Didn't Reagan have dementia during his presidency?

[milestogo]

I am pretty sure he was totally incoherent, but nobody said a thing about it until a diagnosis was announced, after his presidency.

[BannonsLiver]

1. 100 percent yes in my view

But I don’t think there’s much of a comparison to be made between 1988 and a pre internet culture vs. present day.

[Grins]

59. Friend of mine had a friend in Reagan's White House...

At dinner a couple years ago and we’re talking about Trump dementia. I bring up Reagan. He brings up his friend (whom I HATE!) who worked in Reagan White House, admitting to him Reagan was off the deep end as Pres.

Me: Yes, his 2nd term.

Friends: No; his first. They knew in his first term he was ‘off.’

Particularly in his disastrous 1984 first debate with Mondale who ridiculed his memory. And it showed!

But before that, his WH staff avoided mentioning his time as governor - and to NEVER - say the words “file cabinets!” because that would trigger Reagan to go off on a tangent.

At that 1974 debate - Reagan was age 73!

[surfered]

2. Yes, Nancy was the real President, kind of like Stephen Miller is now.

[DBoon]

20. I'd say Nancy's astrologer was acting president.

Given how much she relied on this pseudo-science for advice.

[carpetbagger]

32. But that was the best part of his presidency.

The one thing I like the most from a short list was his decision to work with Gorbachev. And that was those two who arranged it.

Too bad they didn't take over in '81.

And yes, he had early cognitive deficits, which progressed into dementia, slowly enough to evade a date. But everyone knew it, and by '86, he was believed when he claimed not to recall things under oath

[Joinfortmill]

50. Lol

[Blue Full Moon]

3. His son says yes.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/17/ronald-reagan-alzheimers-president-son

[Chasstev365]

4. Remember Nancy Telling Ronnie What to Say?

?si=RUd1aU1qILU_8BbC

[sunflowerseed]

8. Can you make that into its own post and share it far and wide?

I would like to but I have to work here....some of the time.

[Chasstev365]

13. Just tap the 3 dots in the upper right cornor

[milestogo]

15. That's a great example.

Unlike TSF, Reagan just wasn't there. But he was never hostile.

[ShazamIam]

62. True Regan was a genial dolt while the current one is a raging criminal monster.

[haele]

49. My father used to refer to her as Edith - err, Nancy Reagan.

Edith Wilson pretty much ran the last couple years of Wilson's presidency after his stroke. Even after he recovered, word was she remained his gatekeeper.

[Ocelot II]

5. He was showing signs in his second term.

He sometimes stumbled over his words and his memory was unreliable. He wasn't totally incoherent; it hadn't progressed that far by the time he left office. His son Ron thought he was starting to lose it but it wasn't as obvious as Trump's incoherence.

[Pinback]

51. Reagan's experience as a B-Grade actor came in handy.

Like the current WH inhabitant, he was a good enough performer to play the part most of the time, even when he was seriously losing his marbles.

[Ocelot II]

53. Probably true, but Trump's experiences as a B-grade game show host

don't seem to be helping him at all.

[ForgedCrank]

6. The way

I understand it from multiple sources of info I read a few years back, he did have early onset symptoms during the waning months of his term and it was beginning to affect him. How bad it really was depends on the source, and as always, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
I do know that from my viewpoint, they kept it relatively quiet because I never even knew about it until just a few years ago. All that said, I was a young teenager at that time so I wasn't exactly watching the news or following politics... I was too busy chasing girls and goofing off, so my recollection is probably lacking.

[Lonestarblue]

18. Some of the media kept Reagan's dementia from the public.

Lesley Stahl wrote about her meetings with Reagan a few years after he left office where he clearly showed signs of Alzheimer’s. It’s been my understanding that much of the media knew but many chose not to publish anything about it and that Nancy and some key advisers basically ran the government for at least the last year and possibly longer.

Some media did report Reagan’s confusion and mental lapses during the 1984 election debates. He was also confused during the 1999 Iran-Contra testimony. Trump seems much worse at this point than Reagan ever was during his presidency.

[suegeo]

7. Analyses show he was in decline while still in office.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6922000/

President Reagan was not diagnosed with AD until August of 1994, but the results of our analyses suggest that changes in speaking patterns were becoming detectable years prior to clinical diagnosis. Analysis of his transcripts revealed significant differences in variables known to be associated with the onset of dementia. We found that the use of unique words in the discourse of RR declined over time, and the use of non-specific nouns and fillers increased over time.

[Paladin]

9. Just another example of an unending double standard. (nt)

[calimary]

40. Just another example of why we need age limitations for presidential eligibility.

And as soon as possible!

[malaise]

10. Yes n/t

[ZDU]

11. Is the Pope Roman Catholic?

[karynnj]

12. Yes. One time when it should have been clear was his comments on the Contras

When presented evidence that his administration supported the Contras using money from selling weapons to Iran, he looked very sincere that he knew nothing about this.

I admit, at the time, I simply thought the actor was lying, but looked at in hindsight he may have not remembered. ( The only other possibility is his dementia started earlier than suspected.)

[Moostache]

52. I remember it vividly...

Reagan in that deposition looked and sounded EXACTLY like my currently 82-year old dementia afflicted father. He was confused. He was repeating himself. He was not making any sense. And he looked dimminished - vastly.

Dementia is an insidious condition and its cruelty to the victim and their loved ones is painful and destructive. I am living through it for a second time with my father (the first time was with my paternal grandmother, who also started a massive cognitive decline around age 82-83 and then lived for another 14 years in mental oblivion with no recognition of anyone and no ability to remember what day, month, year it was or where she was). The nightmare never ends and the cruelest part is when you convince yourself that your loved one is still in there, still aware and that the signs of decline are slowing or arrested or even reversing when the truth is the opposite.

I feel badly for anyone afflicted with this disease with one glaring exception - Donald J. Trump. I want him to suffer a debilitating stroke that robs him of function and leaves him in a wheelchair, unable to speak without slurring, unable to control his bodily functions, and unable to self-locomote. I want to watch that happen to him. I want to see it impact him and steal the light from his eyes the way I watched my grandmother disappear and I am watching my father do the same (and fear that should Ilive another 25 years that the same fate awaits me). My sense of cosmic justice DEMANDS that a monster like Trump gets the full course of decline and all the attendant miseries as well.

[UTUSN]

14. Submerged most of his life, overt the 2nd term

[Baitball Blogger]

16. If Biden was president when this happened, at

Some point he would step down and Kamala would have been president.

[FalloutShelter]

22. Exactly right....

However... let's play a thought experiment:
Let's say that the Regan Admin. and the Biden Admin. covered up the health of these Presidents.
What ever will we do?
How about asking why we have NEVER seen a true analysis of Krasnov's health?
How about that instead of focusing on the PAST?
Who treated Krasnov after he was shot? What Hospital did they take him to?What Dr. treated him? Who stitched him up?
What EXACTLY does his medical work up say? Where is it... in full?
Just sayin'.

[Ocelot II]

17. Attempts at concealing the illnesses of presidents is a long-standing American tradition.

Woodrow Wilson's staff carefully concealed the effects of his 1919 stroke for at least a year while his wife actually ran the show. The extent of FDR's disability from polio was not well-known; most people weren't aware that he used a wheelchair in private. Eisenhower's heart attack was covered in the media but his subsequent stroke and aphasia during cabinet meetings were not. JFK concealed his serious difficulties with Addison's disease. Reagan's early symptoms of Alzheimers were discounted. There are probably other instances with other presidents that we still don't know about. Not saying this is OK, but it's what happens.

[milestogo]

21. When someone has power they want to hold on to it.

That is the nature of power.

They also used to cover for the spouses of Presidents. Betty Ford was an alcoholic and everyone around the White House knew it- but the press did not report it because in those days there was more privacy.

[Midnight Writer]

19. Yes, and it was reported upon at the time, but the stories got little traction. (Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus)

Chief of Staff Howard Baker even arranged for a psychologist to surreptitiously sit in on some staff meetings to evaluate his mental health. There was talk among his Cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment.

His last couple of years in office he was very disconnected, telling long droning anecdotes about his acting career and old cowboy movies (his favorite). Meetings were derailed because he would take over with unrelated story-telling sessions. He was protected by his loyalists.

Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus published a book called The Unmaking of a President while Reagan was still in office that detailed the extent of Reagan's diminished capacity and how it affected White House operations.

[malaise]

23. Found this- Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer's while president, says son

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/17/ronald-reagan-alzheimers-president-son

Ronald Reagan's sons have locked horns over the former president's political legacy after the younger brother, Ron, said his late father's battle with Alzheimer's began while he was in the White House.

The spat opens up a subject that has long been a talking point – when did the 40th president begin to become mentally impaired by the disease. He was formally diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1994, five years after he left office. Reagan died 10 years later at 93.

In it, Ron Reagan describes his growing sense of alarm over his father's mental condition, beginning as early as three years into his first term. He recalls the presidential debate with Walter Mondale on 7 October 1984.

"My heart sank as he floundered his way through his responses, fumbling with his notes, uncharacteristically lost for words. He looked tired and bewildered," Ron Reagan writes.

[milestogo]

28. Actors don't fumble for words, even if they are B-list actors.

[marble falls]

30. I've heard from sources that while a bit out here, have been accurate 90% of the time, Ronnie started smearing shit ...

... on the walls his last month/s he was in office.

[milestogo]

34. I think that's worse than throwing ketchup.

But both are un-presidential.

[malaise]

36. I believe given that

He was full of it.

[marble falls]

64. But he did give us the F-35. which the US military did not want.

[mopinko]

24. it was an open secret in d.c. by the end of his 1st term.

my late bil worked for the dea for several yrs out of law school. he kept in touch w a lot of his friends there. he told me toward the end of his 1st term that pretty much everyone knew he was slipping.

[kimbutgar]

25. Another case of iokiyar ( It's ok if you area Republican] syndrome

But as the orange Hitler says more insane shit maybe just maybe people will wake the F up and ask what the f is wrong with him? He sounds insane!

And going after entertainers and President Obama is insane shit!

[Ocelot II]

33. Wilson, FDR and JFK downplayed and concealed their illnesses, too.

It's not just a GOP thing. People in power want to stay there.

[Wonder Why]

44. and Wilson and who knows how many others? Garfield, after being shot, was often out of it.

[Picaro]

26. Yes

At least the last year.

But you know who wasn’t senile and still isn’t? Joe Biden.

[calimary]

54. From what I've seen and heard, yes. Yes indeed.

[Warpy]

27. My mother spotted it in 1982

I don't think he ever really recovered mentally from being shot and severely injured.

His progress was slow enough that he was able to be a front man, saying his lines with a corporate pitchman's delivery. By the end, he was muffing his lines rather obviously, but he wasn't as far along as King Dumdum is.

I fully expect punches to be thrown at staff and the press very soon. There is little self control left and he flies into rages with little provocation.

Pro tip to staff: step back two or three paces and let him blow. He's a big oaf so you'll want to be just out of reach. You can't control this and neither can he, you just have to stay safe and let it happen.

[Polybius]

57. His progress was likely exceptionally slow

If he has it in 1982, it's pretty incredible that he was able to give that 30+ minute speech at the 1992 Republican Convention. He was 81 then.

[Warpy]

66. There is no set timetable for Alzheimer's

I've swwn both rapid and slow cases. I really think the shooting had something to do with accelerating Reagan's symptoms and making hem apparent to keen observers like my mother. I worked swing shift, so I never saw the bastard on TV, so I missed pretty much his whole ugly presidency, although I had to deal with the fallout as he pretended the AIDS epidemic didn't exist.

King Numbmuts is progressing much more quickly than Reagan did and more quickly than his father did, too. Daddy Frred seemed to be pretty intact up until his last two or three years, when Numbnuts tried to flimflam him into signing a new will that left the whole of the estate to Numbnuts, cutting his siblings out completely. Fred was still with it enough to object.

I think the end will come when Numbnuts starts to throw punches. His sudden rages show he's pretty close to that now. Punches won't be easy to shrug off, cover up, sanewah.

[marble falls]

29. And President Wilson was enfeebled after his stroke and his wife, a serious racist, took over. The armed forces ...

... were made segregated at this time.

[aocommunalpunch]

31. Obviously IOKIYAR

Fuck these ghouls.

[DENVERPOPS]

35. The reality was

that it was Bush Sr. and his CABAL that corruptly put him in office as a pawn.....Reagan was merely the front man.......a pawn.....not much different than when Cheney's CABAL corruptly put WBush into the White House.....

There was HWBush and his CABAL running everything from the Shadows during the Reagan period, There was Cheney/Rumsfeld's CABAL running everything in the shadows during the W period in the White House.

W had a brain seriously damaged by long term use of Cocaine and ETOH. Reagan was showing signs of Dementia/Alzheimers in his first term. They were both put in front of the public to serve as a detraction for all the work being done behind the scenes.

The powers to be put their Frankenstein's Monster in office with the thought they could control him.......But he was such a narcissistic personality, and psychopath and they temporarily lost control.......But he did serve a purpose, and there again, it was a continuous, DAILY distraction from all that was being done in the background, behind smoke and mirrors.......And once again, with Trumps emotional/psychological problems showing since the beginning of his first Term, and growing worse by the day, it is evident that they are tolerating him and allowing him to continue, because he is serving more and more as a daily distraction for all the 2025 etc groups so they can do their work in the shadows. And also, I don't think that they understood that Putin was Trump's Second "Master," which they hadn't planned on...and that they are trying to work around........

[Tranquil72]

37. Reagan's decline almost certainly began during his presidency. Here's some science:

An investigation into the Reagan case:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6922000/#:~:text=President%20Ronald%20Reagan%20(RR)%20was,and%20popular%20debate%20%5B11%5D.

He was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, which comes on gradually in most cases. It was discussed during his terms, especially the second one, and he appeared to have some confabulation before that — remember his confusion around a movie role that he mistook for reality? The big difference between then and now is social media, and the crazy narratives that appear around what is essentially a common phenomenon among the aged. It’s likely that neither Joe nor Donald should have run for president at their respective ages, but politicians have always been reluctant to give up their positions.

[patphil]

38. Anyone could see he was suffering from dementia in his 2nd term.

A lot of people were saying that Nancy and several other people close to the President were running the country for most of his 2nd term.
It appeared to me that the President was playing the role of President, instead of actually being the President.

I see parallels with Trump, but his dementia is magnifying his mean, angry, hateful, violent nature. We can only hope he gets a lot worse very quickly, and there isn't any alternative but to remove him.
Unfortunately, JD Vance is VP.

[Ocelot II]

43. Reagan was declining but hadn't completely lost his shit the way Trump has.

Trump is totally off the rails - whether it's age-related or just plain old madness doesn't matter any more - and everyone knows it. Before social media it was possible for an impaired president to muddle along with the help of staff, but Trump feels compelled to broadcast his lunacy on Fake Twitter every day. I bet Vance would love a chance to 25 47 but he needs the cabinet secretaries to go along with that plan.

[patphil]

46. Yeah, they're not going to go easily, because a lot of them know they'll be replaced if Vance is President.

Vance will want his own list of loyal cronies to implement his directives.
Not that he'll be better than Trump, just different.

[niyad]

39. I remember when it was finally admitted, after he left office, calling a friend

in CA and asking, "Are you and I the only two people who knew he had dementia while he was governor?"

[Vinca]

41. Yep. Nancy would stand right next to him and coach him on what to say.

[Rebl2]

42. They

hid it.

[multigraincracker]

45. Don't forget tfg's dad had it too.

https://www.politicalflare.com/2020/02/trumps-father-struggled-with-alzheimers-disease-for-6-years-what-does-that-mean-for-trump/#google_vignette

At least 6 years before he died.
He likes to brag about an uncle that was an MIT professor. You only share less than 10% of your genes with an uncle and more like 50% with dad.
Any reporter want to ask him about that?

[Jacson6]

47. Reagan had Alzheimer's disease. n/t

[SocialDemocrat61]

48. Yes, but he was a republican

and his VP was a white man

[BaronChocula]

56. Amen

Suddenly I don't feel like I'm shouting into the void anymore. Reagan helped solidify the gop as the safehold for white male supremacy, both the upscale kind and the bargain shelf kind. White men united against everyone else (with the help of women) reserve all the passes and all the credit for themselves no matter how badly they screw things up.

Joe Biden doesn't get the same pass. We all know the old southern expression for Whites who stood up in defense of Blacks since the start of jim crow. Reagan helped frame white male Democrats in that same way without using the bargain shelf language. Some evil traditions die hard.

[Polybius]

55. I think that he showed some signs since 1984, but his case was an unusually slow progress

He was still well enough to give a speech at the 1992 Republican Convention at age 81.

[hadEnuf]

58. The GOP had an excellent PR team that worked to keep Reagan sanitized.

They simply were not honest about those types of things, if anything.

Reagan was smoke and mirrors. He was a trained actor and his handlers mostly kept him on script.

Trump is more bullshit than he is an actor and he wanders from the script quite frequently, however he now has a few multi-billion dollar networks, countless radio stations and internet support along with his PR team to try and sanitize and sane-wash him.

[Sneederbunk]

60. And they never did figure out what was wrong with W.

[fujiyamasan]

61. Different media environment

Even if some journalists knew at the time, they may have withheld from reporting it, probably for the same reason the media didn’t report as heavily on FDR and JFK’s health issues.

The press afforded the presidency a certain respect and deference. The 24 hour broadcast news environment was barely starting.

[Angleae]

63. This started up as early as 1984.

During the olympics open ceremonies, he gave a speech to officially open them. It's two lines and pre-written and he got it wrong, even the announcers noticed it. The guy is a career actor and politician, memorizing lines is what he's done his entire life. To stumble on a two line speech...

[Xolodno]

65. I think this is a pointless debate and is just fodder for having some hate for a moment.

What we understand about dementia now was a LOT different back then. In the 80's, "having a senior moment" was thrown around a lot. Trying to diagnose someone who is now long gone and not knowing the full story is pretty much pointless.

It's over, move on. Lets concentrate on the moment with the better tools we have now rather than trying to "convict" someone in the past who is long since dead on something we didn't understand as well yet. They'll never be a consensus.