Trump And His Supporters Also Have Memory Problems
President Biden’s health has been a topic of public discussion and concern. Will it impact his ability to win reelection and lead for another four years?
At 82 years old, he is the oldest person to assume the presidency in U.S. history, but some people have raised concerns about Biden’s mental fitness, citing occasional gaffes and misstatements. However, there is no consensus among medical professionals on whether these are indicative of cognitive decline.
A recent NBC News poll found that 76 percent of voters have major or moderate concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health. Biden’s health is likely to be a campaign issue in the 2024 presidential election, especially if he decides to run for a second term. His opponents may try to use his age and health as a liability, while his supporters will likely emphasize his resilience and experience.
One report described Biden’s memory as “hazy,” “fuzzy,” “faulty,” “poor” and having “significant limitations.” It said that Biden could not recall events in his own life, including when his son Beau died.
“When I was asked that question, I thought that it wasn’t any of their damn business,” he said. “Every Memorial Day we hold a service remembering him. I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”
The 258-page transcript of the interviews conducted by special counsel Robert Hur on Oct. 8 and 9 paints a more nuanced portrait of the president than was described in Hur’s report last month. Hur is set to testify before Congress on Tuesday about that investigation.
“It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” the report said.
The special counsel did not release the transcript of the interviews with Biden, so some context is unclear. In response to reporters’ questions about his memory, Biden disputed the report’s statements.
“My memory is fine,” he said. I’m the most qualified person in this country to be president.”
The release of the report overlapped with recent Biden speeches in which he mistakenly claimed to talk with European leaders — France’s Francois Mitterrand and Germany’s Helmut Kohl — who had, in fact, not held office since the 1990s and had died several years ago. As Biden defended himself, he misspoke about the Israel-Hamas War. He referred to Egypt’s leader Abdel Fattah El-Sissi as “the president of Mexico.”
During questioning after the press conference, reporters gave the president a pass on the mistake, but some media outlets are now pointing to this incident as further evidence that the President is suffering from cognitive decline. They argue that such gaffes are becoming more frequent and that they raise concerns about his ability to lead the country. Others have defended the President, arguing that he simply misspoke and that there is no need to draw any conclusions about his mental health.
The human brain has trouble pulling names out of stuffed memory banks on cue. But when are those and other verbal stumbles normal, and when are they a sign of cognitive trouble? Even House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., recently confused Iran with Israel.
“When I see somebody make a flub on TV, I’m really not all that concerned,” said well-known aging researcher S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago. “What science will tell you about flubs is that they’re perfectly normal, and they are exacerbated by stress.”
It is important to note that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that President Biden is suffering from neurodegenerative disease. The incident in question is just one example of a public figure making a mistake. It is possible that the President was simply tired, stressed, or distracted when he made the mistake. It is also possible that he was simply thinking about the president of Egypt when he was asked about the president of Mexico.
“If you’re too senile to stand trial, then you’re too senile to be president. Joe Biden is unfit to lead this nation,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for Make America Great Again Inc., the main super PAC backing Trump’s candidacy.
In an August poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs, 77 percent of U.S. adults said Biden is too old for four more years (89 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Democrats say that Biden’s age is a problem).
“The Special Counsel’s opinions about President Biden’s health couldn’t be more wrong on the facts,” said Vice President Kamala Harris. “These conclusions were politically motivated. The comments were gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate.”
Former President Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner, has boasted of his own vast memory but has also at times said in legal proceedings that he does not recall certain events. He also has had a series of his own mental missteps. The 77-year-old Trump faces questions about recent memory lapses. In a January speech, Trump confused former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, his opponent for the GOP nomination, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Pelosi was the House speaker during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by Trump’s supporters who sought to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. Trump said it was Haley who led the House and that she should have done more to secure it. Trump’s critics have questioned his mental health for years. Many Americans have memory problems if they want to give the former president another chance to overthrow the constitution.
“President Biden has said that age is a fair question on voters’ minds, but if you’re worried about your kid facing gun violence while going to school, the prospect a national abortion ban, or the future of our democracy, you may think about the president’s age, but at the end of the day the choice is easy,” said Kate Berner, a former deputy communications director in the Biden White House. “Donald Trump is on the wrong side of all of those issues.”
The New York Times editorial board opined yesterday that Biden has had “less substantive, unscripted interaction with the public and the press than any other president in recent memory.” It went on to ask if President Biden is “hiding, or worse, being hidden” from the American people.
World leaders are not immune from the perils of neurodegenerative disease. President Carter entered hospice care in February 2023 due to several health issues, including falls and recent hospitalizations. However, there has been no official announcement of a dementia diagnosis for him. However, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter was diagnosed with dementia in February 2023 and passed away last November. She was a beloved figure known for her strong advocacy for mental health awareness and caregiving support.
President Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in August 1994. He publicly announced his diagnosis on November 5, 1994. While Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis was made public in 1994, he lived for another ten years with the disease. During that time, he remained active in public life, advocating for research on Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. He also wrote a book about the disease, I Long to Return: Reflections on the Presidency and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Former President George H.W. Bush was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2012. He died in 2018 from vascular Parkinson’s disease. Barbara Bush also died in 2018.
Elsewhere in the world, Margaret Thatcher struggled with dementia for more than a decade. She died of the disease in 2013. It’s never been officially confirmed whether she had Alzheimer’s disease or another form of prion disease.
Unfortunately, age is only one of many contributing factors that can contribute to neurodegenerative disease. The spread of a deadly form of neurotoxin known as a prion is the driving force behind the global surge in neurodegenerative disease. Prions are unstoppable. They migrate, mutate and multiply. Victims become incubators and distributors. People with prion disease are infectious (all bodily fluids and cell tissue).
Prion disease has been given several names based on the region of the brain that is under attack. Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Huntington’s disease and ALS are forms of prion disease. The scientific name for prion disease istransmissible spongiform encephalopathy. The operative word is “transmissible.”
Prion disease also is killing other mammals. In deer, the disease is known as chronic wasting disease. In cattle, it’s mad cow disease. In sheep, it’s scrapie. The only difference is the species under attack. There is no such thing as a mad cow prion or a CWD prion. A deadly prion is a deadly prion. There is no reliable species barrier among most mammals, including sea mammals.
If you add all of these variations of prion disease up and look at the body count, you will see a very alarming trend and an equally alarming trend to cover up the mismanagement.
Humans are at the top of the food chain, so we are most vulnerable to the spread of prion disease. As the disease spreads in the population, prion contamination spreads exponentially. As more humans get sick and die, the sewage system and other pathways become deadlier.
Humans likely spread the disease to livestock and wildlife with the mismanagement of sewage (sewage sludge a.k.a. biosolids) and wastewater. Cattle and deer are likely giving prion disease back to humans via the food chain.
Bad policy at the U.S. EPA has contributed to the problem. Mismanagement of prion regulation at the federal level has contributed to the problem. In fact, prions went from the list of select agents to no regulation at all. As a result, the prion threat has been turned loose on an unsuspecting public—including presidents past, present and future. Even teenagers are dying from CJD today. We all are vulnerable.
Unfortunately, there are many prion pathways that must be avoided and there is an over-abundance of misinformation and disinformation about prion disease. Answers begin with the truth. To help safeguard yourself and your family, and to learn more about the prion pandemic, visit https://alzheimerdisease.tv/neuroscience-research/prion-disease-research/nobel-prize-prusiner/ and spend more time researching this site.
