SADLY, TRUMP'S BRAIN IS STILL FINE (BY TRUMP STANDARDS)

Are we really doing this again?

Donald Trump could have lied to Fox News in an interview released Sunday, but it's also possible he's actually suffering from memory issues associated with cognitive decline, an attorney and show host argued.

Trump told a Fox panel over the weekend that he didn't say "Lock her up" referring to his 2016 presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton. Instead, he asserted, it was others, including his supporters at his rallies, who chanted the phrase about imprisoning his political opponent that election.

The internet called Trump out on the lie immediately, sharing videos of instances in which Trump himself recited the phrase at rallies....

Dean Obeidallah, a lawyer and host of The Dean Obeidallah Show on Sirius XM, appeared on MSNBC Sunday....

The host said Trump acted "as if he has no idea that his previous comments have been recorded" ...

"Does Trump truly not remember saying that?" he asked. He added that "there is a lot of signs about him and what he says and I am not a doctor, but some cognitive issues going on there."

Please stop.

Trump is partly right: During the 2016 campaign, he regularly accused Clinton of criminal behavior, but at first it was only Trump's audiences who said, "Lock her up." So he's remembering the script, though he's conveniently forgetting the times he deviated from the script, as enumerated by CNN fact checker Daniel Dale:

During campaign rallies in 2016, Trump sometimes paused his remarks as his supporters engaged in chants of “lock her up,” giving the chants time to continue. On other occasions, he explicitly repeated those words himself.

“For what she’s done, they should lock her up,” Trump said after the crowd chanted “lock her up” at an October 2016 rally in North Carolina.

“‘Lock her up’ is right,” he said at an October 2016 rally in Pennsylvania....

“You should lock her up, I’ll tell you,” he said at a January 2020 rally in Ohio. At an October 2020 rally in Georgia, after the crowd chanted “lock them up” in relation to the Biden family, Trump said, “You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary.”

Lying about inconvenient truths to make himself look like the soul of innocence isn't a sign that Trump's brain has stopped working properly. Self-serving lies are a sign that his brain is working exactly the way it's worked all his life. When Trump lies, that's evidence that his brain doing exactly what it was built to do.

Jennifer Rubin has similar thoughts about Trump's airing of grievances at Trump Tower last week:

Trump, during his Trump Tower temper tantrum on Friday, ... went on to unfurl an unhinged, incoherent, rambling and desperate 40-minute diatribe, spewing a “gusher” of falsehoods. Rolling Stone summarized the “train wreck post-conviction speech” as “a stream-of-consciousness laundry list of grievances ranging from the trial itself, to his issues with the Jan. 6 Committee, to the border.”

She concludes:

The mainstream media’s refusal even to question Trump’s mental and emotional health after displays like this is evidence of massive journalistic malpractice.

But Trump has sounded like this since 2015 -- unhinged, overwrought, full of grievances articulated in a language full of obscure right-wing codes and allusions -- but that just makes him like every other Fox-binging septuagenarian in America. I'll acknowledge that the presentation is a little more ragged than it was eight years ago, but it's the same act, and largely the same energy. Here, watch (if you can stand it):



He's wrong about many things, and he probably knows that. He also knows that, in his world, truth is whatever you can get away with saying.

Trump will be in a state of mental decline when his speeches and monologues don't rally the base and don't infuriate liberals, when he can't remember his lies and exaggerations, when he's unable to sustain this level of vitriol because he can't remember why he's angry. He might get there someday soon, but he's not there yet.