Trump has always seemed pretty stupid, but if you compare videos of him in interviews in the 1980s to his recent media appearances, the decline is shocking. It's easy to tell something is wrong with him, and now a new statistical analysis of his verbal communication style over time bolsters support for the widespread belief that Trump's brain is circling the drain.
An article in the medical news publication STAT, titled "Trump keeps losing his train of thought. Cognitive experts have theories about why," includes this telling portion of a disjointed Trump speech:
"Somebody said he [Biden] looks great in a bathing suit, right? When he was in the sand and he was having a hard time lifting his feet through the sand, because you know, sand is heavy. They figure three solid ounces per foot. But sand is a little heavy. And he's sitting in a bathing suit. Look, at 81, do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don't think Cary Grant — he was good. I don't know what happened to movie stars today," he said at a March rally in Georgia. Trump went on to talk about contemporary actors, Michael Jackson, and border policies before returning to the theme of how Biden looks on the beach.
STAT asked four experts to review and compare clips of Trump's speeches in 2017 and 2024:
Several noticed Trump's 2024 speeches included more short sentences, confused word order, and repetition, alongside extended digressions such as Trump's comments on Biden and Cary Grant, or in another speech, comments on banking abruptly giving way to Trump lamenting the cost of electric cars.
These could be attributed to a variety of possible causes, they said, some benign and others more worrisome. They include mood changes, a desire to appeal to certain audiences, natural aging, or the beginnings of a cognitive condition like Alzheimer's disease.
STAT also asked James Pennebaker, a social psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, to do a statistical analysis on 5 Trump interviews from 2015 to 2024:
Although Pennebaker said he'd want to analyze more texts before submitting his findings to an academic journal, he concluded that the texts showed significant changes in Trump's linguistic tendencies.
Since the end of Trump's presidency in 2021, Pennebaker's analysis showed a steep increase in "all-or-nothing thinking," as indicated by a roughly 60% increase in use of absolute terms like "always," "never," and "completely." This habit, Pennebaker said, can be a sign of depression, which also fits with other changes in Trump's word choices: His dialogue now has far fewer positive words than previously, and includes more references to negative emotions, especially since his return to civilian life.
Previously: Spinning out of control, Donald Trump authors an unhinged fantasy about Joe Biden
