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boonecreek

(1,529 posts)
Mon Apr 13, 2026, 04:58 PM Yesterday

NY Times Drops Splashy New Feature on Trump's Mental Acuity: 'Less Restrained and More Incoherent'

Source: MEDIAite

The New York Times published a new piece questioning President Donald Trump's
mental acuity on Monday, hours after a Sunday night / Monday morning Truth Social tirade
that included an attack on Pope Leo XIV and a now deleted image of the commander in
chief as Jesus Christ.

A story entitled "Trump's Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health
Debate," written by Peter Baker, once again raised Trumps cognitive ability.

In the piece Baker writes that Trump is "even less restrained and more incoherent at times":

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/ny-times-drops-splashy-new-feature-on-trumps-mental-acuity-less-restrained-and-more-incoherent/



22 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
NY Times Drops Splashy New Feature on Trump's Mental Acuity: 'Less Restrained and More Incoherent' (Original Post) boonecreek Yesterday OP
"Less restrained" than wha? He's always been a livetohike Yesterday #1
The next restraining needs to be by handcuffs Whyisthisstillclose Yesterday #2
Or a straight jacket. 11 Bravo Yesterday #5
Does this mean the NYT has been informed by their bosses in the deep state that Trump is on his way out? bbernardini Yesterday #3
Maybe they heard that the suit against Wall Street and the Guardian were going to be dropped. choie Yesterday #9
Hey! Someone call Jake Tapper! paleotn Yesterday #4
Splashy -- like a turd dropping into a toilet Blue Owl Yesterday #6
LOL. I sent them an email asking... S/V Loner Yesterday #7
Thank you! Prairie Gates Yesterday #11
LOL S/V Loner Yesterday #13
100%. Great observation and comment. He sucks chicoescuela 19 hrs ago #17
I hate that "drops" is now a word that now also means its opposite. (n/t) thesquanderer Yesterday #8
Written by Trump Whisperer Asshole Peter Baker Prairie Gates Yesterday #10
I agree with Peter Baker on his assessment of Trump....... I have to wonder why riversedge Yesterday #12
Who still watches CNN?!? BigmanPigman Yesterday #14
Here's for you.... reACTIONary 23 hrs ago #15
"crazy-like-a-fox-or-just-plain-crazy"? BigmanPigman 22 hrs ago #16
The difference is entirely due to... reACTIONary 10 hrs ago #19
thanks for the free link NJCher 10 hrs ago #20
Mental fitness for what? jfz9580m 16 hrs ago #18
Trump's Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate (NYT Gift Link) LetMyPeopleVote 10 hrs ago #21
MaddowBlog-Trump confronts a public conversation he hoped to avoid over his mental stability LetMyPeopleVote 3 hrs ago #22

livetohike

(24,321 posts)
1. "Less restrained" than wha? He's always been a
Mon Apr 13, 2026, 05:01 PM
Yesterday

blowhard that says whatever crude thing comes to his feeble mind.

bbernardini

(10,020 posts)
3. Does this mean the NYT has been informed by their bosses in the deep state that Trump is on his way out?
Mon Apr 13, 2026, 05:17 PM
Yesterday

Also, does this tinfoil hat make my ass look big?

choie

(6,942 posts)
9. Maybe they heard that the suit against Wall Street and the Guardian were going to be dropped.
Mon Apr 13, 2026, 06:19 PM
Yesterday

And they decided the coast was clear. It's certainly not due to journalist integrity or balls.

S/V Loner

(9,556 posts)
7. LOL. I sent them an email asking...
Mon Apr 13, 2026, 05:48 PM
Yesterday

Why they pretend he isn’t nuts when everyone knows he is and to state reality.
You are welcome. Again. LOL.

Prairie Gates

(8,286 posts)
10. Written by Trump Whisperer Asshole Peter Baker
Mon Apr 13, 2026, 06:56 PM
Yesterday

Some say X. Some say Y. Democrats say X. Some on the right say Y. The White House says Z.

Who's to know?

It's all such an amusing little game!

- Byline, Peter Baker

FUCK PETER BAKER.

riversedge

(81,028 posts)
12. I agree with Peter Baker on his assessment of Trump....... I have to wonder why
Mon Apr 13, 2026, 07:06 PM
Yesterday

his staff does not reign him in. But I suspect Trump would not listen anyways.

In the piece Baker writes that Trump is "even less restrained and more incoherent at times":


BigmanPigman

(55,293 posts)
14. Who still watches CNN?!?
Mon Apr 13, 2026, 07:32 PM
Yesterday

I guess it's the same people who still buy and read the NYT and WaPo.

BigmanPigman

(55,293 posts)
16. "crazy-like-a-fox-or-just-plain-crazy"?
Mon Apr 13, 2026, 11:09 PM
22 hrs ago

That is what I asked my psychiatrist in 2017 and his reply sort of scared me. He went with the "crazy like a fox" answer. I wonder what his answer would be today if he hadn't retired in 2019.

NJCher

(43,266 posts)
20. thanks for the free link
Tue Apr 14, 2026, 11:03 AM
10 hrs ago

I'd say that sub-head is pretty strong:

As the president threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as “lunatic” and “clearly insane.”

I emphasize:

As the president threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as “lunatic” and “clearly insane.”

jfz9580m

(17,361 posts)
18. Mental fitness for what?
Tue Apr 14, 2026, 05:39 AM
16 hrs ago

Last edited Tue Apr 14, 2026, 06:16 AM - Edit history (1)

Trump is mentally fit enough to be a reality show star, a professional celebrity, an influencer, a performance artist of some sort I suppose. To the extent that the first three can be considered a profession, he is I suppose “crazy as a fox” as his acolytes brand it.

That is not the same as mental fitness for the office of the US presidency.

I for instance am mentally unfit to be an influencer, a television personality, a politician, a media figure.

I am mentally fit to be a (mediocre -extremely mediocre, bottom of the class and unlike Trump ashamed of it, hyper super mediocre low IQ okay? Happy? And not suicidal because no one is suicidal for being the worst scientist ever. Someone has to be. I am not re-defining standards..it is not “imposter syndrome” which these barbarians would correctly identify as a hedge one could use hoping to throw off estimation of one’s precise level of low IQ, mediocrity. I am sticking with humor as a defensive mechanism..A classic. Total jackasses..And the humor is just for asshole “colleagues” who may justifiably be annoying about my mediocrity and well..at least I am not thriving in a world full of tech creeps who destroy society. Lamest self-defense imaginable. It’s asymmetric! Anyway, I am still filing complaints about all the rest of it which I never wilingly engaged with and never will. That is sanity. It has to be unconstitutional in both democracies involved) hard scientist, a private citizen in a democracy and an irate and gloomy anonymous activist and complainant and attempting to emulate those fine birds ostriches.

You put me in ill fitting contexts I would seem mentally unfit. Yeeesh.

I really got this girl..she was a very funny blogger I used to read back in the day.

I am sad to do this to her again. But she is funny organically rather than goaded into shedding the ordinary layer of human-whatever it is when people try to pass for insipid enough tp not attract a damn travelling, everywhere 3-ring circus, sucking away all your space and time with no explanation and an unclear expectation of the system of trust extending to some unknown, random creeps:

https://plork.blogspot.com/2005/09/i-am-become-famous.html?m=1

I am unwilling to start a Hello I am Stupid and Mediocre podcast. Seems a bit redundant.
But I did relate to that. Yeesh. Any shame or what? Idiots..


What I am confused about is how this is a test of general intelligence I failed when I tried to indicate over and over that I would kowtow to academic scientists in my field or the ORI or my mentors (minus these tech creeps shilling agents and lie detectors and emotion ai) - they are actually elite in hard science. And okay fine.


But why I should pretend to be in some sort of “weeeeee” with other equally mediocre people without the sense to tell these tech creeps to fuck off and that one doesn’t buy that it is about Security, Safety, Healthcare, The Press (Yasha Levine or Chris Ketcham or Ed Zitron etc would never behave like the disgraceful NYT douchebag. Hey I have a disease! I am unfiltered! Like Trump! No picking on the diseased!)? This is bullshit.
I will finish this paper I was working on when I fell into whatever hell this was. But I am too old and tired to keep pretending that this rubbish isn’t rubbish.
And if you are hackers..get a life. No one is going to “learn to code!!” That’s why we have laws!
Crazy or what?

While this has strained my temper, my contract throughout was only with my mentor who works in my field and yes he shouldn’t watch TED tech and psych today (though it explains a lot about why outside the field he apparently does not notice that his school’s psychiatry dept etc is full of what can only be termed unutterably sleazy and stupid douchebags who wink at serious conflicts of interest involving data mining giants trying to sleazily mediate “open science” and healthcare and causing more calamities than anything they fix and endlessly doing pointless Solaristics like pretty much everything Alex Pentland does. Yeesh. Give me a fucking break. Security issue my ass. How is “I 💓 Epstein because he has money and I have no principles” a security issue connected with me? My mentor was decent, but all the crap like the MIT Media Lab and tech billionaire funding and game theoretic assholery and the harassing creeps on my street are the systemic issue. Not anyone I would even consider an actual scientist.)

LetMyPeopleVote

(180,478 posts)
21. Trump's Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate (NYT Gift Link)
Tue Apr 14, 2026, 11:08 AM
10 hrs ago

As the president threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as “lunatic” and “clearly insane.”






https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/us/politics/trump-mental-fitness-25th-amendment.html?unlocked_article_code=1.alA.T8aR.kAtYwbFz0brv&smid=tw-share

A series of disjointed, hard-to-follow and sometimes-profane statements capped by his “a whole civilization will die tonight” threat to wipe Iran off the map last week and his head-spinning attack on the “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” pope on Sunday night have left many with the impression of a deranged autocrat mad with power......

Democrats who have long challenged Mr. Trump’s psychological fitness have issued a fresh chorus of calls to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from power for disability. But it is not just a concern voiced by partisans on the left, late-night comics or mental health professionals making long-distance diagnoses. It can be heard now among retired generals, diplomats and foreign officials. And most strikingly, it can be heard now on the political right among onetime allies of the president....

Some of the questions about Mr. Trump’s soundness come from people who once worked with him and have since become critics. Even before the civilization post, Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer in Mr. Trump’s first term, told the journalist Jim Acosta that the president is “a man who is clearly insane” and that his recent string of belligerent, middle-of-the-night social media posts “highlights the level of his insanity.” Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary for Mr. Trump, wrote online last week that “he’s clearly not well.”....

Mr. Trump’s stability has been a recurring issue since he first sought the presidency in 2016. Numerous psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have weighed in with their own opinions even without the opportunity to evaluate him. John F. Kelly, his longest serving White House chief of staff in the first term, even bought a book by 27 of those specialists called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” in an effort to understand his boss and came to the conclusion that he was mentally ill.....

In his second term, Mr. Trump seems even less restrained and more incoherent at times. He uses more profanity, speaks longer and regularly makes comments rooted in fantasy rather than fact. He keeps saying that his father was born in Germany when in fact he was born in the Bronx. He repeats an invented story about his uncle, an M.I.T. professor, telling him about teaching the terrorist known as the Unabomber.

He wanders off into odd tangents — an eight-minute ramble at a Christmas reception about poisonous snakes in Peru, a long digression during a cabinet meeting about Sharpie pens, an interruption of an Iran war update to praise the White House drapes. He has confused Greenland with Iceland and more than once boasted of ending a fictional war between Cambodia and Azerbaijan, two countries separated by nearly 4,000 miles. (He evidently means Armenia and Azerbaijan).

Even before lashing out at Pope Leo XIV on Sunday night, and then posting an image of himself as a Jesus-like figure before deleting it, Mr. Trump had shocked many with his outbursts at critics. He accuses those who anger him of sedition, a crime punishable by death. He claimed bizarrely that the Hollywood director Rob Reiner, who was allegedly stabbed to death by his son, was killed “due to the anger he caused” by opposing Mr. Trump. When Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director and special counsel, died, Mr. Trump said, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”...

But there may be political latitude for it with his base. “There is an element of American politics in the age of polarization, particularly within the G.O.P., that likes this style of leadership,” Mr. Zelizer said. “What can be more anti-establishment than someone who is willing to be out of control?”

Please read this entire article. I have been convinced that trump is mentally ill for a long time but now it is getting worse and there are no John Kellys to try to keep trump from doing something stupid like attacking Iran and blockading another blockade.

LetMyPeopleVote

(180,478 posts)
22. MaddowBlog-Trump confronts a public conversation he hoped to avoid over his mental stability
Tue Apr 14, 2026, 05:42 PM
3 hrs ago

The article in the OP is cited heavily in this post

One observer argued, “The American people must not look away … They must pay attention to the president’s deterioration.”

Is Trump’s mental stability getting worse or has he always been this way? It’s tough to say with confidence.

What’s easier to say is that the intensifying public conversation about his mental fitness is getting louder, which is a disaster for the White House.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-04-14T20:56:03.629Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-confronts-a-public-conversation-he-hoped-to-avoid-over-his-mental-stability

Last week, after Donald Trump issued genocidal threats toward Iran and made strange comments at the White House Easter Egg Roll, Rep. Jamie Raskin decided to contact the president’s physician, seeking a “comprehensive cognitive and neurological evaluation.”

This week, the Maryland Democrat, who serves as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, took another step down the same path, unveiling a proposal to establish a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office. The measure, which was unveiled with 50 Democratic co-sponsors, would be responsible for determining whether the president is incapacitated “either mentally or physically” and unable to discharge the powers and duties of office, as called for in the 25th Amendment.....

Indeed, the day before Raskin unveiled his proposal, The New York Times published a striking report with an unsubtle headline: “Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate.” From the article:

President Trump’s erratic behavior and extreme comments in recent days and weeks have turbocharged the crazy-like-a-fox-or-just-plain-crazy debate that has followed him on the national political stage for a decade.

A series of disjointed, hard-to-follow and sometimes-profane statements capped by his ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’ threat to wipe Iran off the map last week and his head-spinning attack on the ‘WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy’ pope on Sunday night have left many with the impression of a deranged autocrat mad with power.


The Times highlighted a lawyer who used to work with Trump, who described the president as “a man who is clearly insane.” It also noted a recent comment from Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary who worked for Trump in his first term, who wrote online last week that her former boss is “clearly not well.”.....

Indeed, I remember the Times publishing a front-page report in October 2024, about a month before Election Day, that highlighted a variety of situations in which the Republican “seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality.” The same article added, “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body.”

A year and a half later, is Trump worse? It’s hard to say with confidence.

What’s easier to say with certainty, however, is that this entire line of inquiry is a disaster for the White House. Trump is woefully unpopular; he has no idea what to do with a struggling economy; and the destabilizing war he started in Iran for reasons he’s unable to explain clearly isn’t going according to plan — to the extent that the president even had a rudimentary plan at all.

It’s against this backdrop that the conversation about his mental fitness is getting louder.
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