debate on television, “any impartial mental health expert would be very concerned about Donald Trump’s performance”, with a speech “repetitive not only in form but in substance”.
“If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now routinely demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out cognitive illness,” he also added.
The 78-year-old candidate, who would therefore be the oldest president to take the oath of office in the event of victory (82 years old at the end of his potential mandate, one year older than Joe Biden), has always rejected these accusations, ensuring that his mental health was perfect and passed all cognitive tests. “I will let you know when I lose control, I really think I will be able to tell you,” he recently told his supporters.