Is Donald Trump’s Most Recent “Frozen” Moment a Symptom of Worsening Dementia?

30 seconds of silence at an NRA Convention in Dallas shows a mind in decline

It appears that Donald Trump’s symptoms of dementia may be increasing in frequency and intensity. Here he is at an NRA Rally in Dallas, TX, on May 18 (skip to 1:23:10):

In this clip, we see Trump addressing the rally-goers. Then, he stops cold and appears to go blank for 30 to 40 seconds during which time he is totally silent. Meanwhile, there appear to be two teleprompters in front of him, so losing his bearings under these circumstances is even more alarming. While the Trump camp has been telling us that he “deliberately” paused, blaming a musical interlude, this gap in activity could also point to intensifying dementia and/or even a mini stroke while standing at the podium.   

The incident has been compared to Mitch McConnell’s two freezes while responding to questions at the Capitol. What makes Trump’s, incident more worrying is that McConnell did not have a teleprompter in front of him in either instance while Trump has two. McConnell froze while thinking and Trump just froze while reading. When the incident passed, Trump clung to reading the words on the screen as tightly as he clung to the podium. 

Generally speaking, Trump tends to use the teleprompter when it suits him, but then he impulsively begins to muse aloud, describing images or ideas that are nonsensical or non-sequiturs or both, stemming from associations he is making to the words he’s sees on the teleprompter, or in response to some earlier incident. His default is to believe that what is of interest to him is of interest to us. Often we see Trump wander off course during a speech, then make vague or “loose” associations between words and ideas that don’t follow into each other in any logical way.

We also see incidences of phonemic aphasia – the merging of words such as Venezuero for Venezuela, for example. The more we see Trump speaking in public here in 2024 the more noticeable it is how much his cognitive functions have deteriorated since 2016. Take this montage of 32 clips from only two speeches in March in which Trump mixes up words, forgets names and garbles his speech. It’s not just that Trump makes these cognitive mistakes, but that the frequency is increasing.

“In my opinion, Donald Trump is getting worse as his cognitive state continues to degrade. If Trump were your relative, you’d be thinking about assisted care right now,” said John Gartner, prominent psychologist and former John Hopkins professor, in an interview with Salon.

But what happens at this rally in Texas may be a new and even more alarming symptom. Whether meandering off on a tangent or sticking to the script, when Trump is in front of an audience, he is never at a loss for words. But here, to go this long in total silence, a blank look on his face, is not something we have seen in public before. 

In the past Trump would either choose to ignore the words on the teleprompter, to substitute his own, or to relay a story that made sense only to him. It seemed to be his choice to abandon the words on the screen in favor of sharing the word salad in his brain. To Trump it does not matter whether his audience understands him or not. His impulsivity compels him to go off on tangents and explore random ideas without any concern as to whether there is truth to them or not. 

In this most recent NRA rally, we are witnessing an alarming new indicator that Trump is in cognitive decline and may be developing dementia: Silence is even more telling than filling blank space with word salad.

Frankly, it’s only the latest in a series of symptoms. According to numerous prosecutorial and defense lawyers, Trump is the first defendant they have seen nod off during a criminal case. Not being able to avoid closing his eyes for long stretches, whether because he is sleeping, or because he “is listening with his eyes closed” is not a good look for the defendant in a hush money criminal trial with 34 felony counts against him, nor is it a promising indicator that he would have the mental stamina to run the country for the next four years.  

According to trial observers, his lawyers did what they could to keep him propped up, e.g. not leaving him alone at the defense table, passing notes with him and giving him papers to read to occupy him. MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin reports seeing these papers from behind Trump in the courtroom, and finding they were a series of positive reviews and favorable articles. Another strategy to keep Trump awake has been to provide video where he can see himself during the trial. However, there has been no method that succeeded in keeping him alert/awake throughout the 2 weeks of testimony. Trump had to have been informed that even if he was awake, keeping his eyes closed as frequently as he did likely meant he couldn’t help himself. Uncontrollable napping/sleeping is another prominent sign of dementia. 

Another sign of dementia is the lack of control over bodily functions. People seated behind Trump in the courtroom complained of being subjected to foul odors coming from his direction. Others surmised that he wears adult diapers. 

Of all these worsening symptoms of dementia, the NRA speech where he goes blank is the most concerning. To become that disoriented, or to have possibly briefly forgotten how to read or speak – having to wait until his brain refamiliarizes itself with his surroundings and recognizes the words on the teleprompter – is a stark demonstration that he is in cognitive decline. Is it Alzheimer’s? Trump’s father, Fred, had Alzheimer’s when he died, so it’s possible that we are seeing early symptoms in the now-78-year-old Donald Trump.

Moving forward, we will continue to closely monitor Trump for further signs and symptoms of dementia.