Jeffrey J. Mariotte

Because we need a president about whom there is no question of cognitive function

My father, like Donald Trump’s, died of Alzheimer’s disease.

I’m a decade younger than Trump, and I’ve started seeing a neurologist (and had a battery of tests), because if I start to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s, I want to know it as early as possible. There are now treatments that can delay the disease’s progression, and more research is underway. Someday it might not be a death sentence. Someday, the weeks and months and years before death might not be a nightmare from which there is no waking.

We, the American public, have not seen an authentic report on Trump’s physical and mental condition at any point in his political career (and probably not even before that). His “medical” reports are dictated by him to crackpot doctors willing to set aside professional ethics and release whatever nonsense they’ve been spoon-fed.

That’s not good enough. One doesn’t have to attend his rallies in person to see that he’s decompensating before our eyes. Instead of prepared remarks, he freestyles. And what he says makes no sense. He goes off on tangents that never circle around to any real point or connect to what came before or will come after. He talks about sharks and electric boats and the genitalia of famous golfers. He brags about his own wealth and power, his “beautiful body,” his incredible athletic skills.

Trump has always been a liar, always inflated his own capabilities, always believed that there is no one more important or worthy than himself. That’s not new. What is new is his mangled syntax, sentences that begin here, stray over there, and never wind up anywhere. He’s using less complex sentence structure and shorter, easier words than he has in the past. He has more trouble marshaling multiple thoughts to make a point.

On those occasions when he does utter a sentence in which the ending has something to do with the beginning, it’s often one describing something he doesn’t like. He rails against immigrants, against the media, against his perceived enemies. His governing philosophy has always been “us versus them”—“them” being everyone who doesn’t support him, people of color, and people whose job it is to enforce the law. But his attacks on “them” are more pointed than ever, and phrased in simplistic words and sentences, which can indicate cognitive decline.

Does Trump have Alzheimer’s? We can’t know unless he subjects himself to real neurological testing and makes the results public, and he’s not going to do that. And that’s a problem.

I loved my father, who was a kind and gentle man. He was outgoing, making friends everywhere he went. But once Alzheimer’s set in, he became angry, bitter, and cruel.

Trump, too, is angry, bitter, and cruel.

We need a president about whom there is no question of cognitive function. Even if I disagreed with Kamala Harris’s policies (which I don’t), I’d say that she’s better suited to the job than her opponent.

Jeffrey J. Mariotte is the author of more than sixty novels.