WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON HERE ?
DEBATE QUICK TAKE: BIDEN'S TEMPORARY BUT UNTIMELY MELTDOWN AT SUNDOWN; TRUMP'S CHRONIC TWEET-STYLE PERFORMANCE ART; AND WHAT'S UP NEXT?
It is no surprise that former President Trump’s advocates in Congress including Speaker Mike Johnson, as well as Trump’s allies in the media, are busy in the past few days asserting that that Vice President Harris and Biden’s Cabinet should immediately invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment and remove the President from office due to his evident incapacity as exhibited in the June 27 CNN debate. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4746165-speaker-johnson-cabinet-biden-25th-amendment/#:~:text=Speaker%20Mike%20Johnson%20(R%2DLa,weak%20debate%20performance%20Thursday%20night.
Congress has a potential role to play if that invocation were to occur. “A dispute from the president about his capacity to perform the job would send the question to Congress, which could then decide to give the vice president the powers of acting president by a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate.” Ibid.
Johnson’s suggestion reflects calls made earlier this year by GOP officials to activate the Twenty-fifth Amendment process after the special counsel in the Biden classified documents probe publicly pictured Biden as an elderly man suffering from memory issues and “diminished capacities.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/02/09/what-is-the-25th-amendment-simplified/72536345007/
Trump himself has also asserted that Biden is “cognitively impaired.”cnn.com/2024/03/29/politics/comstock-act-alito-thomas-abortion/index.htmlcnn.com/2024/03/29/politics/comstock-act-alito-thomas-abortion/index.html
Let’s examine the GOP pre-election prescription for effectively cancelling the Biden Presidency right now, as well as its underlying “diagnosis,” at face value for a moment, and see whether their propositions have any merit or relevance, and for whom.
There is a condition called the “sundown syndrome” or “sundowning,” a neurological phenomenon where an elderly individual exhibits agitation, anxiety, brain fog, confusion, and disorientation triggered around the time the sun sets —that is, at 8:52 PM in Atlanta on June 27, 2024. It is a frequent and chronic occurrence in later-stage dementia. Biden’s overall debate performance, however, does not constitute evidence of dementia. But to some doctors, it apparently is suggestive of a a sundowning-like episode associated with dementia, leading them to publicly raise concerns and heighten Democrats post-debate anxiety. https://www.foxnews.com/health/doctors-concern-bidens-apparent-cognitive-issues-debate-troubling-indicators
Medical evidence, on the other hand, shows that sundowning episodes have been triggered in elderly people who do not have dementia by spending the time in relatively isolated circumstances away from their usual life routines and stimulation, such as during extended hospital stays. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-disease/expert-answers/sundowning/fac20058511#:~:text=Answer%20From%20Jonathan%20Graff%2DRadford,lead%20to%20pacing%20or%20wandering.
Biden spent the five days prior to the debate at the Camp David Presidential retreat he knows well, rather than recovering from surgery in an ICU. But Biden’s poor performance in the early part of the debate could have been triggered merely by medication to relieve symptoms of a common cold that he perhaps caught while in the Maryland woods. He did not exhibit at the debate any of the agitation, restlessness and paranoia frequently associated with sundowning in dementia patients. That said, it seems possible that his debate prep team did not put Biden through a mock debate rehearsal beginning at 9:00 PM at Camp David, and to plan his Thursday routine accordingly -- not of course with Trump’s suggestion of cocaine, but maybe with a mandator afternoon nap and some evening Red Bull.
Although Trump seems to be a “night person” more used to being “on” in the late evenings at his clubs, it could be suggested that a form of sundowning may indeed be affecting his performance! Trump has spoken of his own distress at his father’s dementia diagnosis. Many have borne witness to Trump exhibiting known sundowning symptoms of agitation, paranoia, delusion, irritability and even pacing around (recall his debate with Hillary Clinton). Trump’s late-night tweets and and his debate performance both reveal that he becomes more incoherent, repeats himself endlessly, and drifts further into outright lies and dark fantasies as the night also grows darker. An accurate transcript of Trump’s responses to the debate questions would consist of fifty percent capital letters, with multiple misspellings and excessive use of exclamation points — plus some form of disclaimer that the views expressed by the speaker do not necessarily bear any relationship to reality.
Media commentators have largely avoided probing the sundowning/dementia matter and its possible association with Trump as well as Biden, while they focus intensely on the possibility and politics of replacing Biden on the Democratic ticket. Biden's vigorous and effective performance during the day after the debate at a North Carolinas rally would belie political insinuations that Biden has dementia even though he may have displayed partial, minor and temporary sundowning-type symptoms the night before.
Trump’ agitated late-night tweet storm behavior, which he channeled throughout the debate, is a far more chronic occurrence ever since 2016. Trump has spoken of his own distress upon learning, and accepting, his father’s dementia diagnosis. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/20/donald-trump-dementia-father-fred-alzheimers-biden/
If a sundown syndrome diagnosis were suggested in Trump’s case, however, he would probably claim he has absolute immunity.
To be clear, the most important risk to the country of a second Trump term as President is not that he may have inherited Alzheimers, but that he exhibits his father’s racist tendencies. It is not that he is a “sundowner,” it is that he is a serial liar. The risk is the danger of his policies: for example, an inflationary new ten percent tariff tax on all imported goods (including prescription drugs, washer-dryers, clothing, and even some groceries); the end of DACA along with massive militarized desert encampments and mandatory deportation of millions of undocumented working people, separated from their citizen children and spouses, provoking a jobs crisis and recession with few citizens willing or able to take their jobs in nursing homes, hospital wards, fruit and vegetable fields, meat packing plants, nurseries, fisheries, day care centers, school facilities, construction, and even the military; defunding and eliminating all federal government programs and policies addressing the consequences of climate change; and prohibiting federal and state employee retirement funds from consideration of environmental, social and governance risks in their investment decisions; and requiring all business and nonprofit entities that receive government funding to eliminate consideration of race in their hiring, promotion and firing decisions.
In addition to those radical right wing priorities, Trump and his “transition” planners have signaled support for elimination of birthright citizenship; partisan political control of the Justice Department and its prosecutorial choices; circumventing long-standing Civil Service rules protecting career federal staff from partisan political interference; use of federal troops to patrol street demonstrations and our national borders; and federal permission for states so inclined to (i) prohibit IVF, (ii) restrict certain contraceptive sales, (iii) declare a fetus a Constitutional person within the meaning of the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, (iv) override FDA rules and ban delivery and use of abortion pills as dangerous drugs, (v) register and monitor all resident pregnant women and their doctors to make sure they do not pursue abortions, (vi) compel religious instruction and preclude selected vaccine mandates in state-funded schools, and (vii) establish partisan political control of curriculum and textbooks in all state-funded schools and colleges.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise
Trump's also recklessly promised in the debate that he will do deals with Putin to free the hostage Wall Street Journal reporter and end the Ukraine War (to the detriment of Ukraine) even before he takes office. His assertion recalls private citizen Richard Nixon's secret efforts as the GOP nominee for the Oval Office in 1968 to undermine the Johnson Administration's Vietnam peace negotiations in 1968. LBJ found out about Nixon's conduct (which was arguably treasonous), but the President reportedly concluded he could not effectively expose Nixon without also exposing his sources or triggering accusations that he was trying to rig the election for Humphrey by using unverifiable intelligence. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668
Today's media is missing an obvious scoop, based on Trump's own words in the debate, which serious political reporters in Nixon's time would have jumped on had they known about it, and even witnessed it in person as the CNN debate team did!
In light of the rough experience Kaitlan Collins had gamely trying to fact-check Trump in real time during CNN’s previous Town Hall with the former President in May of 2023, the debate moderators deliberately and perhaps understandably chose not to engage in substantive disputes with either candidate on their answers to questions posed (and only occasionally challenged the candidates' non-answers). But they apparently side-stepped or did not notice Trump’s repeated promise to conduct alternative foreign policy negotiations without benefit of office, which citizen and candidate Nixon could have been jailed for doing to undermine the policy of President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, as well as Humphrey’s candidacy against Nixon.
When Trump accused Biden and state-level Democratic administrations of practicing infanticide, the moderators might well have made an exception and at least asked a routine "follow-up" question about which particular states and hospitals Trump had in mind where this practice is going on. Bernard Shaw, CNN’s original debate moderator in 1988, would most likely have done so. Shaw would have understood the gravity of Trump’s accusation — and the moment.
Similarly, Trump’s undocumented assertion that undocumented persons are taking millions of “Black” and “Hispanic” jobs could have led to further exploration during the debate of his view about those two minority groups’ proper “place” in the American economy. But the moderators had no obligation to do that job for Biden, who did not pick up on the rather obvious racist assumptions (as well as lies) inherent in Trump’s assertions.
The current media consensus seems to be that Trump will be delighted to have a second opportunity to pummel Biden (or whoever). After declaring himself (with considerable media support) the winner of a decisive 15-round de-facto debate knock-out, however, Trump is more likely to somehow find an excuse to deny Biden (and the CBS moderators) the previously agreed September rematch. Trump has everything to lose and nothing much to gain from a rerun; he has apparently reinforced the momentum his campaign had already enjoyed before the debate.
The post-debate polls in the coming days and weeks (rather than the New York Times and other editorial boards), will probably determine whether Biden will be led or forced to step aside. Meanwhile, how will the debate outcome, as well as Kamala Harris’s effectively combative post-debate support for Biden on CNN, influence Trump’s choice of running mate in the coming days. Will he turn away from a “first, do no harm” selection. Or would he double down with his base and pick from among the most radical “MAGA-Me-Too” types (even if his choice is a recent convert to the cult) to perhaps assure the Trump brand will define and stick (like the hot iron “Y” in the TV seriesYellowstone’s Dutton Ranch) to the GOP and its adherents for generations to come.
In any event, Democrats cannot expect the media to do their job for them if they want to win any office in November. Based on the most recent opinions released by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, they also cannot count on the judicial branch to assist their campaign against Trump in a timely way. The Court has already potentially (but not necessarily fatally) undermined two of Jack Smith’s four indictments of Trump in the criminal case relating to January 6th by holding that the federal stature outlawing obstruction of an official proceeding must involve “documents” in some way.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/justices-rule-for-jan-6-defendant/#:~:text=By%20a%20vote%20of%206,or%20documents%2C%20in%20official%20proceedings.
Even if a common cold and a relatively brief and partial sundowning episode explain Biden's halting debate performance, his Party must somehow acknowledge and address the public's legitimate concern about how Biden would handle the famous hypothetical “3:00 AM phone call” given how weak he seemed at 9:00PM on June 27. After the debate, however, there is also a serious question of how Trump would answer that call. Would it be a verbalized tweet storm stream of invective stacked with a pack of lies (including a golf championship claim at his own club), or a quick “on hold” for a Zoom check-in with Putin, who would be fully awake Moscow time?
Democrats will need to decide soon, with daylight transparency, who would be their strongest candidate for President to expose and defeat Trump’s dangerous and unprincipled weaknesses of character and fitness for the highest office in the land. The 2024 campaign is Biden’s last big-league at bat, in a literal “world series” of potential catastrophic consequences. According to Biden’s good friend and key enabler of his 2020 victory, South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, Biden should stay at the plate — but he also conceded Biden has one strike against him after the debate. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/biden-trump-first-presidential-debate-2024-election/card/james-clyburn-s-recommendation-stay-the-course-on-biden-hU5lCzRacxEkaXIeKvhT?mod=lctimeline_article
Is there a better batter on the bench? It seems time to hear the reactions from the folks in the stands, not just the chatter from the team dugouts, so keep close watch on the near term polling scoreboard. After all, it’s baseball season. It takes three strikes before you’re out. But the 2024 campaign is ultimate hardball.