Experts say Trump may be suffering from a serious problem

How old is too old to be the President of the United States? This is a question the public has been trying to answer now that the 2024 Presidential Election is a race between two of the oldest candidates ever to run for office. 

The 81-year-old Biden and 77-year-old Trump are both running at an age that some say is too old to be the leader of the free world, and several recent polls have revealed most Americans think the men should not be running. 

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For example, a February Ipsos poll found that 59% of those surveyed felt both Biden and Trump were too old to run for a second term in office. However, more respondents agreed that Biden's age was more of a problem than Trump's age. 

Only 62% of Americans thought Trump was too old to be the president again whereas a whopping 86% said the same about Biden. However, the polling from Ipsos was not the only recent survey to publish worrying findings. 

In March, polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found one in six people (63%) said they weren’t confident in Biden’s mental capabilities while 57% said the same about Trump.

Age is just a number if you still have your mental faculties about you, and while Biden or Trump could prove to be mentally fit presidents after 2024, there are some experts who believe Trump is showing signs of suffering from dementia. 

Dr. Lance Dodes is a supervising analyst emeritus of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and a retired Harvard Medical School professor who recently described the issues he sees in the former president. 

"Unlike normal aging, which is characterized by forgetting names or words, Trump repeatedly shows something very different: confusion about reality," Dr. Dodes wrote in a statement published March 15th according to Newsweek. 

"If he were to become president he would have to be immediately removed from office via the 25th Amendment as dangerously unable to fulfill the responsibilities of office," Dr. Dodes continued. But he’s not the only expert warning about Trump. 

Newsweek reported that New York psychologist Suzanne Lachmann noted Trump will "seemingly forget how the sentence began and invent something in the middle" which results in "an incomprehensible word salad.”

Psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School has also voiced his concerns about the former president’s problems and started a petition aimed at getting professionals to sign onto a diagnosis that Trump is suffering from dementia. 

“From our years of training and experience, we are convinced that, while a definitive diagnosis would require further testing, Donald Trump is showing unmistakable signs strongly suggesting dementia,” the petition reads. 

The probable diagnosis asserted in the petition is based on Trump’s “public behavior and informant reports that show progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, ability to use language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills.”

Cornell University senior lecturer Harry Segal noted that there are examples of Trump suffering from phonemic paraphasia, which Segal described as the swapping of words that sound similar. It's an issue thought to be a sign of early dementia, though intermittent. 

One of these phonemic paraphasia incidents may have occurred at a Georgia rally in March when the former president was trying to mock Biden over the wars in Israel and Ukraine but ended up looking silly mistaking Putin for Poten. 

"Israel wouldn't have been attacked and Russia wouldn't be fighting with Ukraine," Trump said. "I know 'Poten' very well,” Trump said on stage according to a quote of the former president's comments from The Mirror. 

However, it's important to note that whether or not the former president is suffering from dementia is something only a proper test can reveal, but it is certainly likely the topic will become far more prevalent as the election moves forward.