I don't think it's a coincidence that the same people who've been accusing Trump of various mental deficiencies and problems since at least 2017 are back at it again just as Joe Biden's memory and mental sharpness have become a focus of attention.
In case you've forgotten all of this, back in 2017 a psychiatrist named Brandy X. Lee organized conference at Yale to remotely diagnose President Trump. The practice of diagnosing people through the media is one that the American Psychiatric Association express forbids though something called the Goldwater Rule. But Brandy Lee and other psychologists declared that Trump's case was too important to worry about observing such rules. The said they had a "duty to warn" the public.
After the conference Lee gave an interview to Salon's Chauncey DeVega in which she said the survival of the human species was at stake.
I’ve been thinking from the very beginning that he exhibits many signs of mental impairment. I recently organized a conference on this at Yale. Afterwards, there has been almost an army of people who have shared with me how they have been wanting to speak about this issue. I did not expect to get such a massive response...
This situation has come to such a critical level. In fact, a state of emergency exists and we could no longer hold back. We have an obligation to speak about Donald Trump's mental health issues because many lives and our survival as a species may be at stake.
Following the conference, Brandy Lee put together a book titled "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President." By December of 2017, Lee was briefing Democrats in Congress about the President's mental state:
Lawmakers concerned about President Donald Trump’s mental state summoned Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee to Capitol Hill last month for two days of briefings about his recent behavior.
In private meetings with more than a dozen members of Congress held on Dec. 5 and 6, Lee briefed lawmakers — all Democrats except for one Republican senator, whom Lee declined to identify. Her professional warning to Capitol Hill: “He’s going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs.”
But after that point, Lee's fortunes took a turn for the worse. In 2020 she was fired by Yale University after diagnosing Alan Dershowitz, one of Trump's lawyers, based on a tweet. In 2021 Lee sued Yale demanding they allow her to resume her position (apparently she never had an actual job at Yale). But in 2022 her case was dismissed. She appealed and last year the appellate court ruled against her.
But it seems there are many more people willing to take up the position of Trump's unofficial psychologist. One of those is John Gartner who apparently was one of the 27 people who contributed to Brandy Lee's book in 2017. Unlike Lee, he has no university job to lose so violating the Goldwater Rule doesn't seem to worry him. Gartner has been giving a series of interviews to Chauncey DeVega at Salon. His opinions read like they were written by a White House spin team.
The press has flogged the non-story of Biden’s age to death. Yes, Biden’s old. So am I. He forgets names and dates. So do I, and so do most of the people in my age cohort. So what? To say we’re less able because of these blips is just plain ageism, pure and simple. News flash: We senior citizens have something you young whippersnappers don’t: the wisdom and judgment that comes from experience. Most societies revere their elders but we ridicule ours.
Meanwhile, the press edits out the most disordered parts of Trump’s speeches or normalizes his behavior with innocuous euphemistic words, like “rambling” The press is pathologizing the normal in the case of Biden and normalizing the pathological in the case of Trump. It’s perverse...
Trump’s a classic case of dementia. He ticks all the boxes. He’s shown a precipitous decline from his baseline—He once had a rich vocabulary and spoke in polished paragraphs. And he shows the classic disturbances in memory, language, behavior, and motor performance that we see in dementia patients. If Trump were their patient or my family member, they would urgently refer him for an emergency neuropsychiatric evaluation. And under no circumstances would a patient showing this level or organic cognitive decline be capable of being president.
There's a lot more of this but you get the gist.
And, look, it has to be said that Trump really is getting old and, as with Joe Biden, that worries me. Yes, Trump seems more with it right now than Joe Biden, but that's no guarantee for the future. Frankly, Biden seemed a lot better four years ago than he does now. The job takes a real toll on everyone who holds it. Trump will not be immune. It's one of the reasons I was hoping the GOP would go with a younger candidate.
Anyway, the push to remotely diagnose Trump as having dementia (and whatever else) is ramping up just in time for the election even though psychiatric professionals aren't supposed to diagnose anyone without meeting them. This is a case of we have to violate the norms to save norms. Brandy Lee paid a price for violating the Goldwater Rule but so long as there are people in a position to ignore it, they will continue to do so. So expect to see John Gartner or someone similar on MSNBC and CNN in the coming months. If Biden's mental fitness is an issue, Democrats and Democrat-friendly media are going to make sure Trump's mental fitness is also an issue.
