Joe Scarborough says people close to Donald Trump have told him that the president was in “mental decline” or possibly even “pre-dementia” during his 2016 presidential campaign.
The “Morning Joe” co-host’s comments came after the president tweeted out multiple disparaging comments about Speaker Nancy Pelosi, including retweeting a Fox Business video of Pelosi that had been deceptively edited to make her look as if she was stuttering and stammering her way through a press conference Thursday.
“The president, during the campaign, we’ve said it, people closest to him told us that they feared that he was in mental decline … that he was in pre-dementia, that he had changed,” Scarborough said on “Morning Joe” Friday. “You watch Donald Trump in the late 1980s, you watch him in the 90s, you watch him now, he’s completely changed.”
Scarborough went on to defend 79-year-old Pelosi, saying: “I’ve known Nancy Pelosi and been working with her since 1994. So a quarter of a century, I’ve known Nancy Pelosi. I can tell you, Nancy Pelosi is tougher today than she was 25 years ago.”
“Sharp as a tack,” co-host Mika Brzezinski added.
It is not the first time that the “Morning Joe” have discussed the president’s mental state.
In May 2017, Scarborough said Trump was sounding like his mother who “has had dementia for 10 years.” He repeated the word dementia again in January 2018 while speculating whether the president was suffering from the condition or that “he’s a liar.”
On Thursday, Trump and Fox Business both came under fire for the video of Pelosi. The president’s tweet was the culmination of a series of nasty back and fourths between the Trump and Pelosi over a failure to reach a consensus on how to move forward with the president’s infrastructure initiatives.
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