Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Does Donald Trump have dementia?

This is an extract from Lionel Shriver’s diary, available in the new issue of the magazine, which is out tomorrow.

Over dinner, my fellow Professional American Sarah Churchwell and I shared our dismay over what on earth to say about Trump in public. (Sarah Churchwell ever being at a loss for words will astonish her fans.) Days earlier, a punter had closed my festival event in Swindon with an ostensibly ‘simple’ question: ‘How do you explain Trump?’

Sarah posited a theory gaining mainstream currency. Many of Trump’s characteristics point toward dementia: forgetfulness (leaving an executive order photo-op without remembering to sign the order); volatility, irritability, impulsivity and paranoia; anxiety about stairs and inclines (re: gripping Theresa May’s hand); poor concentration and degraded syntax: reliance on placeholders (‘very, very, very’ buys time), small vocabulary, fragmented sentences.

I just listened to Trump’s 1998 Oprah Winfrey interview. If still arrogant, Trump was lucid, coherent — almost articulate.

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