Donald Trump’s fist bump of Jeff McConney in court today is the strongest evidence yet of Trump’s dementia
Donald Trump has spent much of his criminal trial asleep, a sign that he keeps forgetting how important this trial is for him, or keeps forgetting what’s going on entirely. This comes even as Trump keeps getting important political figures confused with each other, keeps making up imaginary words, and at one point had to read the names of his kids off a card.
It’s plainly obvious that Trump is exhibiting symptoms of severe and worsening dementia, both in and out of court. It’s led to the question of whether Trump even knows what this trial is. For instance he’s woken up and paid attention when familiar faces like David Pecker and Hope Hicks have taken the stand. But his lack of a reaction has suggested that he didn’t really know why they were there; his fading brain merely recognized a familiar face amid all the confusion.
Then came today, when Trump Organization Controller Jeff McConney took the stand. This is a guy who’s worked closely with Donald Trump on a regular basis for a very long time. McConney has long been the most relevant person in the Trump Organization not named “Trump” or “Weisselberg” – so Trump knows this guy quite well.
McConney’s testimony against Trump today was rather damning. He helped confirm the financial details which prove that Trump was in on the payoff to Stormy Daniels. Anyone watching this trial, legal expert or not, could easily deduce that McConney’s testimony was bad news for Trump.
Yet after Jeff McConney left the witness stand, a confused Donald Trump smiled and fist bumped him. The AP reported on it, and the moment stood out as so bizarre that it even made it into a courtroom sketch.
Let’s be real here. Trump sat through damning testimony against himself, from a longtime close associate, and the most that Trump’s fading brain could come up with was “Hey it’s my buddy Jeff, I haven’t seen him in awhile!”
This might be the strongest evidence yet that not only is Donald Trump suffering from severe dementia, he’s so far gone that he has no idea what’s even going on. In that moment Trump clearly had no idea what McConney was even doing there, or that this was even a trial, let alone that McConney had just sold him out.
We’re going to see a thousand wild contrarian takes about how Trump’s fist bump was some carefully choreographed thing aimed at getting into the jury’s head, or aimed at threatening McConney, or whatever other “Trump is more dangerously powerful than ever” hot take these folks can come up with.
But in reality we just watched a senile man sit there in total confusion while one of his close associates testified against him, without any understanding of why any of it was happening. At this point the sum total of Trump’s understanding of this trial is “Hey I think I know that guy!”
Trump’s worsening dementia symptoms continue to be the biggest story in all of politics. It’s just a matter of when and how the media is finally going to stop understating it, and acknowledge that Trump is a complete goner.
