• Jiggle_Physics@quokk.au
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    2 days ago

    yes, but this is nothing new. Reagan was basically cognitively absent in a significant portion of his last term, and many believe his wife essentially took the role of the presidency. This has been talking point among democrats for decades now, so there was a lot of “revenge” coping going on with Biden. His cognitive state is not truly known. The books, like Tappers, have provable false information them. However those within the west wing at that time have things against their stated evaluation on Biden’s competency. We, unfortunately, have no idea how bad it was, and all the outpouring of statements against him, and in his defense, are too full of intentional disinformation to really know, at this point. I imagine that some years from now there will be information that comes to light that cuts through a lot of this obfuscation, and we will have closer answers. Right now too many parties have interest in it being not known. I think if there was clear records of his decline in the records from the white house, Trump would be parading them around. So we shall see.

    • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      He could actually speak coherently. Are we seriously comparing a couple gaffes with a constant stream of sentence fragments?

      • RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Biden’s final debate performance was pretty awful. Seemed lost a couple times. Nothing like the guy who had debated Paul Ryan years before. It was so bad that he had to drop out.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        2 days ago

        I had multiple grandparents at different states of decline from dementia during the fateful debate. Those weren’t his usual stutter nor a simple misspeaking, that was his brain being unable to connect the partial fragments of thoughts and voice them. Aka dementia.

        Trump’s also showing clear cognitive decline, but he’s also much more obviously very hopped up on medications for all of his public speaking engagements. There’s a ~4 week cycle of him having a poorly covered up bruise from an IV in his hand, about a week of him hidden from the public eye, then about 2 weeks of him doing noticably better then he starts declining again for the last week before the next dose during which he gets hidden from the public eye again. They schedule all of his biggest public engagements during that 2 week window

      • Jiggle_Physics@quokk.au
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        2 days ago

        I am not comparing him to Trump, Trump is clearly spiraling out of control. The problem is he had proof of problems and they hid them. No one knows the degree, so it is being used by anyone who can make money from it to postulate that he was basically either unaware of what was happening around him, or being sharper than most people in their 20s, neither was true. At some point we may learn what was happening.

    • rumba@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      TBF I think he was facing some really bad cancer diagnosis and working one of the most public and stressful in existence. He might not have been up for the task rather than not been with it.