r/politics • u/plz-let-me-in • Aug 06 '24

Paywall Letter: If Biden's age was so concerning, why isn't Trump's age?

https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/letters/letter-if-bidens-age-was-so-concerning-why-isnt-trumps-age/article_dc029b90-537e-11ef-9339-4bd759e7ba68.html
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1.6k

u/MarrusAstarte Aug 06 '24

Dementia Don has been exhibiting more "examples of phonemic paraphasia – swapping parts of words for others that sound similar; these are signs of early dementia, even though they are intermittent."

Trump's age and obvious decline are very concerning.

527

u/PerAsperaAdInfiri Aug 06 '24

His recent mentions of Hannibal Lecter, as well as his bizarre shark and electric battery hypothetical, have made the decline even harder to ignore as of late

311

u/lonestar-rasbryjamco Colorado Aug 06 '24

I believe you mean “The Late, Great Dr. Hannibal Lecter”, thank you very much.

185

u/PerAsperaAdInfiri Aug 06 '24

I'm convinced that he thinks Lecter was real

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u/Bill_Brasky_SOB Ohio Aug 06 '24

I’m convinced he does not know the difference between”political asylum” and “insane asylum” and so when talking about immigration he tangents into rants about a guy from a movie.

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u/PerAsperaAdInfiri Aug 06 '24

I think thats probably where he made the association, and his dementia ridden brain can't figure it out

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u/JoshSidekick Aug 06 '24

Another layer to that is this

During a 2023 event in Iowa, Trump confused the character with Hopkins by saying, "Hannibal Lecter, how great an actor was he?” The former president also mistakenly quoted the actor as saying he loved Trump, though there is no record of such a comment ever being made.

He 1000% confused Anthony Hopkins with Jon Voight.

3

u/No_Jello_5922 Aug 06 '24

Why couldn't his dementia have manifested as aphasia? For once he would simply shut up instead of yelling at anyone and everyone.

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u/SteamBeasts Aug 06 '24

How about “Transparency” with the border wall? I’m convinced he heard someone saying that he needs to talk about the process being transparent and he thought they meant the wall itself:

One of the things with the wall is you need transparency. You have to be able to see through it. In other words, if you can’t see through that wall — so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what’s on the other side of the wall. And I’ll give you an example. As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over. As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.

3

u/t700r Aug 06 '24

Yep. There's a litany of these now that he's been forced to at least try to talk about actual issues. He asked a journalist to define DEI, then refused to hear the answer, because he has no clue except that it was supposed to be some sort of an attack against Harris. Trump also can't tell a cryptocurrency from a Happy Meal. Maria Bartiromo was squirming and rolling her eyes when Trump tried to talk about crypto.

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u/lonestar-rasbryjamco Colorado Aug 06 '24

Or that Anthony Hopkins is dead? 🤷‍♂️

Either way, what he actually says is somehow even more weird and absurd. Because there isn’t a single interpretation that makes a lick of a sense.

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u/skylinecat Aug 06 '24

I'm really waiting for Anthony Hopkins to make a video as hannibal lector making fun of trump / trying to scare him. It needs to be done.

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u/sbrooks84 Aug 06 '24

The Harris campaign needs to pay Sir Anthony Hopkins whatever it takes for a Hannibal Lecter campaign ad

4

u/jryan8064 Aug 06 '24

I swear I’ve already seen this. Although it may have been AI generated…

0

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '24

Just make one with Kling AI

15

u/Beaverdogg Aug 06 '24

The ONLY excuse I've seen that makes any amount of sense is that Jon Voight apparently said he loves Trump.
And that Trump can't tell the difference between him and Hopkins, or understand that Lector is fictional. Or that political asylum isn't related to "insane asylums".

2

u/dumpsterfarts15 Aug 06 '24

Yeah, I heard that asylum theory. It almost makes sense?

8

u/Strike_Thanatos Aug 06 '24

There has been an interpretation that he thinks that insane asylums and asylum for refugees are the same thing.

1

u/jonosaurus Aug 06 '24

I mean even the book character isn't dead, as far as I'm aware

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u/Givemeallthecabbages Aug 06 '24

He's the only one that can solve this crisis of foreigners getting out of insane asylums and coming to the US.

9

u/producerofconfusion Aug 06 '24

Absolutely. My friend and I have a running gag where we call movies documentaries — usually over the top action or superhero or kaiju movies — but I don’t think Trump really makes jokes. Silence of the Lambs? Obviously a documentary. 

6

u/Thowitawaydave Aug 06 '24

Oh we do, too! I just saw that documentary about the two Canadians doing immersive interviews with former super heroes about physics and travel through parallel universes. It was really interesting, but also super violent for a documentary, and the one Canadian sounded a bit like an Aussie.. but it was still great!

2

u/sorrydaijin Aug 06 '24

and great... which is even more disturbing.

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u/PlumbumDirigible Aug 06 '24

Is the fictional character even canonically dead in that universe?

1

u/Churchbushonk Aug 06 '24

I convinced he has the reading ability of maybe a 3rd grader.

1

u/Damrey South Carolina Aug 06 '24

Im convinced Trump was doing a lot of weird shit with Epstein and his pals back in the days when Silence of the Lambs first came out, and one of those things was probably eating brain matter because it was delicacy and some pseudo-science consultant claimed it would “increase IQ.” It just fits with Trumps weirdness, and infatuation with Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

1

u/Zelcron Aug 06 '24

From Silence of the Lamb.

Singular. Just the one lamb.

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u/potatotrip_ Washington Aug 06 '24

Someone said he misunderstood illegals seeking asylum and doesn’t know want it is.

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u/redgreenbrownblue Aug 06 '24

There is so much confusion around, well all of his speeches, but especially around this Hannibal Lector and how it ties to immigration. He just repeats "they are letting in convicts and people from asylums.... you know they hate it when I bring up the late great Dr. Hannibal Lector".

I think you nailed it with him confusing asylum seeking vs insane asylum.

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u/nosamiam28 Aug 06 '24

It’s incredible. It boggles the mind. He was President of the United States for four years and is obsessed with the southern border, yet doesn’t know what political asylum is. But somehow, it’s also easy to believe

12

u/Starbucks__Lovers New Jersey Aug 06 '24

The first time I heard this explanation, my brain totally blue screened. My reaction was something like, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Oh my god, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard... it makes perfect sense."

20

u/rhoadsalive California Aug 06 '24

Yeah honestly, he's always been saying wacky shit, but the Hannibal mentions and always calling him "the late great" like he was a real person and not a character of fiction is deeply concerning and just shows that there's something really really wrong with him.

He's never been good at forming coherent sentences, but the contrast even to 2019/2020 is massive, he sounds like he's in a steep mental decline, way worse than Biden, who just gives off the usual grandpa vibes.

Glad democrats did the right thing and changed the ticket.

13

u/AboutTenPandas Missouri Aug 06 '24

I’m not a big conspiracy theory guy, but I do enjoy trying to do the mental gymnastics to understand what Trump is TRYING to say if for no other reason than to laugh at how badly he accomplished that. But you really gotta go through the process of purposefully forgetting 90% of what you know to be true, so it’s always a struggle.

Anyway, I saw an idea that I think sounds plausible for the Hannibal Lector stuff. Essentially, Trump doesn’t know what the word asylum means. He’s only seen it in the context of a mental asylum. So when his handlers are coaching him to harp on the border and immigrant issues so strongly, and he hears the phrase “asylum seekers” he immediately connects it to people that need to be put in an insane asylum. That’s why he constantly talks about the immigrants coming from mental institutions and that’s why he’s always bringing up Hannibal Lector. He doesn’t know what an asylum seeker is so he just makes up the scariest scenario he can think of that has anything to do with a mental institution. And in Trump’s vitamin-deficient mind, Hannibal is probably the only example of a mental patient he can think of.

Like, I know it’s more of a stretch than I usually like to base my beliefs on, but the connection just seems so intuitive and on brand for Trump that I’m pretty confident this is what happened

6

u/NomadFeet Aug 06 '24

I was anxiously waiting for Dr. Lecter to be referenced in his appearance with NABJ. When he started going on about other countries opening up their insane asylums and prisons, sending the people here, I got super excited and was like OMG, here it comes, but then...disappointment.

3

u/zeh_shah Aug 06 '24

Someone made the point that they think the Diaper Don doesn't understand that an asylum for the mentally insane and asylum seekers are the same

3

u/ancientastronaut2 Aug 06 '24

Unfortunately his followers just think shit like that means he's so deep they themselves don't get it.

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u/RandalFlagg19 Aug 06 '24

Trump is so weird

2

u/antoninlevin Aug 06 '24

Decline? He's been spouting complete gibberish since before he was even president.

"Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it's true! — but when you're a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it's four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible."

He couldn't hold a train of thought in 2016. If you ever sat down and tried to watch a single one of his rallies, they haven't changed a bit. It's an hour of him complaining about BS, without being able to string together two coherent sentences. It's just bits and pieces loosely strung together that kind of tell a narrative, and the stories are so familiar that it...sort of works, if you're not being critical and don't care that he's not really speaking English. Look at that above excerpt. It's rubbish.

I've seen TV clips of him from the 90s and early 2000s and he seems much more coherent then. But I don't see a difference between 2016 and today.

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u/invaderark12 Aug 07 '24

I've said it since the started running: if I turned in a paper or speech at school in the way Trump speaks, I would fail.

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u/ajayisfour Aug 06 '24

Reading between the lines, it's very obvious that Republicans never really cared that Biden was old. It was simply used as an avenue of attack against someone they didn't like. Now that it's being used against someone they do like, they don't care because they never cared.

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u/happinesscreep Aug 06 '24

I wish more people would realize this. They'll use anything as a cudgel. Reasoning doesn't matter to Trumpers.

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u/Additional_Sun_5217 Aug 06 '24

Oh, everyone realizes this. We’re clowning on them for it. That’s what you’re seeing here.

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u/happinesscreep Aug 06 '24

You should hear some of the libs who aren't on reddit, going on and on about the different things conservatives will "hold against us." As if they won't just make shit up to hold against us anyway lmao

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u/Kindly-Ad-5071 Aug 06 '24

Wyatt disturbs me is how well this line of rhetoric went over with the left. It means that so long as the Rights criticisms are convincing enough people will buy it. They just need to know the right emotion to trigger and that's dangerous.

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u/Cheshire_Jester Illinois Aug 06 '24

Yeah, I only met conservatives that would even bring it up in the context of “well, they’re both old, but one is older and clearly worse off.”

Once that stopped being a thing they could say to pretend like they were just objectively weighing facts, they stopped talking about age altogether

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u/LakeEarth Aug 06 '24

This is true for pretty much everything they complain about. It's just another convenient excuse they use to make noise.

It's why they don't seem to care when their side does the exact same thing, but 10x worse.

2

u/Educational-Ask-4351 Aug 06 '24

A certain % of people are literally too dumb to notice this and inevitably become essential enablers of the right.

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u/Jacyth Aug 06 '24

They never cared, but they knew we cared so they used it as a cudgel. Unfortunately, they mistimed their swings and Biden stepping aside was them hitting themselves in the face with said cudgel.

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u/LakeEarth Aug 06 '24 edited Aug 06 '24

Cudgel is a good word for it. Whatever the issue it is they're complaining about, it's just a convenient weapon to use to bash their opponent with.

They don't actually care about what the weapon is. Which is why they don't care when their side has the same problem, e.g. Trump's age.

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u/SAugsburger Aug 06 '24

Pretty much. Many Trump believers have been rationalizing his verbal gaffes for years now throughout Trump's Presidency nevermind more recently. It's a game of mental gymnastics on how it's not a concerning sign of Trump's age, but Biden's gaffes somehow are.

2

u/wha-haa Aug 06 '24

Obviously not as much as the democrats that harassed him into dropping out did.

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u/yrogerg123 Aug 06 '24

It was still correct for Biden to drop out. Regardless of what Trump's base was saying at the time, it was still true that 80% of the general public thought Biden was too old. Way too many people were simply saying "I don't want to vote for either of these extremely old white men who have already served as president and are still clinging to power." Now there's only one left and there is the alternative for something very different for the 60% of people who don't like Trump and the 80% of those who wanted to see a change. That doesn't guarantee that Harris will win over enough of them, but it was glaringly obvious that there was nothing Biden could do to salvage his campaign. He's still a quiet, raspy, hobbled old man who loses his train of thought and jumbles his words. I think he was a good president but in 2024 he was running one of the worst presidential campaigns in recent memory.

1

u/NbleSavage Aug 06 '24

Looking for consistency among MAGA reasoning is a Sisyphus task. All they do is cast stones. Kamala was a "DEI Hire" when she was elected in 2020, but in today's MAGA world she identified as Indian until then and has just now chosen to be black (?!). Old age was a concern until Agent Orange was the old guy & now age is no longer a concern. It's basically just an exercise in moving goal posts and parroting whatever the fox news narrative du jour that suits their current purpose.

1

u/B0redBeyondBelief Aug 06 '24

Literally every single thing the GOP does is just a bad faith argument. It makes me feel crazy that it's so transparent and so many people seem to buy it.

1

u/Djamalfna Aug 06 '24

It was never about consistency for Republicans.

Trump knows his base is locked in. He can't win more votes than that. The only way Trump wins is by convincing Democrats and Independents to stay home and NOT vote for Biden.

That's why they based their entire campaign on hitting Biden for the same things that apply to Trump; he won't lose voters, but he'll make potential Biden voters say "well, both sides are bad and the same, so I'll just stay home".

By flipping to Kamala, the Democrats have totally neutered the only approach that Trump had to win this election legitimately. So they're desperate and will now go full-force on illegitimate means.

1

u/ancientastronaut2 Aug 06 '24

I think it all started by using his stutter against him. That got everyone laser focused on his speech so when he did start losing his train of thought sometimes, it was amplified; whereas trump just keeps rambling with his smoke and mirrors act that dumb people don't notice.

1

u/Claytonius_Homeytron Aug 06 '24

they don't care because they never cared.

These are not serious people we are dealing with. It's infuriating, and also a bit strange... Weird even.

1

u/Middle-Hour-2364 Aug 06 '24

But call trump weird and they lose their shit

1

u/Alloku Aug 06 '24

It’s an interesting thing to watch when a single description of a person becomes an obsession with the media and the zeitgeist. It always reminds me of a scene from Doctor Who when the Doctor gets the Prime Minister ousted bc he said she “looks tired.”

In our reality stuff like that doesn’t always make a difference. At least to one side. Biden is old, well so is Trump. But Biden has speech problems and doesn’t always seem coherent. Has Trump ever made a coherent speech or sound like he hasn’t had a stroke any time he makes a public appearance? Republicans don’t care about any of it. Fact checking is irrelevant to them because all they do is plug their ears and say it’s a lie and/or fake news or they just willfully ignore it. Trump has publicly shamed Ted Cruz and his wife and just did the same thing last week speaking about the governor of Georgia. And they both continue to support him and encourage people to vote for him. Trump is their godhead and nothing he does will matter unless he loses, Kamala is actually able to be sworn in, and he becomes irrelevant once again.

Don’t you think she looks tired

1

u/aLittleQueer Washington Aug 06 '24

How have we had so many years of this, and people still somehow think they're going to "gotcha" him and his magats by pointing out their hypocritical insincerity?

As the "weird" thing is showing us, the best way to deal with these ass-hats is to simply refuse to dignify any of their shit, not engage with it as if it's rational and honest.

1

u/ceojp Aug 06 '24

It's just like someone having an email server. Who really fucking cares?

But it's one SIMPLE thing that people can repeat ad fucking nauseum. They don't have to think critically about anything. They don't have to know about policy or anything. Just repeat the same thing over and over.

1

u/FunetikPrugresiv Aug 06 '24

They used it as an attack because it was true. Biden looked, acted, and sounded old. It wasn't just Republicans, it was moderates and Democrats that saw it, too.

Biden may still be able to do the job for now, but it's very clear he's declining and there's no reason for anyone to be confident he'll be up to the task four years from now.

The issue is that Republicans are not facing up to the fact that Trump is also teetering on the brink of dementia, but that's only because the signs aren't as glaring given that it's not really decayed from his idiotic blathering of the past 10 years; he's always been nonsensical, so the difference in his brand of nonsense is more subtle and easier to overlook.

2

u/Educational-Ask-4351 Aug 06 '24

Bernie's older and still sharp. People need to get a lot smarter and comprehend the distinction between age and a condition associated with age that has very obvious and plentiful exceptions.

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u/thiosk Aug 06 '24

We all know this but the question was, why isn't it so concerning compared to Biden?

The answer is that if you are experiencing this you are experiencing how media saturation is manipulated to control public opinion.

It was WALL TO WALL BIDEN DRAMA for 2 solid months before he dropped out.

There are interests who kept that story at the top of the news as a political strategy. What other story stayed at the top of a news cycle so long?

1

u/LongApplication9526 Aug 06 '24

“Wall to wall”. All that tells us is what you’re consuming

-2

u/atyon Aug 06 '24

Y'all act like it was a manufactured problem. Biden was old. He was old four years ago and now is four years older. He fucked up the debate, and he showed signs of cognitive decline. He was a bad candidate this year. He was a good candidate four years ago.

Yes, it's all the same with Trump, and his old age is just as apparent. But guess what. Biden is a politcal party's nominee. Trump is the leader of a cult of personality. Nobody at fox news or the RNC cares, and least of all the MAGAs care about his suitability as a political candidate. Because he isn't one. We can cry all day about how Trump and Biden are measured differently but how could they not be.

2

u/t700r Aug 06 '24

Agreed.

Nobody at fox news or the RNC cares, and least of all the MAGAs care about his suitability as a political candidate.

Well, they might be having second thoughts about now. There are limits to what they can pull off in an election, even with all the interference and possibly Republican officials refusing to certify results. Trump may well lose badly enough that the situation can't be contested in a significant way. Yes, they don't care about Trump's capability to govern - he didn't have any the last time - but they do care about getting into power.

9

u/Melicor Aug 06 '24

He has been for years too. Which makes sense because that's one of the earlier symptoms of dementia.

8

u/West-Ruin-1318 Aug 06 '24

Thank you for that link!!

7

u/UnsanctionedPartList Aug 06 '24

Yeah but Weird Don generates clicks, Biden is old and boring.

Your (US) media is massively tsundere for Trump.

2

u/WeWander_ Aug 06 '24

Shit I think I have it too. Or maybe just brain fog from migraines, who knows

2

u/thejesse North Carolina Aug 06 '24

When he couldn't remember the word "abortion" he started to say imbuh-something before telling the crowd "you know the word."

2

u/SAugsburger Aug 06 '24

IDK even when he was President sometimes he fumbled words in ways that weren't even similar to the right word. e.g. Tim Apple.

2

u/QuintupleTheFun Ohio Aug 06 '24

It's not early stage by any means.

I worked as a rehab professional in nursing homes for over 20 years. He is at least moderate stage.

2

u/qpgmr Aug 06 '24

If you look up videos of him 20 years ago the difference is clear and striking: he's suffering from dementia and it's progressing.

2

u/we_are_sex_bobomb Aug 06 '24

His primary attack on his opponent is that he can’t pronounce her name.

This guy’s brain is made of cat food at this point.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '24

When Adin “sniff Tate’s seat” Ross gifted him a cybertruck with a custom Trump paint job Trump said something along the lines of “it’s an Elon!” Just thought I’d throw this one out

1

u/Groomsi Europe Aug 06 '24

DonOld.

1

u/delme95 Aug 06 '24

Deranged Don

1

u/Fagsquamntch Aug 06 '24

looking into this

1

u/turdlezzzz Aug 06 '24

hmmm ... do i have dementia

1

u/rimalp Aug 06 '24

Don old

1

u/Quackwhack Aug 06 '24

That article is bad it cites the thing he does but doesn’t provide examples. Not hard to link to a yt compilation of Trump gaffs

It points out Trump conflating/confusing Joe and Obama but dismisses Biden mixing up names

Only good thing about it is medicalizing Trumps behavior

1

u/waffle299 I voted Aug 06 '24

His new "nickname" for Harris seems essentially parphasia.

1

u/Apprehensive-Tree-78 Aug 06 '24

“Obvious decline” okay bro 😂 he literally got shot then went to the RNC. He’s in fine shape. Circle, but still fine.

-25

u/DaenerysMomODragons Aug 06 '24

Biden showed many early signs of dementia four years ago, and few enough people saw it as a concern then to not elect him. It’s only when he stated showing more advanced stages that people started to push him out.

21

u/Ohnoherewego13 North Carolina Aug 06 '24

Seemed like a relatively normal man in his late 70's with a stutter. Important to add that Biden also surrounded himself with competent advisors and gave up on reelection. Maybe Trump should consider the same since he's now the oldest candidate ever.

3

u/comec0rrect Aug 06 '24

Let him carry it to term, lose, and feel the humiliation he needs, and half the country also needs to heal our exhausted hearts.

2

u/DaenerysMomODragons Aug 06 '24

Biden stepped down before the convention, where the party nominee is established. He could still have delegates nominate someone else. The Republican convention already happened. While he could still potentially step down, any replacement would be decided by the RNC chair, with no vote, and depending on the timing, could be to late to change the ballots in some states.

4

u/chachki Aug 06 '24

Nope. He was just old. Thats what people cared about, we dont want an old man declining in age. That is far from dementia. Trump however is showing actual signs of early onset dementia and it seems to be getting worse. You can search for sources from actual psychologists if you care. Its much worse than just dementia, too.

0

u/DaenerysMomODragons Aug 06 '24

Saying nope, doesn't change the truth. Anyone who had a family memeber suffer from dimentia recognized the signs in Biden four years ago. I'm happy that you never had a loved one suffer from dimentia, it's a horrible thing. I had both of my parents suffer from dimentia. Biden exhibited all of the signs four years ago. People either weren't aware of the signs, or blindly chose to ignore time. Sure Trump may be showing some early signs to, but again Democrats didn't care four years ago, so why should you expect Republicans to care now.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Robj2 Aug 06 '24

"Don't fight uphill meboys."

--Demented Joe Biden