THURSDAY: What did Senator McCaskill mean?

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2025

And when did she possibly mean it? In yesterday morning's report, we quoted Claire McCaskill saying this about President Trump's endless speech in the Poconos:

"That speech—he's not well. He's not well."

Due in part to our own pre-existing frame of reference, we connected that to the fairly obvious possibility that President Trump is afflicted by some form of (what used to be known as a) "mental illness." 

Yesterday afternoon, as she appeared on Deadline: White House, it seemed that McCaskill might instead be thinking of some sort of cognitive decline—some form of a "mental cognitive problem."

MacCaskill is routinely astute. She spoke as part of a three-way discussion with Nicolle Wallace and John Heilemann. They staged an important discussion, one which should be pursued, with great care, within the pages of the New York Times. 

That said, no such discussion will appear at that location. Blue America's high-end press corps continues to agree that no such discussion—not about possible "mental illness," not about possible cognitive decline—can be permitted with respect to the capabilities, or the afflictions, of high political figures.

According to the rules of the game, you can't discuss the monarch that way. For better or worse, so it goes within Silo Blue even after our recent "No Kings" day!

The Times did publish this recent, mush-mouthed report in which they claimed to quantify something resembling the president's energy level. To our eye, the president has looked extremely unwell in recent weeks, but the Times methodology struck us as unconvincing. That's especially true with respect to what was once conventional wisdom—until quite recently, it seems:

Conventional wisdom until recently:
President Trump did nothing but sit around watching TV during his first term. But ever since the start of his current term, he's been aggressively flooding the zone with revamped dogmas and destructive policy moves.

Is cognitive decline considered a form of "mental illness?" Some sources flatly say no, some others seem to say yes. Presumably, the worst combination of afflictions would saddle a person who was suffering from a serious "personality disorder" with a substantial cognitive decline.

(We're forced to speculate about such possibilities because the journalists upon whom we rely won't conduct careful interviews with experienced medical specialists.)

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our Blue elites have agreed to abide by a bromide from another day:

Don't ask, don't tell.

A few medical specialists have recently started breaking the rule. Thanks to the weak cognition of the people we're told we should trust, their efforts are likely to gain little purchase.