It was big news across the nonauthoritarian-leaning side of the internet the other day when the NY Times finally published an article about the many signs of Trump’s seeming mental decline (not to mention his blooming psychopathy) and his apparent unfitness for office, headlined:

Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age

With the passage of time, the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years.

Fair enough, as far as they go in their detailed chronicle of his more and more demented statements as he campaigns to become president again, presumably by a combination of voter suppression, a surgically precise, razor-thin Electoral College win, strategic support from a corrupt and incompetent postmaster general, various MAGA election officials, MAGA state legislatures and MAGA state courts, his friends in Congress, The Heritage Foundation, The Federalist Society, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Robert Mercer, Ginni Thomas, General Flynn, Q, X, a corrupt 6-3 MAGA Supreme Court and, in a pinch, an army of angry low flying monkeys desperate to avenge the Confederacy’s inglorious military loss in 1865. 

The Grey Lady steers gracefully clear of violating anything like the sacred Goldwater Rule (no public comment on elected official’s dangerousness by mental health experts unless the elected psychopath in question agrees to be publicly psychoanalyzed) [1]. It quotes several who know the Republican candidate well and appear to think he’s just fine.

The Grey Lady also does not comment directly about how increasingly insane his rantings are. They simply provide many examples so an intelligent reader can draw the inference, if they so choose, that the man who says these things is dangerously insane, rather than a serious world leader for this perilous moment in human history. The Grey Lady seems to tastefully avoid (she’s nothing if not tasteful) the most hateful and violence-inspiring things trump constantly spews. Then she muses:

The former president has not been hobbled politically by his age as much as Mr. Biden was, in part because the incumbent comes across as physically frail while Mr. Trump still exudes energy. But his campaign has refused to release medical records, instead simply pointing to a one-page letter released in July by his former White House doctor reporting that Mr. Trump was “doing well” after being grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt.

Yo, Grey Lady, you leave out an obvious and immense part of why Biden was hobbled by fears about his age and you sell your influence short. Former president trump’s mental capacity was never written about negatively in the news section of the paper, as Joe Biden’s was, hundreds of times on the front page of the NY Times. Joe Biden’s every stutter and misstatement was amplified and questioned, his fitness for office constantly questioned, in news reports and editorials. Trump’s clear cognitive decline has been tastefully not spoken of (on the rationale that him being an inanely riffing, opinionated, fact-free asshole is not news) while the Grey Lady’s scrutiny of every Biden gaffe, stutter and misstatement was a major factor in Biden being forced to abandon his candidacy after a highly accomplished presidency.

One more, then you can go read the catalogue of trump’s idiocy yourself, at this gift link.

A 2022 study by a pair of University of Montana scholars found that Mr. Trump’s speech complexity was significantly lower than that of the average president over American history. (So was Mr. Biden’s.) The Times analysis found that Mr. Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level, lower than rivals like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who speaks at an eighth-grade level, which is roughly average for modern presidents.

It’s a tic, I suppose, to miss no opportunity to prove their unflinching fairness by once again pointing out that Biden too is, vocabulary and speech-complexity-wise, unfit for the presidency.

Are you smarter than a fourth grader? If so, read the NY Times with a critical eye for these fucking tics. The Grey Lady is all atwitch in these twitch-worthy times.

[1] OK, can’t resist one more. Note the Grey Lady’s lack of specificity, or an embedded link, in its reference to the recent conference of an anonymous group of mental health, national security and political experts whose 2017 New York Times bestseller the New York Times (in conjunction with the American Psychiatric Association,) successfully removed from public discussion during the trump presidency (and since):

Polls show that a majority of Americans believe he is too old to be president, and his critics have been trying to focus attention on that. A group of mental health, national security and political experts held a conference at the National Press Club in Washington last month on Mr. Trump’s fitness. The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group of former Republicans, regularly taunts him with ads like one calling his debate with Ms. Harris “a cognitive test” that he failed.