Brutal Video Shows Pace of Trump’s Cognitive Decline Between Debates

CNN made a video comparing Donald Trump’s debate answers against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and his answers from Tuesday’s debate with Kamala Harris eight years later, and there’s a considerable difference in how the Republican presidential nominee spoke and conducted himself.

The video comparison, aired on Thursday night, shows how Trump would stay on topic and give coherent answers in 2016. In contrast, Trump earlier this week went off on tangents, rambling and avoiding specific ideas.

In particular, on immigration, 2016 Trump was able to hammer home his points about building a wall and stopping drugs from entering the country. On Tuesday, Trump ranted about the false rumor of Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio and a disproven story about a Venezuelan gang taking over an apartment complex in Colorado.

Trump’s performance during this week’s debate was widely seen as poor, as Harris was able to bait him into ranting about personal grievances, going against the game plan made by his advisers. At one point, he tried to combine right-wing talking points on transgender people, migrants, and criminals, and he also gave a word-salad answer about Afghanistan policy,

It’s a stark example of the convicted felon’s cognitive decline, which has become more pronounced during the current presidential campaign. Earlier this month, Trump appeared to forget at a Fox News town hall whether he was running against Harris or President Biden. A few weeks before that, he went on a weird rant about bacon and wind power and accidentally praised Harris’s record. As the 2024 presidential campaign enters its home stretch, it’s becoming more and more apparent to the public that Trump’s mind has lost a step.

The judge in Donald Trump’s Georgia election interference case tossed three of the charges, including two against the former president, Thursday. 

In his ruling, Judge Scott McAfee dismissed three counts related to filing false documents, finding that bringing such charges was outside Georgia’s jurisdiction. Instead, he determined they belonged in federal court. 

“Because Counts 14, 15, and 27 lie beyond this State’s jurisdiction and must be quashed, the Defendants’ motions to dismiss the indictment under the Supremacy Clause are granted in part,” McAfee wrote.

The three counts that were dismissed were criminal attempt to commit filing false documents, conspiracy to commit filing false documents, and filing false documents. Trump had been indicted on the latter two of those three counts.

The motion to dismiss the charges was brought by two of Trump’s co-defendants, John Eastman and Shawn Still, who argued that the charges were in violation of the supremacy clause. 

McAfee separately declined a motion to toss the indictment’s racketeering charge. He wrote that the charge remained “facially sound and constitutionally sufficient as alleged.”

Still, the case against Trump, which has been stalled for months, has only continued to narrow. McAfee previously threw out six counts in March, three of which were against Trump. The former president is still facing eight of his original 13 counts.  

Donald Trump’s meager attempt to prove a group of immigrants had begun dining on their neighbors’ pets has predictably fallen apart.

After Trump was brutally fact-checked during Tuesday’s presidential debate when he tried to baselessly claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating local pets, the former president took to Truth Social to provide his own so-called proof.

What he was able to provide were blurry screenshots of one call report from the Clark County Communications Center, which had been obtained by the right-wing opinion blog The Federalist. The report detailed a call from August 26, during which a caller claimed that they had seen a group of people walking down the street carrying geese.

The caller “said he could tell they were Haitian because he was within earshot of them to hear them speaking Haitian Creole,” according to the report. The identifying information on the report had been removed.

The report was meant to justify Trump’s extreme claims on national television, but a closer examination of the facts—and testimony from the caller—shows that the right-wing hysterics are over basically nothing.

Steven Monacelli, a freelance investigative reporter for The Texas Observer, decided to follow up on the report with the Clark County sheriff’s office.

A clerk for the sheriff’s office passed along the original report, as well as a recording of the call. “At this time we have not found any other record concerning Haittians [sic] harvesting geese. At this time we have not found any record of Hattians eating pets,” the clerk wrote in an email, which Monacelli posted to X.

Monacelli also spoke with the caller, whom he identified simply as “Toby” to protect his privacy. Monacelli detailed what he learned in a series of posts on X.

Toby explained he was simply trying to report what was potentially illegal goose hunting, which requires a permit outside of goose-hunting season, which starts in September. Toby also pointed out that a viral photo of a man walking down the street holding a goose, which many on the right have cited when pushing this conspiracy, was from Columbus, Ohio, not Springfield.

“I’m not trying to really be put on the news, famous or anything, I was just a citizen on his way to his orientation, and just happened to see that,” Toby explained. “I just made a report, that’s literally all I did.”

When asked whether he had seen anything similar since making his initial report in August, Toby said, “No I haven’t.”

Monacelli asked what Toby thought about the right-wing claims that there had been widespread pet abductions, to which Toby replied he “hadn’t seen any pictures, or anything like that myself. But then again, I’m not on social media.”

Donald Trump’s attorney Alina Habba recently escaped some legal trouble of her own.

On August 27, Habba settled a case brought against her by Alice Bianco, a former waitress at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, who had sued the club alleging that she was tricked into a hush-money deal after a supervisor sexually harassed her. Bianco also sued Habba, accusing her of betraying ethics by offering her legal advice while helping the club secure a $15,000 deal in exchange for her silence. Just a few weeks after the deal, Habba joined Trump’s legal team.

Bianco settled with the club in March, but Habba at the time was curiously left out of the deal—leaving her open to being sued.

According to New Jersey state law, an agreement like the one Habba set up “relating to a claim of discrimination, retaliation, or harassment” is “against public policy and unenforceable.” After attending mediation, Bianco and Habba agreed to an out-of-court settlement, but terms were not disclosed. It’s unclear how much Habba had to pay to make the lawsuit go away.

“I feel very proud. I’m very grateful to have my life back. This was a three-year-long fight that caused many sleepless nights,” Bianco told NOTUS. “I pray that she gets what she deserves.”

In the summer of 2021, Bianco sought legal counsel after getting fed up with her supervisor requiring her to “engage in sex as a quid pro quo for continued employment and protection,” according to her lawsuit. She hired an employment lawyer, and discussed her case with co-workers.

Habba then approached her as a concerned friend, offering to give her legal advice. Bianco didn’t know who Habba was, only having seen her as a member of the club who liked to sing at the club’s party nights, according to court documents. Habba convinced Bianco to drop her lawyer and hire her instead, then advised Bianco to accept the hush-money deal and keep the story out of the news.

When Bianco found out that she would owe taxes on the $15,000, she reached out to Habba via text message, who was unsympathetic.

“I can’t technically give u legal advice,” Habba texted back, according to the lawsuit documents. “That’s the problem.”

This would seem to explain why Habba was left out of the golf club’s settlement, with its lawyers saying that the club “cannot be held liable for Ms. Habba’s purported misrepresentations.” Bianco hired a new lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, who helped the waitress put together a timeline showing how Habba kept Bianco quiet to impress Trump.

Habba persuaded Bianco to sign the $15,000 deal on August 21, 2021, and three weeks later, the attorney joined Trump’s legal team in his defamation lawsuit against a former Apprentice contestant, Summer Zervos.

“The timing could not be more definitive. She silenced me in order to be in Trump’s good graces,” Bianco said to NOTUS. “She is evil. She does the devil’s work for free. She acted as a caring guide in my life. She acted like she could help me, only to then completely ghost me and use me for her own success.”

Habba’s representation of Trump has brought her legal expertise into question, with her statements at times sounding like admissions of Trump’s guilt. In defending the former president, she seems to misunderstand legal terminology like “due process,” and during Trump’s E. Jean Carroll defamation trial was reprimanded 12 times in one day by the judge. Her case with Bianco is something entirely different, though: It calls into question her ethics and morals.

Even Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks Donald Trump went too far by spending time with Laura Loomer this week.

On Sunday, Loomer said that if Kamala Harris wins the presidency, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center,” referring to Harris’s Indian heritage. Days later, Trump visited Philadelphia for the first presidential debate with Loomer right by his side—and he then traveled with her to a September 11 memorial event.

Now MAGA infighting is erupting in public view, with Greene leading the charge against Loomer.

“This is appalling and extremely racist. It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. This does not represent President Trump,” wrote Greene on X, hours after Trump visited the 9/11 Memorial with Loomer. “This type of behavior should not be tolerated ever.”

But Loomer didn’t roll over, hitting back at Greene with a slew of insults, calling the Georgia representative “extremely jealous and vindictive,” accusing Greene of saying the n-word and being antisemitic, and throwing some jokes about CrossFit into the mix. “She is not representative of the GOP or what it means to be America first.”

More than anything, Loomer slammed Greene for not being loyal enough to Donald. “Guess you gave up on Trump when he gave up on your boyfriend @SpeakerMcCarthy,” she wrote, asking the representative why she wasn’t at the debate.

Loomer’s racist tweet shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. In the past, she has referred to herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and “pro-white nationalism” and even claimed 9/11 was an inside job.

When Greene was asked by CNN if she had contacted Trump about the argument, she confirmed they had spoken but was sparse on the details. “I just felt like it was time to call it out. I think it’s wrong. We’re not a party of identity politics,” Greene said, stating that her party should focus on policy, “not attacking people for their race.”

Fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has also chimed in, echoing Greene’s talking points and condemning Loomer’s comments on 9/11 and Harris. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is right. I don’t say that a lot,” said the South Carolina senator. “I think that the president would serve himself well to make sure this doesn’t become a bigger story.”