Trump vs. Harris: What did the Neurologist think

As mentioned earlier, I have studiously avoided anything about politics (newspapers, internet, tv) since 8 August, and have been the happier for it. My reasons are here — https://luysii.wordpress.com/2024/08/21/the-political-world-spun-on-its-axis-without-my-help/.

But there is nothing like listening to the candidates, pure and unvarnished, without the intermediary of spinmeisters spinning (they call it setting context). Everyone knows what Trump sounds like, but I had no real exposure to Harris.

One of the readers of the blog asked me to examine Trump’s speech carefully.

“I have routinely if erratically followed your blog for years. Although I largely avoid news entertainment, the limited press that I do read has remarked on the recent reduction of Mr. Trump’s complexity of sentences and vocabulary; phonemic paraphasias (swapping word parts); tangentiality (jumping from topic to topic with few connections in between); and nonclinical, subjective, presumably politically slanted impressions characterizing him as “deranged”. Politics aside (to the degree that it is possible) I wonder if you would render your opinion as to the trajectory of Mr. Trump’s cognitive status and fitness for office, perhaps comparing and contrasting that with your recent characterizations of Mr. Biden.”

The debate was quite informative. Both politicians, as is typical, answered the question they wanted asked rather than what was actually asked. I thought the questions from the ABC monitors to both Trump and Harris were hard and fair and relevant to the concerns of the electorate.

I didn’t find phonemic paraphasias (Trump) or word salad (Harris). Both used politically slanted impressions to the same extent. Trump’s sentence structure was simpler than Harris, but he was talking to the working class, to whom the issues of respect and standing are more important than to readers of this blog and the highly educated.

Neither candidate showed obvious episodes of incoherence as did Biden in his debate with Trump. Both were vigorous and they clearly delineated their differences.

So no sign of dementia (incipient or otherwise) in either candidate. So the choice is a political one about goals and methods, and up to you without their neurologic function pushing you one way or the other.

I’m going to continue to tune out the press until a few weeks before the election.