No wonder Donald Trump’s handlers took him off the campaign trail

For the past several months the biggest story in politics has been Donald Trump’s startling cognitive decline on display every time he’s spoken in public. For the past few weeks the biggest story in politics has been that Trump’s handlers pulled him from the campaign trail, presumably because of said cognitive decline.

Late last week we were finally reaching the point where the media was starting to ask aloud why Trump seemed to have abandoned the campaign trail. Accordingly, Trump’s handlers decided to put him back out there again today. This time, instead of a rally speech, they had Trump speaking while flaked by the most unsuitable law enforcement officers they could find.

These officers should, obviously, lose their badges. But the real story is that Trump once again ended up doing a cognitive face plant. At one point Trump declared that victims of crime would be deported. As usual, Trump had no idea what he was even trying to say.

Trump did seem like he was slightly better cognitive condition yesterday than he had been before he abandoned the campaign trail last month. That’s not surprising. Dementia patients can benefit slightly in the cognitive department if they’re given an ample number of “rest” days.

But this merely suggests that Trump needs two or three weeks of rest just to be able to show up and give one campaign speech, and even then he’ll still come off as half senile. If that’s the case, then it’s completely untenable. The election isn’t until November and this is still only April.

Of course this largely comes down to the media’s willingness to do its job. Trump’s handlers pulled him from the campaign trail weeks ago, and the media was just recently getting around to acknowledging it. Even now, the media is largely suggesting that Trump’s handlers pulled the plug on his rallies because the campaign couldn’t afford them, which is absurd given that Trump rallies are profit centers for him.

It’s also more crucial than ever that we not take the bait that Trump’s babysitters keep laying out for us. During Trump’s final rally speech last month before his handlers benched him, they seemed to insert the word “bloodbath” into the teleprompter in order to make sure that the story would be about how Trump was talking about violence, instead of the story being about how he was too senile to keep holding rallies.

Yesterday Trump’s handlers fed him the word “bloodbath” in a different context, this time in relation to the border. Sure enough, the entire media seized upon Trump’s use of the word, and used it as an excuse to portray Trump as being more dangerously powerful than ever.

Meanwhile there are virtually no headlines about how senile Trump’s speech was yesterday, because it was conveniently overshadowed by Trump’s continued use of the word “bloodbath.” And now that Trump has feebly done one rally, if he now disappears again, how long will it take the media to call him out for it?

Donald Trump’s worsening dementia, and his inability to more than occasionally participate in his own campaign, is the biggest story in politics. It’s also the storyline that’ll cost Trump the most votes along the way. Anyone who’s on the fence will use Trump’s total senility as a tiebreaker, if they’re made fully aware of it.

So it comes down to us pressuring the media and pundit class to properly cover the fact that 1) Trump is senile, and 2) Trump’s own people have largely pulled him from the campaign trail because he’s senile. At this point anything else is just noise.