There have been lots of famous walls in history and mythology: The Great Wall of China, the wall around Troy, the Berlin Wall, the Trump Wall . They served their purposes with varying degrees of success. So far the wall keeping much of the public from recognizing Trump’s dementia has been incredibly effective.

The most telling example of Trump’s dementia.

While it was reported in the media in early March this was covered mostly because it was an example of Trump’s obsession with windmills. The following in italics is from

Asked about Ukraine, Trump’s attention turns to windmills

The former president was asked about the future of an ongoing international security crisis. His response focused on windmills

During an interview yesterday, Donald Trump was asked a straightforward question about the crisis in Ukraine: “How does this all end? Is this going to be a long-term thing? How do you see it unfolding?”

In theory, any former president could’ve reflected on the geopolitical events in a variety of ways, but as HuffPost noted, Trump’s attention quickly turned to windmills. No, seriously.

“Well, and I said this a long time ago, if this happens, we are playing right into their hands. Green energy. The windmills don’t work. They’re too expensive. They kill all the birds. They ruin your landscapes,” Trump answered. “And yet the environmentalists love the windmills. And I’ve been preaching this for years. The windmills ― and I had them way down ― but the windmills are the most expensive energy you can have. And they don’t work.”

It’s worth emphasizing for context that Trump didn’t eventually get to this anti-windmill rant after trying to answer the question in a more serious way. Rather, as  the YouTube video shows (no longer online), after being asked about his expectations for the ongoing crisis, it was literally one second later when the Republican’s thoughts turned to, of all things, windmills.

Trump’s obsession with windmills was covered in RawStory today.

If Trump had waited mere seconds when asked a question about Ukraine and went into a rant about a coming alien invasion the coverage would have focused on his mental state instead of his obsession with windmills.

The conclusion would have been that he lacked focus and mental acuity and would, or should have, led to reasonable speculation that these were symptoms a paranoid episode caused by dementia. (This is not uncommon.)

If you do a Google News search for Trump dementia this is what you come up with.

The top story (here) is still the one where I am the clinical social worker in the title.

Dr. John Gartner and Salon’s Chauncey DeVega have been doing their best to get the word out that in addition to Trump being a malignant narcissist who aspires to be a dictator also has dementia.

The matter of Trump’s dementia made it into a Jennifer Rubin Podcast where she interviewed John Gartner and a Washington Post article, but again these stories are on our side of the wall where we look at facts.

The course of dementia is always down, it gets worse. If Trump does have dementia his fate is sealed. While we can predict that if he has dementia his symptoms will eventually get so bad they will be impossible to ignore, we can’t say whether this will happen prior to the election when it would influence voters, or if he wins when his Vice President and Cabinet might be forced to, despite their loyalty, have to invoke the 25th Amendment.

All isn’t hopeless. There is hope for getting past the wall between the truth about Trump becoming more and more demented and his supporters being aware of this. Obvously we can’t count on progressive journalists to breach the wall. We can’t count on many conservative journalists either, although if it gets severe enough there may be a few that sound the alarm. It’s possible that Rubert Mudoch who at 93 is showing no reprorted sign of dementia, will see it, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.

Because dememtia effects about 10% of the population, about 7 million people, many people have had personal experience with it. You don’t need to know someone with dementia to recognize it. As people move from the early stage to the later stages the symptoms become more and more obvious.

Trump brags about his genetics. However as Mary Trump reminds us he is “fearful of Alzheimer’s” since his father had it too.

A judge can issue a gag order which which Trump may rant about without ending up posting or saying something that will end him in jail. My hunch is that he can exercise some self-control over himself regarding matters like this, but it will be something like his windmill rant that will be his undoing as long as it is reported by the conservative media for what it represents, i.e, a sure sign of dementia. Some Trump supported will figure this out for themselves though unfortunately many have to be told that the small part of the animal they are looking at belongs to an elephant.

Read previous Stressline blogs here.