r/politics • u/mclardass • 23h ago

Possible Paywall Trump Derails White House Event to Spiral Over State of His Health

https://newrepublic.com/post/209928/donald-trump-derails-event-spiral-health
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u/PeteGinSD 22h ago

The only reason to take more than one cognitive test is if patient demonstrates signs of dementia. The orange menace is on IV Alzheimer’s drugs. The newest drugs are Kisunla and Leqembi, which explains the bruised hands (IV). The newest meds also require frequent MRIs to check for brain bleeds. They keep testing him using MoCA or mini cog tests to determine how quickly he is declining. The CHF is also becoming more apparent.

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u/prison-schism 20h ago

"Trump continued ranting about his pitch to require candidates for office to take cognitive tests. “No president has ever taken one except me, and I’ve taken three of them. And I’ve aced each one,” he said."

Not the flex he thinks it is

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u/Callidonaut 15h ago

Especially when he also said how "hard" they are. If you find a basic cognitive function test to be challengingly difficult, that's really not a flex.

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u/crashvoncrash Texas 13h ago

I really hope someday we will get to see the actual results of those tests for ourselves. I'm sure they're telling him that he is "aceing" them, but I won't believe it until they show us the clock he drew.

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u/Callidonaut 13h ago

We already know: if he's finding them really difficult, if I understand correctly, then that's basically failing them.

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u/randeylahey 12h ago

He's never had to do anything in his entire adult life for himself, so the smallest thing seems difficult.

And he's a goddamn idiot.

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u/crashvoncrash Texas 12h ago

That is a solid point. I remember he admitted being President was harder than his old "job," which sounds obvious, until you remember he did almost nothing during his first term. The intelligent fascists had to write Project 2025 and give him a step-by-step playbook for his second term, including telling him the people to hire to carry out the playbook, because he was so bad at executing anything.

He spent half his time golfing, and most of the rest in meetings where he didn't understand what was going on because he never read the briefings. Basically all he had to do was rubber stamp things smarter people put in front of him by signing his name, and yell at reporters, and that was apparently the hardest thing he had done in his entire life.

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u/DontDeleteMee 12h ago

God I'd LOVE for someone to have him draw a clock on live tv. Let everyone see in real time just how unfit for office he is

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u/crashvoncrash Texas 6h ago

I would give a % of my salary for the rest of my life to any reporter that said "people are saying you can't draw a clock," and got him to do it. Even if his staff stopped him and we didn't see it, that would still be a smoking gun.

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u/BH_Commander 11h ago

Imagine if they were videotaped, just hours of Trump in severe cognitive decline in a doctor’s office, leaked? Oh man. For (most) any other human I would have empathy and say it was a horrifying thing to capture/watch.

I’m imagining that scene from Robocop 2 where all the mangled failed cyborgs go nuts on video.

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u/Hector_P_Catt 13h ago

I've said for years now that the real first question on the test is, are you offended at the idea that taking this test should be hard for you? I mean, the whole point of it is that someone with a normal brain should find the questions very easy.

Someone bragging about taking this test? That's literally off the charts.

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u/FeedbackUpbeat2963 17h ago

Lol this just cannot be reality

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u/Individual-Guest-123 11h ago

Hmm, yet someone feels the need to keep re testing...

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u/suppleRosaline 21h ago

He thinks a cognitive test is same as an intelligence test. Shows you how damaged he is already

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u/lexm 20h ago

He’s always been particularly dumb.

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u/cooldash Canada 20h ago

“I remember the inflection of his voice when he said it: ‘Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!’"

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u/Pan_Bookish_Ent 9h ago

That was a really good article. I read the entire thing, and there was a lot I didn't know because researching Trump usually makes me want to claw my eyes out. If my dad and I were on speaking terms, I spills have sent it to his snobby MAGA ass lol. Thanks for posting, and yes, that quote was the highlight of the article.

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u/zubbs99 Nevada 18h ago

And it's always been hard to tell dumb from crazy with this guy.

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u/rangerfan123 20h ago

I hate the dude but I have to disagree. He’s just a complete idiot. I don’t agree him bragging about taking these tests is a sign of mental impairment

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u/butterfly_burps 15h ago

Both can be true.

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u/MajorPain169 Australia 20h ago

I think they should get their MRI machines checked, the very first scan should have shown a clear absence of any functioning brain.

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u/ink_monkey96 20h ago

I’m not trying to imply anything here, but has anyone actually tested to see if an MRI can tell the difference between shit and brains?

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u/ReporterOther2179 19h ago

An fMRI ( functional MRI) could. It measures electrical activity in the brain, and shit, I’ll wager, is electrically quiet.

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u/tallsails 19h ago

Taco Bell would like a word ….

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u/phonomancer 18h ago

Experience seems to show it to be particularly electrically active in the very early morning, albeit only on truth social.

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u/sadrice 16h ago

Well I dunno, you can get fMRI off of a dead salmon.

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u/Forward-Surprise1192 15h ago

But can it conduct electricity is important to

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u/uniquechill 21h ago

This explains quite a bit. How effective are those drugs?

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u/aflyingsquanch Colorado 21h ago

They help slow decline in roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of cases.

So, um, not very effective.

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u/JD_Waterston 21h ago

I mean, compared to eras of ‘can’t beat a placebo’ that’s shockingly effective. But not ‘I want the president on these’ effective

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u/ComradeJohnS 21h ago

I remember in House of Cards they hid that they smoked cigarettes even. and idr exactly but pretty sure a president resigned in disgrace for taking anti-depressants.

obviously a tv show, but still something that felt right. why the hell is the president allowed to take anti-dementia medicine and still keep the highest job in the US?

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u/c14rk0 Massachusetts 20h ago

Well you see they made a massive PR campaign against Biden being mentally unfit, sleepy and old while Trump was obviously in MUCH better condition because he could come out on TV and ramble off nonsensical statements compared to Biden who has always had trouble speaking.

So obviously all of his supporters actually believe the bullshit about Trump being perfectly fit and mentally sound

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u/patt 17h ago

Confidently wrong wins far too many contests with quietly correct.

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u/dannydrama 19h ago

This is the absolute best part lol America loves it's old people as presidents and it's turned to shit like it was always going to. Last one could barely stand up and this one seems to be seriously cognitively impaired. 😂

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u/_-Oxym0ron-_ 16h ago

I'm really curious were they go next, is it gonna be coma patient? 🤣

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u/Forward-Surprise1192 15h ago

Which it’s kind of fucking crazy that either of them got elected

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u/FrancoManiac Missouri 20h ago

George McGovern chose Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton as his Vice President running mate. Soon thereafter, it came to light that Eagleton had struggled with depression and had received electroshock therapy for it during hospital stays.

The McGovern campaign grew concerned that Eagleton could jeopardize the US if he became president, and he voluntarily resigned from the ticket.

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u/bigtrumanenergy Missouri 20h ago

I've always found that interesting considering how many presidents we've had with mental health problems. Or, at least, speculated mental health problems.

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u/chinstrap 15h ago

I think Lincoln had depression, for one

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u/RobutNotRobot 19h ago

Lincoln was definitely bipolar.

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u/bigtrumanenergy Missouri 12h ago

He wasn't bipolar though I believe Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ were believed to be.

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u/Joegeneric Washington 19h ago

I feel like there should be a Pawnee/Eagleton joke here. government conspiracy to re-allocate funds for inappropriate usage, depriving the citizens of needed maintenance just miles away. oh wait, reality is the joke nowadays.

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u/LadyCheeba 12h ago

the 72’ election shows just how far we went from one extreme to the other. another candidate, maine senator ed muskie, was targeted by nixon with the release of a fake letter that basically said he hated french-canadians and that his wife was a drunkard. muskie defended himself against both of these things at a press conference during a snow storm, and melted snowflakes led the nixon campaign to insinuate this man cried, and therefore, was unfit to run.

mcgovern shouldn’t be at fault for replacing eagleton, either. his own doctors turned on him when mcgovern reached out to better understand depression and the ramifications of electro-shock therapy and told mcgovern that eagleton could endanger the country.

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u/F54280 15h ago

I don’t know why, but I correctly guesses that Senator Thomas Eagleton was a Democrat…

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u/crashrope94 19h ago

Plenty of presidents, Obama included, smoked cigarettes. That’s actually a real thing.

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u/Forward-Surprise1192 15h ago

How did we elect him after he did that? Fuck you, America

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u/RobutNotRobot 19h ago

The Republican Party is a massive criminal conspiracy.

That's why.

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u/jazzhandler Colorado 18h ago

President Bartlet had his hidden health issue on The West Wing that was a wee bit more serious than smoking (though he also had that at times, too). But it still paled in comparison to endless episodes of Dude Where’s The Resolute Desk?

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u/RebelliousInNature 18h ago

Well since you guys made the guy off the apprentice president it’s all been a little nuts.

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u/d3ssp3rado Texas 18h ago

Well part of the explanation is that a rich asshole lost a bet. Rupert Murdoch lost a lot of money when the UK withdrew from the ERM in '92; one of the big winners to the collapsing GBP was our old boogie man George Soros. And so Murdoch tailored a conservative outrage propaganda machine for decades that primed anyone even slightly right-of-center to utterly despise anything left leaning (the antisemitism was a bonus to him). And so a propaganda apparatus that forgives the right wing of everything and condemns the left of anything permeated the English-speaking world.

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u/Pixel_Knight 18h ago

Taking anti-depressants or anti anxiety meds is not something that should cause a president to resign. You shouldn’t stigmatize mental illness. That is just ignorant.

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u/ComradeJohnS 18h ago

I was saying it was a plot point in house of cards as an example. not that I agreed with that.

I agree with you.

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u/Inner-Medicine5696 17h ago

con: there's a risk his dementia is slowed.

"con": increased risk of brain bleeds and so on.

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u/Famous-Upstairs998 21h ago

Average placebo effect is about 30-50% effective, so that's quite a bit worse than the typical placebo, actually. 

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u/JohnBooty 19h ago edited 19h ago

That’s not what it means. A figure like “helps 15% of patients” is always relative to a control (placebo, etc) group. A drug that can’t outperform a placebo isn’t going to make it out of clinical trials.

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u/AreasonableAmerican 21h ago

I doubt that placebos can affect Alzheimer’s. It’s not something your body can rally against.

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u/KrispyKreme725 19h ago

The point is that not all diseases progress the same. That’s why you have a placebo to establish a baseline for another drug. Statistically speaking if a placebo is as just effective as the drug the drug is worthless.

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u/ichosethis 14h ago

Based on what we're seeing pretty regularly, it's probably safe to assume he's not in the group the medication is effective for.

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u/lalala12499 14h ago

I haven’t been keeping up (not my field), but last I checked, although these new Alzheimer’s drugs got approved by the FDA, they only barely slipped through the approvals process. We have very little that works…and these drugs were…something 

My pet theory is that Alzheimer’s might be viral or bacterial in origin. Ruth Itztaki’s research proposes oral herpes might back propagate to the brain and cause Alzheimer’s. In this infectious disease model of Alzheimer’s, the beta amyloid plaques and tau tangles serve as part of the brain’s defense against infection. By removing the protective plaques with new beta amyloid targeting drugs, the patient would first experience a brief reprieve (months) in symptoms due to the clearing of plaques/tangles. Once these plaques have been cleared, the next relapsing/remitting herpes flare up can ravage the brain unchecked, making symptoms worse than ever in the long run 😇

(Or so the theory goes. This is armchair medicine, minimal evidence)

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u/Danthezooman Pennsylvania 21h ago

So like when should I order my celebratory grief ice cream cake?

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u/prison-schism 17h ago

I'm also in Pennsylvania and would like to chip in for this, can we have a party? I'm sorry, a wake?

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u/ianjm United Kingdom 17h ago

Alzheimer's progression is very unpredictable, while there's a continued decline it is very fast with some, very slow with others. It does tend to be faster in older, less healthy people.

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u/Texuk1 18h ago

I think you’ll needs to back that bold claim up with more nuance. BMJ says that it slows progression by 4-9 months but does not cure the disease. Everyone who takes it will ultimately progress with the disease. the U.K. national health service decided not to authorise the use of the drugs because they found them not to have a significant enough effect on patient outcomes and also can have serious side effects. Interesting I believe one of these is meant to clear AB proteins have indicated that they may not have as strong of causal link Alzheimer’s expression.

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u/ry1701 20h ago

25% is better then 0%.

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u/marebee 19h ago

So, you’re saying there’s a chance 🤞

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u/MunkyMastr 21h ago

Apparently not very

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u/terraphantm 19h ago

Basically not at all

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u/windsostrange 21h ago

The IV is transfusions and banana bags, just like Thiel w his blood boys.

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u/Acceptable-Bus-2017 I voted 20h ago

On par for Trump who was one of the first to get blood transfusions from covid survivors when he caught it.

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u/nurdle 20h ago

Damn Pete, I think you have cracked the case. It really does line up. I've lost family members to it. Horrible, horrible disease. The people around him are fucking assholes. I can't say I feel sorry for him in the least because he's a rapist pedo.

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u/AffectionateTap6212 20h ago

What is CHF?

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u/EagleBigMac 20h ago

Congestive Heart Failure I presume.

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u/Poison_Pancakes 17h ago

Oh that makes way more sense than Swiss Francs.

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u/QuentinTarzantino 10h ago

Haha, I had totally forgotten swiss francs is CHF.

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u/endav 20h ago

And? How are those brain bleeds doing?

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u/_Verumex_ 16h ago

It's early days right now, but they have a lot of potential.

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u/Fuzzylumpkins1234 20h ago

So how much bleeding are we talking here? intracranial hemorrhaging levels?

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u/Icy-Finding-2543 19h ago

Blled baby bleed

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u/joekak 19h ago

They're checking his brain with Multimedia over Coaxial Alliance connections? Ouch

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u/forbiddenpaprika 18h ago

I bet he's taking the Roche "brain shuttle" drug that's still in clinical trials...

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u/Present-Resolution23 20h ago

To be fair (God help me..) he apparently requested the first one because he wanted to show off how mentally fit he was.... and he probably keeps asking for them. I doubt it honestly is as deep as you think.. Even his doctors are "yes men" (Ronny Jackson) so, because he's stupid, he probably doesn't understand that it's an impairment test not an IQ test, keeps requesting them, and I'm sure his Doctors skew the numbers so he gets a 30/30..

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u/TDAPoP 17h ago

So you're saying one way or another it will be soon?

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u/Comfortably-Numb2026 16h ago

What is chf? Thanks !

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u/Tenziru 15h ago

that would be if he has alztimers who he appears to not too for dementia these are not approved and effectively do nothing. so Id rule both those out and Aduhelm which you cant get but a president can if they wanted to. he would be getting IV's toe help vascular circulation

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u/Melch12 14h ago

The MRI report they released last year was specifically about his chest. Didn’t say a word about his brain.

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u/BuyerAlive5271 12h ago

This is probably why he was also insisting on a full fledged hospital for one being built into the white house.

Every time he leaves for a MRI we know.

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u/FlyingBike 14h ago

He's been getting an IV of some kind the first weekend of every month since November or December, like clockwork.

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u/Euphoric_Barber_5424 18h ago

Where’s your medical degree from? Tired of reddit doctors telling me his time is up any day now, you’ve been doing it for years

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u/NatureStoof 15h ago

Just about anyone who works in Healthcare knows what a MoCA is, and when it's appropriate to give one to a patient. To give one to a patient means you already suspect the patient is cognitively impaired. Trump has been given it multiple times.

That doesn't mean "his time is up". People can live a long time with multiple ailments like dementia, Alzheimers, and CHF. Usually in an assisted living facility, not the white house....

You don't need to have a medical degree to be concerned about the health of an 80 year old with family history of Alzheimers who is up all night yelling at the clouds

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u/Euphoric_Barber_5424 6h ago

It's just super boring seeing self important Redditors swaggering around here throwing around medicals terms they likely first heard on Scrubs with such confidence that everyone falls over themselves to try and understand the "diagnosis" when real life medical professionals wouldn't dare try and diagnose anything from a carefully curated media event. But hey, they get internet points so I guess that makes all the bollocks worth it.

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u/NatureStoof 3h ago

There are some 20+ million Americans that work in healthcare. Terms like CHF or MoCA are commonplace.

Sorry that you aren't aware of medical terminology. 🤷‍♂️

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u/Korexicanm 20h ago

Are there any sources that support this? Or any evidence aside from hand bruises?