Investigate POTUS’ Health Cover-Up
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
Congress needs to investigate the cover-up of the president’s health.
No, not Biden’s health, which has become an excuse for avoiding the obvious problems with Trump’s health.
Biden’s no longer the president. He’s no longer making decisions affecting the nation’s security.
This guy, though, is:
Link to original post including the video.
This kind of confabulation is familiar to me, having a parent with dementia. They fake reality to fill in gaps in what they actually recall, and as long as they’re not called out on it they continue to roll with it. They may even believe their fabrication because they can draw on nothing that undermines it.
Depending on the time of day and who corrects them, they may back off or they may become petulant and act out if they are sundowning.
Nobody confronts him. They just let him spew that garbage and replay it to the public without context to call it into question, cementing it as alternative reality.
This is dangerous as fuck, a threat to national security.
The video in the post above was recorded August 26 in a close cabinet meeting. The meeting was held during a period when Trump wasn’t seen by the public, between August 24 and September 2, sparking questions across social media platforms asking if Trump was dead.
Photos taken of him on August 30 preparing to get into a vehicle did not assure the public of his health. He looked pale, pasty, and not very energetic.
Trump’s slack jaw open mouth appearance in several photos that day caused many to ask if he’d had a stroke.
Yesterday there was more evidence yet that Trump may have had a recent neurological event. Lauren Esposito at The Daily Beast offered several perspectives in her report:
President Donald Trump was sporting a doozy of a droopy face as he ventured outside the White House Thursday amid mounting questions about his health.
The 79-year-old president appeared at a Pentagon event commemorating the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, where the right side of his face sparked a wave of online speculation.
Matt Binder of Substack newsletter Disruptionist asked if this may be an AI avatar of Trump:
Link to original tweet on Xitter including video clips.
It’s not just the glitch Binder noted which is concerning; Trump’s right hand is covered by his left. It could be an attempt to hide the bruising frequently noted on his hand, or it could be an effort to hide both a spasm like dystonia or tardive dyskenia, or a decreasing ability to freely using his right hand and fingers. Whatever it is looks awkward and unnatural because Trump talks with his hands.
How would the average American know whether they’re looking at a sick man faking it through his duties, or an artificial construct created to replace him, operated by unelected handlers?
Some have speculated Trump has had Bell’s palsy which frequently manifests as paralysis of one side of the face – but not paralysis or weakening of one half of the body. There’s been no deeper speculation about the underlying cause of the palsy.
Has Trump one or more major neurological events which could affect his ability to fulfill his duties as president?
Has he already subordinated his duties to others around him — outside of the Constitution’s 25th Amendment — including whomever may have made an AI avatar of him used yesterday?
Why aren’t any of the White House staff speaking with media to address Trump’s obvious health problems, instead of covering it up by ignoring it?
When is Congress going to investigate this immediate concern rather than wasting time on a political witch hunt focusing on a former president?
And when is the GOP caucus in Congress going to grasp the reality they are under the thumb of a guy who’s health is clearly compromised? What happens to the GOP both in Congress and the party machine if Trump becomes further debilitated?
~ ~ ~
There is one more huge problem Congress won’t address, regardless of the party helming either house.
That’s the failure of U.S. media outlets. It’s clear based on the complete lack of coverage of Trump’s health that the largest and most influential newspapers conducted a partisan hit job on Joe Biden during his last year in office.
There has been little coverage of Trump’s disappearance for four days by The New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times.
There has been limited coverage of Trump’s obvious hand bruises and his edema, but not a daily report on his health — not like that NYT and WaPo published day after day.
Biden’s health problems were far less obvious and yet they drew magnitude more coverage.
Trump’s latest health problem was picked up in The Daily Beast. Not a single story in any of the major newspapers or cable outlets over the last 20 hours.
It’s rather sad to see multiple Indian news outlets — Hindustan Times, Times of India, Times Now, for example — are doing a far better job of covering Trump’s health on a timely basis.
We’re going to have to build a better media ecosystem if we’re going to get the news we need because the major U.S. outlets prove repeatedly they are not capable of meeting this moment in history.
Their wall-to-wall coverage of a political pundit’s death avoiding altogether coverage of the seated president’s health is yet more evidence of the problem we need to fix and quickly.
If you want to look at the front pages of the NYT, WaPo, and LAT as printed today, check these links:
NYT https://d2dr22b2lm4tvw.cloudfront.net/ny_nyt/2025-09-12/front-page.pdf
WaPo https://d2dr22b2lm4tvw.cloudfront.net/dc_wp/2025-09-12/front-page.pdf
LAT https://d2dr22b2lm4tvw.cloudfront.net/ca_lat/2025-09-12/front-page.pdf
I don’t think these will be available on Saturday; I drilled down through FreedomForum.org’s Today’s Front Pages to get the PDF link.
Nothing about Trump’s health more than 24 hours after his droopy faced appearance.
I’m an emergency physician, trained at Stanford. Trump has shown progressive signs of frontotemporal dementia-PSP- for years, and it’s getting worse. His posture, speech pattern, coordination issues. Looks like he’s getting IV infusions of something and is trying to hide it.
That’s not Bell’s Palsy, which involves the forehead and would cause drooping of the eyelid.
Thank you for your feedback.
My spouse’s cousin developed Bell’s Palsy after a viral infection; the paralysis involved their eye as well as their mouth. Unfortunately the paralysis lingered for years.
Welcome to emptywheel.
ADDER: I agree with you about the FTD though I think he’s experienced parkinsonism.
Friend of mine had Bell’s palsy and it affected his eye and mouth on one side.
12:24 AM 14-SEP-2025
Dawned on me infusions could indicate he’s shifted a stage if he’s got CHF.
Could inotropics be administered by IV through a patient’s hands? I know nothing about this class of drugs. Thanks.
Fundamentally, follow the money. All of these outlets are owned / run by Convict-1’s pals (and I would wager all of them were at the recent Rose Garden CLub event as well) and ones that aren’t directly under a pal’s thumb are likely to be under WH kompromat. That’s why we’re not hearing it, similar to how the National Enquirer did catch and kill operations for Convict-1 in the past.
The GOP caucus is just fine with a weak and debilitated POTUS, because to quote their guru (Grover Norquist) he only needs to be able to hold a pen (in this case a Sharpie) to sign whatever is placed in front of him. It’s useful for Vlad as well.
What needs to be done is the restoration of the Fairness Doctrine but the current Congressional majority will not do it nor will the pet FCC enforce it either. However, the law is needed to fix things later when the pendulum swings back.
I don’t think wall-to-wall “Swan Lake” on TV/video channels will work in the US the way it seems to do in Russia.
If the WH thinks no one notices because they’re keeping it out of the news, they need to get out of that basement.
Not a conspiracy theory but damned lucky break that Kirk died when he did — wiped all kinds of stories off the front page including Trump’s health.
Notice there’s zero on the front pages about the Epstein emails about which Bloomberg reported yesterday.
ADDER: Goddamn it.
The Kirk shooting knocked a few front page stories out of the news.
You mentioned Epstein emails.
There was also Russia sending drones into Poland. In response to that action, our President said, “here we go.” Whatever that means.
More worrisome for President Trump was the conviction and sentencing of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. He was sentenced to 27 years and 3 months in prison for his unsuccessful coup attempt.
I’ve been looking for 3 days in MSNBC’s Youtube feed for a story about Brazil, but crickets, until tonight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AmoW_XCKYQ
The KirkEpstein coverage has delivered a knockout blow to this apparently “3rd-string” story. Rubio is now making unspecified public threats to Brazil to extract some kind of pain (beyond the 50% tarriffs?) for mistreating their boy Bolso…
NBC did cover it elsewhere, like CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/12/us-warns-of-response-to-witch-hunt-after-brazils-bolsonaro-sentenced-to-27-years.html
Yep, the timing of the drones over Poland was oddly fortuitous. I was surprised it only triggered Article 4 and not 5.
To say nothing of an incipient war with Venezuela. My experience with people in the petulant and argumentative stage of dementia indicates that “war” is a concept that remains at least emotionally intact, for a much longer time than such details as “law” and “collateral damage.”
My mother was a medical professional, basically her whole career. Towards the end of her life she refused to talk about her ailments, and she understood the need for objective medical evaluations. As her mind drifted into dementia, she ggot this fantasy that if she didn’t talk about the ailments they would go away. It was the most startling thing I ever saw in her. It was childish. It wasn’t her, it was dementia that created this state of mind.
The concern you have is built around the above paragraph. The press isn’t talking to Donald Trump, they are talking to dementia.
Basically, as far as I know, the blood just stops circulating to the brain, the entire vascular system just stops working properly. It will happen to most of us because USA citizens basically live healthy lifestyles. He’s gonna start falling if he isn’t already.
Idk, I grew up in a medical family, a musician is what I think I am.
We have dementia for a president. It is extremely dangerous. Let’s watch the MAGA cult deal with it. Ah….
Looks like Bell’s palsy to me. I’ve had it, twice, and the social experience was instructive.
I was at work when half my mouth quit working. Coworkers said, in sum, you’ve had a stroke, you should go to the ER. As I walked in, a nurse met me and asked what was up.
‘The people I work with think I’ve had a stroke.’
She suppressed a smile. ‘I am not allowed to tell you what it is but you haven’t had a stroke.’
Later, I went to my GP for followup. He was, at that time, 83 years old and had been doctoring for over half a century. He told me no one had ever presented to him with Bell’s.
Of course not. They rush to the ER because they think they’ve had a stroke.
trump’s facial paralysis looks mild and his recovery, if it was indeed Bell’s, was speedy.
That’s my diagnosis of the prez. My diagnosis of the press is that they are afraid.
Gee, thanks Dr. Eagar. So no chance at all Trump had a transient ischemic attack, hmm? *eye roll*
What part of ‘if indeed it was Bell’s’ puzzles you? I have suspected that trump has been having mini-strokes for a long time.
That does not preclude a spot of Bell’s. If it was Bell’s, he seems to have got over the main effect quickly, as I noted.
Someone should ask him to whistle. I bet he can’t.
Reply to Harry Eagar
September 13, 2025 at 11:00 am
Before you pop off at me exposing further ignorance. you should try reading the rest of the comments.
My grandmother had micro- and mini-strokes. It affected her vision. She could still talk, right up until she died. Don’t generalize so much, because strokes are not one-type-fits-all.
Anecdotes, however charming, are neither facts nor a diagnosis.
Some detail for those who are interested … .
Bell’s palsy causes paralysis/weakness affecting the entire side of the face: the forehead, eyebrow, eyelid, and corner of the mouth. A stroke/TIA, although obviously more serious, does NOT involve the forehead/eyes. The difference has to do with peripheral vs. central neuroanatomy.
Bell’s palsy involves dysfunction of a peripheral nerve (the facial nerve) that innervates the entire side of the face. Stroke/TIA involves a central, one-sided, brain impairment. Because both the right and left brain hemispheres separately control the upper face, the non-involved hemisphere allows the upper face to maintain function. In other words, the absence vs. presence of upper face function may be dispositive (e.g., for Harry’s nurse) in making the diagnosis. That is what I looked for when I saw the photo. Which is not dispositive.
And is what I looked for when watching the video of the 9/11 memorial (see Rayne’s link to Hindustan Times above). Again, not dispositive.
Thanks for your feedback.
Going through all the photos at Associated Press taken of Trump on 9/11, it looked like the flacidity on the right lower side of Trump’s face slowly eased over the course of the day. He looked extremely tired as the day progressed. I lean toward a possible TIA. It’s a shame a family member hadn’t taken him out of the day’s activities and let him rest.
Caveat: most strokes. Not all. (My father’s were in the brainstem. The effects were not one-sided, as it damaged some of the cranial nerves at the source.)
Thanks P J Evans for clarifying. FYI: There is a “BE FAST” acronym for recognizing stroke.
Keep in mind that when persons with recent/prior stroke are tired the underlying residual deficits—otherwise compensated for when more awake—can be “unmasked”. The more tired, the more apparent.
I’m not a medical expert, but I have had a TIA, and subsequently done a lot of reading on both strokes and TIAs. It’s my understanding that TIAs typically don’t last longer than a few minutes (although mine lasted a few hours), so the extended nature of the droopyness would be unusual.
Another thing to consider is that a significant percentage of people who experience a TIA will go on to have a stroke within a few months, if I remember correctly.
Reply to Ruthie2the
September 13, 2025 at 11:04 am
I had a close friend who had a TIA which caused temporary paralysis along one side of her body combined with slurred speech, followed by fatigue. The paralysis lasted for nearly 12 hours, gradually fading. The fatigue lasted for days. I suspect each person’s experience of TIA can vary widely given the number of factors involved from blood pressure to degree of heart disease to hydration.
loose thread i am trying to connect to something:
weren’t there concerns about aspartame, diet coke, and bell’s palsy a couple of decades ago, something that also connected to donald rumsfeld and gilead?
Nope. Bell’s Palsy involves the forehead, causing drooping of the eyelid too.
I suspect the guy uses Botox. If so, maybe that would mask droopy eyelid?
Ha! It is Botox for sure!
I’ve had trigeminal neuralgia for years (not constant, thank God). Trump displays a head-flop toward the right shoulder; he’s had it for at least a decade, and never seems to have attempted correcting it. I wouldn’t have noticed if I weren’t so acutely aware of my own, which one neurologist linked to the TGN.
I’ve come to regard diagnoses as often-intimidating labels slapped on complex and interconnected phenomena. This is partly because of my own “complex” (the word specialists use) presentation, but largely because I was a biology major–pre-med until I wasn’t. Life has taught me that drawing lines between conditions makes understanding them harder, not easier.
What am I missing? I keep seeing these claims but I am not seeing it. In the one from him speaking at the 9/11 memorial the mike mostly blocks view of his mouth, in the linked video he is mostly turned to the right so it is also hard to see the right side of his face. The left side of his face does droop slightly, I think generally, but as he is speaking both corners of his mouth lift in tandem and his lips work fine.
See the photos in this story:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/donald-trumps-face-completely-droops-during-911-events-as-health-concerns-rise/ar-AA1Mmuek
I had seen those photos in articles about the drooping but had not been able to find them from original news media, so that helps. But then I don’t see it when he is at the mike. Strange,
You’d see it if you clicked on any of the three citations to media in India that Rayne provided in the third from the last paragraph of her post.
The drooping of the whole right side of his face is pronounced. They let him go out looking that way, which I assume was better than he looked before they let him go out.
You’re probably right about Trump’s handlers spiffing him up beforehand, but he still looks like death warmed over.
I don’t see it either, Nord Dakota.
I just see an aging man with a sagging face.
One of Rayne’s points is that American media are not covering this.
Daily Beast has the story and picture, as do the three Indian media Rayne gave cites for in the third from the last paragraph of her post. The drooping right side of his face is noticeable.
It’s kind of sad watching overseas news outlets notice Americans getting upset with the lack of coverage of Trump’s health.
Like this one in Ireland: https://www.the-express.com/entertainment/tv/183554/cnn-slammed-donald-trump-health-coverage
Dementia in family members is no laughing matter, of course. I’d not heard the term sundowning in that context. Borrowing crassly from Gordon Lightfoot, for DT:
I heard some stories while commuting by train. People still driving when they needed the keys removed and locked away, mostly, and a few family members who wouldn’t do that much, even when accidents were happening.
I never thought about the song in THAT context. It recently was featured twice in the remake of Salem’s Lot, which involves vampires of a sort.
it was a blatant hijacking of the original context of the song…
punaise, I always loved that song. Learned the term “sundowning” (verb) when my aunt was in late-stage Alzheimer’s at 90. Now I understand why I heard Gordon Lightfoot’s voice in my head so insistently during those years! Thank you.
When it comes to representing the decline of dementia, the best work is probably The Caretaker’s Everywhere At The End Of Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJWksPWDKOc
It’s 6.5 HOURS long, but each section covers a point during the onset of dementia.
It’s as if American media have voluntarily adopted the UK’s “D” notice system, which is an official “request” (ignored at great peril to your organization) not to publish a story or write about a subject, owing to the risks to national security. Like many censorship regimes, it is open to considerable abuse.
Our press has a very long history of ignoring politicians’ foibles. Think Wayne Hays.
That offers the handy option of not ignoring them when a news outlet wants to go after a politician without engaging on some issue.
I could bore you with many examples, but here’s one I watched (but was not a participant in): very popular woman running for governor. I am not sure why the people running my paper wanted to keep her out of the governor’s mansion, but I suspect it was because her husband was a full-on fraudster who had, till then, evaded prosecution. She also had an alcohol problem, though no worse than the common run of local politicians.
Anyway, the paper made her a figure of fun over such petty issues as her frequently changing hairstyles. She lost.
Why trump gets his pass had been a mystery to me. But by this point real fear is sufficient to explain it.
On Fox this morning Trump said we don’t want immigrants burning down shopping centers, shooting people down in the middle of the street.
Where are shopping centers burning?
Or maybe if any burned down in the L.A. fires, those weren’t set by immigrants, were they?
The violence fantasies of the Republicans slipped the surley bonds of Earth long ago, lead by Trump. The ongoing dissonance of Republican leadership offering insane assertions (Trump as an FBI jnformant, the “violent left” killing bonnie Charlie Kirk) with no pushback from media at all can be disorienting if you let it get to you. In a real sense, the entire Republican party has dementia, we’re the ones suffering from it.
In this video, Mockler points out that Trump asked about Kirk, twice, breaks into the ballroom shit.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oyPZSRSm9L4
I haven’t heard of *any* shopping centers burning down anywhere, and if one did I’d suspect the shopping center owner first.
I have, however, heard of a government buildings on fire — in Indonesia, in Nepal, and in the Marshall Islands. Hope somebody wasn’t feeding him news about any of these in a way that his addled brain would conflate with the US.
Addled brain and/or inciting his followers.
In Lahaina two burned, three if you count Front Street. But while that fire has been highly politicized, it does not lend itself to myths about rioters.
LA fires? Yes, a FEW shopping centers DID burn during the 1992 Rodney King riots. One could argue that indeed those whose ancestors were absconded forcefully to the new world did not immigrate voluntarily.
IIRC, a noticeable number of looters during the King riots were white and had money in their family (driving around in MBZs).
The only items “burnt” in LA in June were a couple of Waymo self-driving cars. No shopping centers.
I had a condition awhile ago that caused the left side of my face to squeeze. The temporary solution was to Botox my face to calm to squeezing. Turns out an artery had grown and wrapped itself around the seventh cranial nerve, and was choking the nerve. A five-hour surgery at UCSF where the surgeon unwound the artery off of the nerve resolved the issue.
That’s scary. I’m glad they could fix it.
The condition was more embarrassing than scary.
Oh, the operation scary? The doctor doing the injections advised NOT to have that surgery – death was a real possible outcome.
The condition was getting worse and the Botox was no longer calming the condition as it once did – I figured I’d roll the dice. I won.
My opinion… “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and have a cerebrovascular accident, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”
Unless he pulls a “Greg Stillson”, it will get no traction. It’s like comparing the measured decisions of Earl Warren to the supplicant boot-licks of John Roberts.
But I do think the Orange Shite Stain will eventually have a petulant melt-down. Unfortunately, we have JD Vance in the wings, waiting. He will be more destructive than Epstein’s “Pal”.
To his cult a disabled broken Trump would garner even more awe and devotion: “Look at him issuing commands from his bed/wheelchair! Nothing can stop him! He cares so much about Making America Great Again!”
Because gruntfuttock suggested this (yes, I go through the Trash):
Re: “To his cult a disabled broken Trump would garner even more awe and devotion” Brings up images of Disney’s Jim Bowie at the Alamo in his sickbed fighting off unsuccesfully an overwhelming number of Santa Ana’s soldiers. But only Jim Bowie could go full Jim Bowie. (h/t of sorts – Tropic Thunder)
sksksksk the orange dude couldn’t even walk let alone ride a golf cart to the Capitol with his minions on January 6.
Fattest. Bowie. Ever.
Meaning no disrespect, perhaps the above rehearses a sound political talking point, and certainly it’s evidence (added to the surfeit) of the MSM’s disparate treatment of Biden and Trump, but otherwise I don’t understand how anyone could be interested in Trump’s medical condition and whether it might affect his ability to fulfill his duties as president. Even if Trump were as healthy as Ronny Jackson proclaims and in full cognitive splendor, he would, owing to his sociopathology and limited intellect, be bereft of any capacity to fulfill his duties as president. Any hypothetical diminishment of capacity due to health issues or dementia is completely de minimis.
Um…bombing Chicago instead of Iran?
LOL. “I don’t understand how anyone could be interested in the medical condition of the airline pilot flying the plane I’m on, and whether it might affect his ability to fulfill his duties.”
After the Air India crash that occurred a few months ago possibly due to what may have been suicide by one of the pilots, Captain Steeve on his podcasts was talking about pilots psychological health and how he decided to also get a degree in psychology.
He’s had a guy on that started the program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuzzEYbvTG0
Trump has been having “issues” with bruising on his right hand since 2020, possibly July. Getty Images is a great source of dated photos. For a week in October 2020, he had a bandaid right where he bruises now. He’s been wearing makeup on it regularly since January, if not earlier. Now the “issue” has begun appearing on his left hand.
[Moderator’s notes: IMPORTANT – see your comment at 2:38 AM ET. /~Rayne]
Thank you Rayne for a timely and overdue discussion of the pathetic mental and physical health of the current occupant of the now gilded Oval Office. Trump might be the most unhealthy President since Howard Taft. The fact that his HHS department uses a motto “Make America healthy again” [MAHA] is a sad joke with an out of shape slob like Trump at the helm. Worse still is his delusional ideation, extreme narcissism and sociopathy, which makes him unable to empathize with anyone. Call Jim Comer’s DC office and tell him to do his job, if he is really concerned about the overall health of the person occupying the highest office in the Land!
We need RFK the Lesser on this. It’s the orange makeup. Here’s how I know.
My current read is about the explorer Percy Fawcett, who ended his career hiking in search of the famed glittering kingdom of El Dorado. He just couldn’t resist, after reading things like this: “The Great Lord … goes about continually covered in gold dust as fine as ground salt. He feels that it would be less beautiful to wear any other ornament. It would be crude and common to put on armour plates of hammered or stamped gold, for other rich lords wear those when they wish. But to powder oneself with gold is something exotic, unusual, novel and more costly–for he washes away at night what he puts on each morning, so that it is discarded and lost, and he does this every day of the year.”
The obvious inference here is that, like the lead makeup of yore, the Great Lord’s gold makeup killed him off, and that’s why the civilization was lost. Right? So, has anyone investigated the orange? Who approved that stuff, some liberal? It’s probably made from vaccine spores or such. Time to get on it. Unless there’s no FDA any more, of course.
One more line that rings a bell: “Another chronicler reported that the king slathered himself in gold and floated on a lake, gleaming like a ray of the sun, while his subjects made offerings of gold jewelry, fine emeralds and other pieces of their ornaments.“
For years now, I’ve been waking up hoping to learn that Trump stroked out the night before. Someday it will be true. Media coverage, or lack thereof, won’t change the timing.
Great, then save the bits and bytes and don’t post this kind of opinion. The public has a need to know if the person sworn to execute the laws faithful is competent; if not, they have a right to insist their members of Congress and the cabinet address the incompentency.
This is not about your wishes but American democracy and how it’s supposed to work, including the role of the 4th Estate which has been failing for years.
Thanks Rayne. From the medical realm there is a distinction between competence and capacity. “Competence” is mostly a legal term, is binary (either the patient is, or isn’t competent), is based on history, and mostly is static over time. “Capacity”, as applied in medicine (as in a patient’s “medical decision-making capacity”), ebbs and flows according to often changing, real-time, circumstances.
I think that making this distinction here is useful, perhaps because “competence” is more backward looking and “capacity” more forward looking. To apply the term “capacity” asks us to foresee whether the president will have the presidential decision-making capacity to properly deal with the most dire of unforeseeable circumstances when he is, either mentally or physically, at his foreseeable worst. That is: Given all that we know, and apart from the fact that the president might be, for the sake of the argument, “competent” now, can we be assured that he will have the “capacity” to perform well at the time of the proverbial “3 AM phone call”?
If we assume, for the sake of argument, that capacity or competency must be yoked to some semblance of reality, then the question resolves itself without any medical sophistication.
trump believes in things that are manifestly not there, like rioting Muslims, $2 gasoline and burning shopping centers. Perhaps this does not rise to the medical definition of a psychotic, but it will do for me.
Was it Kelly who described trump as ‘the most damaged man’ he had met? Part of the difficulty in trying to inhabit trump’s mental space is that he exhibits so many illnesses. Take your pick.
While everybody else spent the past 8 years ruminating on his narcissism, I have thought that the core mania was megalomania, and that seems to be very obvious now: grasping for Canada and Greenland; claiming to know the most about wind, grass, construction and finance; ordering around the courts of Brazil etc.
He is pretty close to duplicating Hitler ordering out imaginary battalions, and I’d like to know what he is ingesting besides Big Macs.
The issue of competency is why I shared Malcolm Nance’s post in my post — if Trump is and has been confabulating and with consistency (because the example isn’t the first/only time he’s made up crap), he’s demonstrating he may not have future capacity.
I think we’ll know from the horns and yelling and people dancing in the streets (across the USA).
Almost on topic, this suggests a potential elder abuse scam: Madame punaise had some questions for the Social Security Administration, and she was told by a chatbot (?) that she couldn’t go to our local office in person. She was redirected to a third-party (private) entity called My Just Answer dot com which proceeded to charge her $5 for the inquiry. Somehow that transaction ballooned to $45, which Chase flagged as potential fraud. We shut it down, and upon doing a bit of research it appears to be scammy or scam-adjacent. Oddly, Snopes dot com has nothing but if you Google “is ___ a scam”, there is plenty of fodder.
Have to wonder if the DOGE gutting of SS staff lead to this sort of sketchy outsourcing. Shouldn’t info from the government be free? (even if we don;t like the answer: no , we can;t retiree just yet)
Wow. I found a “Just Answer” – apparently now named Pearl. It has very little onilne information about itself, including one of the skimpiest of wiki entries (barring the characters who manage to avoid any entry).
It’s an AI chatbot. Lots of apparently massaged five-star responses. Up front fee to join, high monthly fees. Purports to check its AI-generated answers through one of many “thousands” of human professionals in a ridiculous wide area of specialties. The business model seems questionable.
If SS were actually mandating its use, that should have been publicized, with a public comment period.
Are you saying she did or did not go to the SSA website?
If someone needs to speak to SSA, call their telephone number at opening 7am.
I did that back in April when I needed to change my bank info, which at that time was still available by phone; I’m not sure that’s still available by phone.
Even though I called at 7am and got through, it took about another half hour before someone came on and he gave me a hard time as to why I wasn’t doing it online and then asked me tons of questions; lots more questions than I’ve ever been asked before by them.
He did complete the change for me.
I noticed that just this month, my SSA check was cited from a different source on my credit union account statement. It’s really got me wondering.