Donald Trump’s ‘Cognitive Decline’ Is Clear: Mary Trump

Former President Donald Trump’s estranged niece, Mary Trump, wrote on Thursday that her uncle’s recent behavior during a Pennsylvania town hall and an interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait are signs of his “cognitive decline.”

Mary Trump is the daughter of Donald Trump’s older brother Fred Trump Jr. and Linda Clapp. She has long been a vocal critic of her uncle, often using her “The Good In Us” newsletter to attack him.

Opening a Substack blog post titled “The Republican Candidate Knows Nothing,” the psychologist wrote, “Donald had yet another banner week on the campaign trail. Between cutting his Pennsylvania town hall short to listen to songs from Cats and Shrek for 39 minutes, to his rambling, incoherent performance at the Economic Club of Chicago, it’s hard to see how anybody thinks my uncle is still tethered to reality.”

Mary Trump then proceeded to write that her uncle’s recent interview with Bloomberg also exhibited the decline of his mental faculties.

“If the town hall was the best example so far of his cognitive decline, the interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago was perhaps the best example I’ve seen of an interlocutor revealing both Donald’s inability to handle pushback and his stunning ignorance.”

Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, has repeatedly shut down concerns over his health and fitness to be president. When he was running against President Joe Biden, 81, before the latter dropped out of the race on July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, to be his successor, the former president’s allies frequently criticized Biden’s age and cognitive state. However, Trump, 78, is now the oldest person to ever be nominated for president by a major U.S. political party and has increasingly faced questions about his own physical and mental fitness for office.

Newsweek has reached out to Mary Trump and Donald Trump via email for comment.

Meanwhile, in a previous blog post earlier this week, Mary Trump also alleged that Trump’s behavior at the town hall—where he stopped answering questions so he could listen to music—was evidence of his declining cognizance.

According to The Washington Post, “some in the crowd began to leave” after the former president said he wouldn’t be taking any more questions at the town hall, and instead told his team to play a succession of nine songs as he at times danced on stage.

The songs played included: “An American Trilogy” by Elvis Presley, “Nothing Compares 2 U” from Sinéad O’Connor, the Village People’s iconic “YMCA” and “Memory” from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats.

Posting about the event on X, formerly Twitter, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote on Monday: “Total lovefest at the PA townhall! Everyone was so excited they were fainting so @realDonaldTrump turned to music. Nobody wanted to leave and wanted to hear more songs from the famous DJT Spotify playlist!”

During his interview with Micklethwait, the former president was pressed on issues including his tariff plans, the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot and his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Analyzing Donald Trump’s performance in the interview, Mary Trump wrote that her uncle “came out of every exchange looking like a complete fool whose lack of knowledge was surpassed only by his contemptuousness.”

She added: “Donald’s con all along has been to surround himself with sycophants and useful idiots who tell him exactly what he wants to hear. If you listen closely to the conversation with Micklethwait, you can hear MAGA supporters cheer even Donald’s most inane comments in order to mask the stunned silence of the economists in the audience.”

In the Bloomberg interview, Trump told Micklethwait that “to me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariffs.'” He also defended his plan to impose tariffs as high as 60 percent on goods from China.

However, this didn’t sit with Mary Trump, who criticized her uncle for not understanding the world of business or how to govern the country.

“The painful truth, which has been obvious to those of us who’ve been paying attention for the last several decades, is that Donald knows as little about business as he does about running the government; which is to say, nothing. He doesn’t understand how the American government works, and he has no plan to move America forward,” she wrote.

Mary Trump then wrote that it seemed that people were only beginning to realize her uncle’s true character.

“I will never understand why it took so long, but it’s as if people are finally seeing the man behind the curtain: the miserable, petty, perpetually aggrieved child who seems only to be trying to win back the presidency so he can stay out of prison.

That so many media outlets continue to let him get away with murder, and that tens of millions of Americans continue to support him is enough to make one’s head explode. But it’s a good sign that at least some people are waking up to the realization that Donald is a no-nothing empty suit who is losing his grasp of reality.”

Mary Trump ended her blog post by urging Americans to keep “shining a light” on “Donald’s increasing, and increasingly serious, deficiencies” and not get demoralized by this year’s presidential race being so close between the former president and Harris, the Democratic nominee.

Assessing her uncle’s cognizance is not a new process for Mary Trump. Her 2020 tell-all memoir Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man alleged psychological decline.