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Throughout final week’s State of the Union speech, President Trump fired a sequence of broadsides towards Donald Trump and his MAGA motion. President Biden fired off this opening salvo and the Republicans in the audience, and extra typically, by no means recovered from it.
Not since President Lincoln and the Civil Struggle have freedom and democracy been beneath assault right here at dwelling as they’re at this time. What makes our second uncommon is that freedom and democracy are beneath assault, each at dwelling and abroad, at the exact same time.
Abroad, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos all through Europe and past. If anyone on this room thinks Putin will cease at Ukraine, I guarantee you, he is not going to.
However Ukraine can cease Putin if we stand with Ukraine and supply the weapons it must defend itself. That’s all Ukraine is asking. They don’t seem to be asking for American troopers. In actual fact, there are not any American troopers at struggle in Ukraine. And I’m decided to maintain it that method. However now help for Ukraine is being blocked by those that need us to stroll away from our management on the planet. It wasn’t that way back when a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, thundered, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
A former American President truly mentioned that, bowing all the way down to a Russian chief. It’s outrageous. It’s harmful. It’s unacceptable.
In an essay here at Salon, Heather “Digby” Parton described Biden’s speech within the following method:
Everybody was anticipating a historic train wreck of a State of the Union final night time and so they bought it. But it surely wasn’t the one they thought it could be. President Joe Biden’s tackle was highly effective and dynamic and little question put lots of timorous Democrats’ worries to relaxation (not less than for a day or so.) It was Donald Trump’s extremely touted response that failed dramatically.
Biden got here out swinging and knocked the Republicans to date again on their heels that they needed to utterly abandon the picture of him they have been constructing since 2020 — a person so outdated and feeble that he cannot even feed himself — and as a substitute hilariously whimper about his loud macho aggression….Biden gave a barn burner of a speech that wasn’t boring, which is extremely uncommon for any president however particularly uncommon for a president many individuals have been satisfied has one foot within the grave.
On the finish of the State of the Union speech, President Biden made a daring transfer, touchdown one other salvo on his critics and enemies, who’re advancing the lie of a story that he’s someway “too outdated” or even perhaps “senile” and due to this fact mustn’t search a second time period in workplace.
In my profession I’ve been instructed I’m too younger and I’m too outdated.
Whether or not younger or outdated, I’ve at all times recognized what endures.
Our North Star.
The very concept of America, that we’re all created equal and need to be handled equally all through our lives.
We’ve by no means absolutely lived as much as that concept, however we’ve by no means walked away from it both.
And I gained’t stroll away from it now.
My fellow People, the difficulty going through our nation isn’t how outdated we’re, it’s how outdated our concepts are.
Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the many oldest of concepts.
However you’ll be able to’t lead America with historical concepts that solely take us again.
To steer America, the land of prospects, you want a imaginative and prescient for the way forward for what America can and must be.
Tonight you’ve heard mine.
President Biden was clearly implying that it’s truly Donald Trump, and never him, who particularly in these previous few days and weeks, has repeatedly proven that he seems to be going through critical cognitive challenges when it comes to his speech, pondering, and reminiscence.
Sounding the alarm about Trump’s rising dangerousness, Dr. John Gartner explained to me in a widely read conversation here at Salon that, “Not sufficient individuals are sounding the alarm, that based mostly on his habits, and in my view, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In actual fact, we’re seeing the alternative amongst too many within the information media, the political leaders and among the many public. There may be additionally this give attention to Biden’s gaffes or different issues which can be properly throughout the regular limits of ageing. By comparability, Trump seems to be exhibiting gross indicators of dementia. It is a story of two brains. Biden’s mind is ageing. Trump’s mind is dementing”.
Dr. Gartner’s colleague, Dr. Harry Segal, who’s a senior lecturer at Cornell College and Weill Cornell Medical Faculty, even went to date to counsel that Donald Trump ought to withdraw from the 2024 presidential marketing campaign.
As a result of Donald Trump lacks impulse management and is sort of pathological in his ranges of projection, virtually on cue following the State of the Union Speech he accused President Biden on his Truth Social disinformation platform of being a “psycho.”
At several events last week, as predicted by Dr. Gartner and his colleagues, President Trump continued to manifest obvious challenges in speech, reminiscence, and cognition.
In an try and make higher sense of Donald Trump’s apparent cognitive challenges and associated habits within the context of the nation’s democracy disaster and the 2024 election, and what could occur subsequent, I just lately requested a spread of specialists for his or her ideas and solutions.
Will Bunch is a nationwide opinion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Clearly, Donald Trump is struggling to carry a coherent thought or discover the correct phrase, and I discover it appears to be rising each time he offers a speech. Everybody ages otherwise, and I consider my dad who simply turned 87 and it completely lucid in dialog though he does sometimes neglect a reputation (as do I, at 65!), I’m under no circumstances an skilled on mind well being, however based mostly on what’s observable and in addition the oldsters who’re specialists whose analyses I’ve learn I believe there’s an actual drawback.
Voters ought to have critical conversations about what it means to be president, what the true points are round presidential well being, and the way Trump and Biden is likely to be completely different from one another. Usually talking, I believe the Ronald Reagan “charismatic actor” reinvention of the presidency makes folks neglect that we’re truly electing the CEO of an enormous group, with sensible folks in nook workplaces channeling the insurance policies and morals of the boss. Nobody is bombing Barbados as a substitute of Syria as a result of an ageing president mentioned the fallacious factor. That mentioned, I believe Trump’s psychological struggles must be taken critically by voters as a result of in his case it appears to be linked to his moods and his temperament. He’s promised a presidency of “retribution” and to encompass himself with aides who can act on his whims. That’s regarding. However will most voters care? In all probability not.
It appears like the teachings the mainstream media have taken from the Trump years are precisely the fallacious ones: a doubling down on a bland and finally phony interpretation of “stability and objectivity.” Evidently sometimes going out on a limb and calling out Trump for a few of his lies from 2017-2021 means they have been salivating for an opportunity to show they are often simply as robust on Biden – whether or not or not he deserves it. For a time, that stalking horse was “inflation,” however the worth will increase cooled, and Biden bought 4 years older, so right here we’re. A lot of that is journalists indulging voters by specializing in fashion when the substance on this election is life or loss of life for America.
Miles Taylor is a nationwide safety skilled who served beneath the Trump administration as chief of employees on the Division of Homeland Safety. Writing as “Nameless,” Taylor revealed the extensively mentioned 2018 New York Occasions op-ed “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” Taylor’s most up-to-date guide is “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Subsequent Trump.”
Donald Trump is clearly a deeply troubled individual. Strip away the politics and his biography, and any one that would spend time with the person would come to the identical conclusion: he’s a sick individual, devoid of any ethical system past relentless self-aggrandizement. The self-interest colours his each interplay. The person’s eyes scan each room — and state of affairs — opportunistically for leverage, for moments to advance himself on the expense of others. This has occurred to the folks closest to him … to his staff … and to the nation.
On a extra easy degree, Donald Trump has obvious repeated reminiscence lapses, problem synthesizing advanced info, disinterest in nuance, and an clearly low IQ. He’s not a wise man, and a few would say he exhibits clear indicators of decline. If it have been a screenplay, a wannabe gangster with dementia is likely to be an oddball comedy. However on the nationwide stage, it’s a civic tragedy.
Finally, the election is much less about Trump than it ever was. It’s now about us. We elevated a person to the nation’s highest workplace, witnessed a really innumerable string of incidents displaying his ineptitude and immorality, watched him try and subvert the Structure and commit crimes, and now we’re giving critical consideration to restoring him to that workplace. If that’s what we’re doing, one would possibly say we deserve a second Trump presidency. Maybe will probably be sufficient to shock the conscience of our society that it’s time to renegotiate our social contract. Maybe not.
Sure, Joe Biden has misplaced his step. It exhibits. However there’s no comparability between an aged man and an authoritarian one.
Jared Yates Sexton is a journalist and writer of the brand new guide “The Midnight Kingdom: A Historical past of Energy, Paranoia, and the Coming Disaster.”
I see a deeply unwell individual. I believe typically we get misplaced in politics and neglect to have a look at the state of affairs as human beings. What we’re coping with is an abusive, deteriorating man who’s someway even getting worse. Fascism feeds on that unwellness and accelerates the method till it leaves a husk, a bunch, and that’s what we’re watching in actual time. Every part else stems from that and that, coupled with the rhetoric, tells a narrative we should always all be listening to.
As I say on a regular basis, a wholesome political system and American society would have rejected Donald Trump in 2016 like a lot unhealthy meals. That it didn’t betrays a illness. What ought to occur is a fancy sequence of authorized penalties and systematic expulsions. On a political degree, an entire rejection by the citizens and motion towards one thing reconciliatory.
Biden’s age is a matter. We must be involved concerning the health of a president. The media obsession is just the identical factor that propelled the e-mail debacle. Lazy journalism combined with the neoliberal refusal to wrestle with itself. They need a right-wing flip of their bones however aren’t even aware about it. These cycles give themselves away after some time.
Investigative reporter Heidi Siegmund Cuda writes about US politics and tradition at her Substack newsletter and for Byline Occasions, and Byline Complement.
I do my finest to not watch the spectacle of Trump. He’s an avatar for the destruction of our nation and America as a dependable ally, and his “moth to flame” circuses have turned us into inventory characters — the outraged or the devoted. But it surely’s unattainable to not see the clips of his antics, and sure, the plain sloppy, sweaty decline is notable. However at all times after we’re watching a propagandist in motion — how a lot is natural and the way a lot is miming Vincent the Chin’s ‘bathrobe shuffle’? It behooves him to be “shedding it” when committing crimes, and this cat has had greater than 9 lives. He detonates narrative warfare wherever he goes, so it’s troublesome to decipher what’s planted to create spectacle to feed the mangy cult and what’s a real trash hearth of a human.
The extra important framing for me is what it says about us {that a} man who led an rebel, is an adjudicated intercourse assaulter, a convicted fraud, an agent of Russian disinformation who engaged in a canopy up of his personal nefarious exercise, and a possible superspreader of America’s most guarded secrets and techniques, is a political get together’s frontrunner. I assume I don’t care if he mispronounces “Venezuela” whereas showing to get excessive on his personal provide, I care concerning the fascism. Undertaking 2025 is a fascist endeavor.
If we have been a wholesome society, we might prioritize a return to decency and the rule of regulation. We might swiftly arrest Donald Trump and his co-conspirators for his or her complicity in an tried coup, which someway this nation appears to have forgotten. I’m uninterested in restricted hangouts — I’m uninterested in small sentences for giant crimes, and convictions for minor gamers. I wish to see this nation standup towards authoritarians and oligarchs, who’re attempting to take away all obstacles to their unrestrained lust for energy. From the second Trump eliminated language to water down assist for Ukraine on the 2016 RNC, his function has been handy Ukraine to Russia, which he’s now doing by his proxies like Mike Johnson. I deliver this up as a result of till now we have a correct framework, we will likely be regularly tilting at windmills. The right framing is Trump, his proxies, and his handlers, are aiming to destroy the US as a global energy. They’re utilizing narrative warfare as a battering ram, and we have to take again the narrative rapidly. We have to bullhorn the stakes. Ladies will probably must take the lead, as a result of it’s our rights which can be imperiled.
The media’s obsession with Biden’s age (“However His Age….”) is America getting caught within the entice of narrative warfare, but once more. “However His Age” is just “However Her Emails” as we noticed with Hillary Clinton — it’s a gaslighting mantra for simpletons who don’t wish to assume too laborious about the truth that we’re the targets of a world fascist legal motion trying to eviscerate democracy. The New York Occasions and cable information know this, and so they’ve positioned their bets on fascism. Massive Information is massive enterprise and massive enterprise has traditionally supported fascism. For this reason we as unbiased members of the media should assist form the narrative. Our alternative is actually good vs evil. We’ve got a alternative between decency and an enormous legal community — a alternative between standing up for our imperfect democracy or succumbing to finish authoritarian seize. It’s not about age — by Biden’s aspect is a superbly wholesome vice chairman, who can capably deal with the labor of democracy ought to he fall in poor health.
The 2024 election shouldn’t be about something apart from decency — are we good folks — is our President a superb man — are we respectable — do we all know proper from fallacious. If we’re respectable, we’ll re-elect Joe Biden, we’ll do every part to assist Ukraine defeat Russian imperialism. We are going to rebuke the cruelty of Trumpism and Putinism. We all know that Trump is a merciless man. We knew that when he known as immigrants ‘rapists’, known as ladies “fats pigs”, “canines”, and “disgusting animals”, mocked a disabled individual, and ginned up violent rhetoric to encourage his MAGA base to kill Mike Pence. We should resolve who we’re. Are we respectable?
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