I understand the impulse to seize on apparent examples of Trump's physical disability as proof of his apparent cognitive decline, but that's not how proof, or politics, works.
There's no video, no Twitter diagnosis, that will resolve the question of his cognitive status in a way that moves the needle on his support among voters or in the institutional GOP. That's movie stuff, and this isn't a movie.
And in the meantime, gleefully sharing images of Trump's difficulty with a glass or a ramp, or of his posture or arm movements, does real harm. It makes it harder for disabled people to live in public. Plus, it's gross.
I think it's appalling how the Walter Reed visit, and Trump's health more generally, have been handled by the White House. But Reddit-detectiving these videos doesn't fix that, and in fact it contributes to an environment where lying about your medical history is smart politics.
And again, I'm not saying that Trump is intellectually fit for the presidency. He's not. And I'm not saying that his unfitness isn't a matter of grave public concern. It is.
But both of those things are true whether his unfitness is grounded in a medical issue or not. And neither has any relevance to any physical disability he may have—except to the extent to which evidence of a physical disability can "prove" a cognitive disability. Which it can't.
What's the solution? There may not be one. Where those around a president—doctors, colleagues, his entire party—choose to cover up his unfitness for office and enable his lies, there's little as a practical matter that others can do. That's a bad thing, but it's a fact.
I think there's maybe some stuff that could be done legislatively to make it harder for future presidents to get away with such lies, and if the actual truth—not guesses and photos, but actual reliable fact—of these coverups eventually emerges, that may have a positive effect.
But if Trump is in fact hiding evidence of serious, worsening cognitive impairment—and he may well be—there's literally nothing that people other than Trump's inner circle and the institutional GOP can do to rectify or ameliorate that right now.
If we're going to fix this mess, it will be by organizing to gain and wield power—electoral and non-electoral—not by parsing photographs of how our already justly reviled president holds a glass of water.
