Dwain Northey (Gen X)

For years, critics and media figures have consistently portrayed President Joe Biden as too old or mentally unfit for office, citing his age, stumbles, or verbal gaffes as signs of decline. But this laser focus on Biden’s supposed senility has largely ignored the mounting, and arguably more serious, signs of cognitive deterioration displayed by Donald Trump — a man who is not only the same age as Biden but increasingly untethered from reality in ways that go far beyond slips of the tongue.

Take, for example, Trump’s recent bizarre assertion that people seeking asylum in the U.S. are being released from “insane asylums” or foreign prisons by their governments and deliberately sent to America. This isn’t just fearmongering — it’s a complete detachment from how asylum systems work, not to mention a deeply offensive mischaracterization of vulnerable populations. Yet Trump continues to double down on this fantasy as though it were fact. Even more telling, he recently claimed that “think tanks” are literal buildings where people physically go to “think,” a baffling misunderstanding of a term that has been standard in policy and academic circles for decades.

These are not isolated gaffes; they are symptoms of a man who appears to be cognitively unraveling. Trump has also repeatedly confused world leaders, slurred through speeches, and meandered through conspiracy theories with little grasp of their internal logic. If Biden had made even one of these comments, headlines would explode with questions about his fitness for office. When Trump does it, the media and political world too often shrug.

This double standard is dangerous. If cognitive fitness is going to be a legitimate concern in presidential politics — and it should be — then it must be applied fairly. Trump’s recent statements should raise immediate red flags about his mental acuity. The 25th Amendment, designed for moments when a president is no longer capable of fulfilling the duties of the office, exists for precisely this kind of situation. While its invocation is serious and rare, the time has come for a national conversation about whether Donald Trump meets the basic threshold of cognitive competence. Because the evidence is piling up — and it’s not pretty.