A Mexican died of the bird flu. Let's hope nobody dies here because if it happens you know what Trump will call it. By Hal Brown, MSW

 

The World Health Organization reported earlier this month that the 59-year-old man in Mexico, who had comorbidities and died from the virus in late April, had no known contact with poultry or other animals. (Article)

Trump infamously called Covid-19 the China virus and China wasn't a county he was demonizing for allowing migrants to trek across their country to our border and anti-Asian prejudice wasnt prevalent among his MAGA cult.

His doing this caused immediate backlash but this didn't deter him from continuing to use the term.

Excerpt from above:

Casting the virus “foreign” was not a simple rhetorical flourish. According to the database website Factbase, the president used the expression “Chinese virus” more than 20 times between March 16 and March 30. The deliberateness of the wording was made clear when a photographer captured the script of his speech wherein Trump had crossed out the word “Corona” and replaced it with “Chinese.”

Trump also called Covid-19 the Wuhan virus. I suspect he preferred to call it the China virus because he thought his base wouldn't know that Wuhan was in China.

Bird, or avian, flu probably won't make it to the United States where if will infect a significant number of people, if it infects any, at least not prior to the election. If it does and infects or worse yet, kills, one or more Americans, I have no doubt that Trump will call it the Mexican virus. Politically it would benefit him with his MAGA base if the first person infected with it was White.

While Mexican nationals aren't the only undocumented people trying to enter the country illegally across the border Trump knows that his MAGA base doesn't draw a distinction between Latinos whether they come from Mexico or from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and other Central American countries. 

I wrote in a similar vein yesterday (here) hoping that an undocumented person wouldn't commit a horrible crime lest Trump make them into his version of Willie Horton. That could have cost Michael Dukakis the election. (read article)

One could speculate that if Horton had looked like any of these serial killers the GOP using this against Dukakis would have been nearly as effective:

Here's a new story about a daring and heroic woman who caught a rape suspect who was a 25-year-old unauthorized Ecuadorian immigrant. I hope that Trump doesn't take a story like this, use the woman who caught him in his rallies, and turn the perp into another Willy Horton.

Trump and his minions are already trying to do this. Consider: 'Vile smears': Trump's MAGA allies fact-checked for tying Biden policy to brutal murders.

Excerpt:

Trump and his allies, though, responded by trying to tie Biden's policy to brutal rapes and murders allegedly committed by migrants — including the killing of a young woman in Maryland. The former president and sympathetic presenters doubled down on these attacks at a garbled rally in Racine, Wisconsin on Monday evening.

But these "truly vile smears" are nonsense, wrote Sargent.

"There's a key tell in the Fox/MAGA attacks on Biden's policy: They all try to change the subject back to *the border.* Yet this policy is all about immigrants who have lived here for a decade or more," wrote Sargent. "This is ugly stuff. Fox/MAGA personalities are linking Biden's policy to a horrific murder. RNC says the killing was done by a 'BIDEN ILLEGAL.' Fox is juxtaposing the new policy with footage of hordes swarming the border and even migrant mug shots."

Addendum:

The U.S. has two vaccines ready should the strain of bird flu circulating in dairy cows begin spreading easily to people, federal health officials said Wednesday. They could begin shipping doses widely within weeks, if needed.

So far, there’s no evidence that H5N1 is spreading person-to-person, although one dairy worker in Texas who worked closely with infected cattle had a mild infection and developed conjunctivitis, or pinkeye, in April. Read more here.

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Compassion doesn't count ballots: Biden does the moral thing on immigration and it will hurt him with many voters. All Trump needs now is his own Willie Horton. by Hal Brown, MSW

In the news today a top story (read article) is that President Biden has once again demonstrated that he has a heart and good sense when it comes to the plight of immigrants who are already living in the United States.

This is Trump's not unexpected reaction:

Of. course what would anyone expect from the president who suggested shooting migrants in the legs and putting alligators in the Rio Grande? There's also this reaction from Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" family separation policy that ripped minor infants and children not only from their parents but even separated them from their own siblings, was outraged.

Polls tell us what we already know:

More than half of Hispanic voters support mass deportation. These are people who are fortunate enough to be citizens and half of them have no compassion for other Hispanics who want what they already have. While 30% of them aren't religious 70% are, and many of them are Catholic (Pew Research article). So much for following the teachings of Jesus.

Hispanic or not, religious or not, these people want to have armed agents round 'em up, line 'em up, march 'em to a bus, and fly 'em outta here. 

It is unfortunate that MSNBC decided to show a man in handcuffs with a tatoo on his wrist. For all anybody knows this is a gang tatoo. Way to go liberal MSNBC, do the MAGA job for us.

They could have used a photo like this:

I am sure that Trump and his minions are hoping to find their own version of Willie Horton in an undocumented (read that as illegal) immigrant who commits a horrendous crime. Read article.

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Trump wants SCOTUS immunity and for Mike Johnson to overturn the verdict in what we should call the Stormy Daniels Super Mario Kart Mushroom trial, by Hal Brown, MSW

 

Trump wants the NYC trial to just go away.... as if the Supreme Court or the US House of Representatives can zap it out of the memories of those who paid attention to it.

I wonder if Trump ever saw the article shown above from Business Insider. I hope he did. After all the "star" of "The Apprentice" believes that he's the consumate businessman. Here's an excerpt fro the article which goes on into more graphic detail:

The latest twist in the ongoing he said/she said between President Trump and Stephanie Clifford — aka "Stormy Daniels," the pornographic film actress who allegedly had an affair with Trump years ago — involves a Super Mario side character.

Is nothing sacred? (The answer is no, nothing is sacred.)

I don't think wearing Mario Cart Mushroom pins during the trial ever became a "thing" but I wish it had. They are available on ebay and elsewhere. For non-gamers, the character's name is Toad.

Less visble than the red ties his loony legion wore to show their support when they attended his trial they would certainly have been noted by the press if people had worn to the trial.

I have no doubt that Trump would have been proud of his - whatever it was - with Stormy Daniels had she not then published her book, Full Disclosure, which had decidely unflattering descriptions of his "apparatus" and manly in his mind man prowess and then went over the incident in great detail when she testified in the trial.

It matters not that this - thing he did - was not what he was convicted of doing. If this was known as the "Michael Cohen cooking the books" or the "hush money" trial it wouldn't have bothered him. The press isn't calling it the "Stormy Daniels trial" but this is what it was in the mind of the public, and in Trump's mind as well. The trial had two stars, Trump and Daniels, and Michael Cohen had a supprting role.

No doubt Trump is concerned about the latest polls: New Polling Shows the Real Fallout From the Trump Conviction....but imagine the personal humiliation if he ends up losing the election because of what happened because he didn't resist the urge to real-life play the already famous Nintendo game with Stormy Daniels.

Here's a clip of Mario chasing Toad from the Super Mario movie. You'll notice that in the final scene Mario has fallen down exhaustedf.

He may think that by some miracle the verdict is negated it will make it as if the trial never happened and Stormy Daniel's didn't do the mocking of his manly magnificance. The oposite would happen. In the event that the verdict was overturned either by the Supreme Court or the US House he would still be the president who was convicted and then unconvicted for what began with a perfectly legal "thing" he did with someone who happened to only be famous in an anciliary segment of the entertainment business. Nothing against Stormy Daniels who is an exceptional woman, but she isn't a Marilyn Monroe who had a real affair with a president. She is like Monroe, who was raised in 12 foster homes and married at the age of 16, in that she also had a tough childhood and made something of herself. This is from the Slate review of her book:

Raised in squalor by a depressed, narcissistic, neglectful mother (her father never showed much interest in her and deserted the family when she was 5), she recalls overhearing adults write her off as “white trash” during her childhood in Baton Rouge. She resolved to prove them wrong by earning straight A’s and becoming the editor of her high school newspaper.

Marilyn Monroe's affair with Kennedy had no effect on his presidency. Trump's "thing" with Stormy may have a real effect on his reelection.

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How can smart CEOs be surprised at Trump showing signs of dementia? By Hal Brown, MSW

Was the Google machine sending me a message when I searched Trump dementia this morning? I modified the Google illustration which is in the lower right above.

After reading the following in How is it possible Trump’s habitual incoherence caught top CEOs by surprise? on RawStory….

Many of them, Sorkin said, had been “predisposed to former President Trump” but walked away from the meeting “a bit disheartened, a bit questioning … I don’t want to say of his mental fitness, but questioning of just how meandering, how, in some cases, one said to me, ‘he could not keep a thought straight. He would go in one direction, then he would go in another direction, and there wasn’t necessarily a through-line to the way he spoke or what he was talking about.’”

…. and this:

In other words, they appeared to have been surprised by what I have been calling Trump’s habitual incoherence, which is to say, incoherence that’s become so habitual that it characterizes virtually everything he says in every public setting, even sober settings, such as his criminal trial in Manhattan or, in this case, a meeting with America’s top CEOs.

The question is, or should be: how could these top CEOs have been so surprised? I don’t expect very obscenely rich men like them to read the Editorial Board, but I do expect them to be thoroughly informed about politics, given that politics is central to their very obscene riches.

… I put this comment on the article:

How is it possible that these no doubt intelligent and supposedly well-informed CEOs hadn’t been keeping up on the electric boat shark cray-cray meanderings of the man who aspires to be president? Did they think this was an act? Are they so ill informed about the symptoms of early dementia that they didn’t think to do some research on a search engine like Google?

All they had to do was look it up with a two word search here.

As a wrote yesterday (here) I am withholding my final assessment as to whether I am 100% sure he has dementia until I see how he handles the debate on June27th.

I am not sure whether the new debate format will be more diagnostic of possible dementia than the format used previously where Trump shouted so much Biden told him to “will you shut up, man” to cut him off. Watch the video here.

I suggest watching this short clip. I only see signs of Trump’s aggressive malignant narcissism here and not of early dementia. An indiviudal can have no signs of dementia one year and begin to show very early barely noticable signs the next year. Several years later the symptoms may become more apparent before a steeper decline which is difficult to deny occurs. I have seen this about a dozen times with residents in the senior community where I live.

The upcoming debate will occur in the evening when people with dementia often are sundowning. If either Trump or Biden have cogntive pathology it will be more likely to be apparent in the evening.

There’s a two minute time limit to answer moderator questions before the microphone is shut off, and a minute to make a response. Each candidate will have to respond succinctly and coherently without going off on tangents or hurling gratuitious insults to convince swing voters that they can handle the responsbilities of being president.

I know what I will be doing at 6PM on June 27th when the debate will be aired on the west coast. I will be watching the debate and hoping to see Trump demonstrate undeniable dementia so blatantly that only brain-dead cultists can say that the man who can’t even remember the last name of the doctor who gave him the dementia test is stable enough to be president (read article).

This just went on HUFFPOST as their lead article.

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If Trump has early dementia there is a good chance he will flame out during the first debate when he'd be sundowning, by Hal Brown, MSW

 

This was the top story on HUFFPOST this morning.

Here's my coment:

My takeaway is based on this excerpt:

″[They were] a bit questioning, I don’t want to say his mental fitness but questioning just how meandering. How, in some cases one said to me, he could not keep a thought straight,” Sorkin said.

“He would go in one direction and then go into another direction and that there wasn’t really necessarily a through line to the way he spoke and what even he was talking about.”

Andrew Ross Sorkin is a journalist with a CNBC show and with a BS degree and not a mental health expert and the CEOs present presumably don't have expertise in any area related to assessing dementia. But common sense ought to lead people to be able to differentiate between normal cognition and abnormal thought process.

This is a man who aspires to be president of the United States. If anyone has even been casually paying attention to the news they know abouthow he interjects unreleated comments into his remarks. For example his sharks and electric boats story and his "joke" about eating with Hannibel Lector. The man is not trying to make it as a stand-up comic.

As I have been writing I have seen more and more indications that my mental health colleagues and associates have been writing (and in the case of Drs. John Gartner and Harry Segal, talking about in podcasts) ... 

In the above podcast John Gartner reminds us that Trump's appearances are scheduled early in the day (on friendly media on weekends on "Fox and Friends" with the B team who won't ask tough questions and rather ask puffcake questions). 

I am sure that they and other Trump observers in our field will be watching the first debate which will be in prime time when Trump could very well exhibit paraphasia, progressive aphasia (read article), wandering thought process, paranoia (read article), and other signs of early and worsening dementia.

It must be recognized before it is too late and Trump is elected that if he does have dementia that this is a disease that while it's course is unpredictable it always gets worse and ultimately is fatal. What may be written off by his supporters that symptoms may just represent Trump being Trump they are really as serious as someone ignoring a large melanoma on someone's face. I'll spare you photos but it you see something that looks like this on yourself or others it needs immediate treatment as this is at life threatening skin cancer.

Unlike with melanoma there is no life saving treatment for dementia (and the form of dementia called Alzheimer's). There is no pill that can hide the symptoms entirely although there are medications a doctor may prescribe to slow down the progression of the disease read artcile).  There isn't a pill that can make you as with-in as the makers of Prevagen want people to believe with their sharper mind and sharper memory commercials (the product is a hoax but I wouldn't be surprised if the medically ignorant and gullible Trump takes it).

I wrote about Trump and sundowning here.

I also wrote about how the media is by and large avoiding covering this here.

Update.. and then there’s this:

Addendum: I took the photos during a weekend at Oregon's Cannon Beach when even local residents were marveling at how beautiful that sunset was. I never thought I use so many of them in blogs. The first debate will be in Atlanta. Fani Willis is the DA for Fulton County which includes most of that city. That won't be lost on Trump. The sundown on June 27th on June 27th in Atlanta is 8:57 PM just as the debate will be starting. It may not come with a beautful sunset, but whether it does or not Trump won't see it. The weather report predicts that conditions will be conducive for a lovely sunset. It doesn't say anything about how Trump will respond to it.

Featured photo:

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If you only see right-wing media you may think Biden wandered off to smell the roses at French event, by Hal Brown, MSW

 

This event is being depicted as proof that President Biden has lost his mental faculites. MSNBC viewers know the true story. He turned away for a a few seconds to walk towards some the the skydivers who were packing their gear behind him to give them the thumbs up. Videos of this were readily available.

MSNBC showed them:

You can see one of the parachutists looking directly at Biden as he gives them the thumbs-up.

This is the NY Post article:

While other kept watching the descending parachutists this photo in the NY Post makes it appear Biden is out of it...

In fact he has turned to engage with the parachutists who were already on the ground.

As I wrote yesterday (here), the real test as to who's non compos mentis and who's compos mentis will come in the first debate which will be held in the evening when if either of the candidates have dementia they will be morel likely to demonstrate symptoms of this because they are sundowning.

Perhaps at some level of self-awareness Trump knows this and will find a way to rationalized a poor perfoance in the debate. Consider this:

'I'll lose the debate on purpose': Trump tries to lower expectations for Biden showdown in RawStory:

"They're going to feed him a lot of stuff, and we should do a drug test," he demanded. "I'd love to do a drug test beforehand."

Trump is basically saying that if Biden does better than the doddering senile old man he wants to say he is this is because he is using brain enhancing drugs. Perhaps Trump believes the Prevagen commercials. (I wrote about Prevagen and how gullible people may believe it really works here.)

More from RawStory:

"If he makes it through, no matter what, how bad, no matter how bad he is, they'll say he was great," he continued. 

Trump said he did not want Biden removed from the Democratic ticket even though he polls better than other contenders.

"Well, you know, interestingly, they've done polling, and I do better against almost everybody," he opined. "And so they don't — they don't want to take him off. It depends."

"Maybe I'm better off losing the debate," Trump added. "I'll make sure he stays. I'll lose the debate on purpose. Maybe I'll do something like that."

The first debate is must-see TV for me. I want to see whether I may have been engaging in wishful thinking when I interpreted Trump's word salad speaking and how he interjects off-topic comments into his remarks, for example Hannibel Lector jokes and wondering about sharks and electric boats, as suggestive of his having early dementia.

Even today it is being reported that during Trump's meeting with CEOs of major companies some of those in attendance were struck by how often he meandered onto unrelated sujects.

If Trump makes it through the debate with a few minor flubs, stays on topic, and manages to soft-pedal the fact that he aspires to turn the country into a dictatorship I will regretfully have to admit that this is rather compelling evidence he isn't suffering from early dementia.

Addendum:

The implications in Prevagin ads which avoid verbotten claims that it could improve dementia symptoms, this is what the ads indirectly suggest. The product is a hoax. See article below.

Read yesterday's blog here.

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If Trump sundowns significantly during the debates his dementia diagnosis will be firmed up for me, By Hal Brown, MSW

 

President Biden and and former president Trump agreed to hold two campaign debates — the first on June 27 hosted by CNN and the second on Sept. 10 hosted by ABC. I don't think there is a graceful way he can back out of them. 

This will be a major test of the state of both candidate's cognitive condition. Trump has called Biden senile and he presents himself as not just smart, but genius …. and a very stable genius at that!". (Reference).

When Trump brags abiout his stable genius and attacks Biden as senile this is a case of the Trump pot calling the Biden stainless steel kettle black.

This is from the Mayo Clinic website on sundowning:

The term "sundowning" refers to a state of confusion that occurs in the late afternoon and lasts into the night. Sundowning can cause various behaviors, such as confusion, anxiety, aggression or ignoring directions. Sundowning also can lead to pacing or wandering.

Sundowning isn't a disease. It's a group of symptoms that occurs at a specific time of the day. These symptoms may affect people with Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. The exact cause of sundowning is not known.

A sundown is often beautiful like the one I shared in this blog that even had locals talking about as partiucarly striking when we spent a weekend on the Pacific coast at Cannon Beach.

If, as many have speculated Donald Trump (see Google search here), is suffering from early dementia no amount of rehearsal will stop him from exhibiting signs of this during a prime time debate. If he doesn't have dementia all he will have to do to hold his own against Biden, who does not show indications of dementia, is to moderate his malignant narcissism and impulsiveness. 

He will have to demonstrate a command of the issues and come up with plausible explanations why he has been calling for revenge against his enemies, most recent his using the phrase "haul out the guillotine" in a fund raisng email (read article).

He will have to clearly state his position on issues like abortion, IVF, and government provided health care so as not to alienate the majority of voters who favor these.

Likewise, he will have to state his position on aid to Ukraine and our membership in NATO.

Hopefully the moderators will ask him whether he still believes the election was stolen and the the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6th are patriots.

If the moderators want "to go there" they could ask him if he denies, as he has claimed, ever having had a sexual relationship with Stormy Daniels or even knowing her.

If they are doing their due diligence the moderators will look over Project 25 and ask him which of the plans laid out by this group he will implement. In particular he should be asked about this:

Project 2025 focuses on packing the next GOP administration with extreme loyalists to former President Donald Trump. 

The plan aims to reinstate Schedule F, a Trump-era executive order that makes federal employees fireable at-will, stripping tens of thousands of employees of civil service protections. Both Trump and others in the conservative movement have said they will clear out the federal government if he is reelected. The project has even set up online trainingsand loyalty tests to narrow down potential hires to those who will commit to follow Trump without question. As Project 2025 senior adviser John McEntee has said, “The number one thing you're looking for is people that are aligned with the agenda.”

If Trump has dementia and it is worse because of sundowning he will have trouble spouting memorized responses which address the quesiotns asked and the attacks likely to come from President Biden. If he has dementia he will probably veer from topic to topic and say things unrelated to the questions posed by the moderators.

Unlike John Gartner and Harry Segal who podcast about Trump's dementia (here) I am agnostic.

I want more evidence before I say that I am as certain than other mental health and dementia experts are that he has this devastating disease which is irreversible and always gets worse. The symptoms in the end stage are devastating to the patient and family. For two forms of dementia the life span is 6-8 years form onset (reference). 

While I am not absolutely certain Trump has dementia, I am certain that he meets every criteria for being a malignant narcissist and that the Dark Triad decribes him to a T.

(From Wikipedia) All three dark triad traits are conceptually distinct although empirical evidence shows them to be overlapping. They are associated with a callous–manipulative interpersonal style.

• Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy.^[10]
• Machiavellianism is characterized by the manipulation and exploitation of others, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a strategic focus on self-interest.^[11]
• Psychopathy is characterized by continuous antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callous and unemotional traits(CU),^[12] and remorselessness.^[13]

As dementia worsens some people undergo no particular personality changes from their pre-illness self. Others who were mild mannered can become aggressive and others who were aggressive can become mild mannered. If Trump has dementia the only change I see from his prevous personality is that he has gotten more aggressive. If he has dementia and is sundowning during the debates he will present himself as someone who undecided voters hopefully will watch and decide that this is not the kind of person they want to be president.

While many of his cult members like how he behaves hopefully there are many voters who are on the fence who want their president to be "presidential", that is,  having a bearing or demeanor befitting a president which is dignified and confident without being arrogant.

I wrote about how with the exception of the progressive media most media outlets are not covering examples of Trump's behavior which suggest he has dementia here.

Addendum:

Trump against a background of Starry Night by van Gogh which I used in part because of the sigificance that he painted it from his  room where he spent one year in the mental hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It was actually painted just before dawn. There are no reports that van Gogh had dementia. There has been speculation that he had temporal lobe epilepsy and many other disorders.

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