Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett has encouraged opposition Republicans to begin calling into question President Donald Trump’s mental fitness for office in the wake of his eccentric public address at West Point’s graduation ceremony, noting their willingness to make the same criticism of Joe Biden last year.
Trump, 78, and his supporters in Congress and beyond repeatedly alleged that Biden, 82, was in a state of advanced cognitive decline throughout the 2024 presidential election. Those allegations eventually forced the then-president out of the election.
Now, Trump’s own mental wellbeing was questioned on Saturday after he delivered a rambling address to graduates of America’s top military academy in New York in which he held court on “trophy” wives, yachts, Gary Player’s short stature, the “great late” Al Capone and Army drag shows before leaving without shaking the hands of the honorees.
The GOP needs to “start calling [Trump] out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally,” the Texas congresswoman told MSNBC on Sunday when asked about the president’s conduct.
“I don’t think that those who have gone through West Point expected to have their commander-in-chief address them and start talking about trophy wives or start talking [about] how he has so many investigations,” Crockett said.
“What a great reminder that you are not qualified to be the person that potentially will command troops to go into war. That is not instilling confidence whatsoever.
“It is time for Republicans to start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally. We know when it comes down to his criminality, he is not qualified to serve, but this is just absolutely deplorable.”
Trump has championed his own freewheeling approach to off-the-cuff speechmaking as “The Weave,” claiming that he is able to draw together all manner of disparate threads into a compelling narrative.
His marathon speeches at presidential rallies across the country last year often yielded bizarre tangents on everything from the fictional cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter to the size of the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s manhood.
Democrats tried to accuse Trump of projection in his attacks on Biden, particularly after he confused his rival for the GOP nomination, Nikki Haley, with ex-House speaker Nancy Pelosi, in wrongly claiming that the former had been responsible for security at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 2021.
Trump also mixed up his former White House physician, Ronny Jackson, with Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson on another occasion, which inspired further counter-claims that it was the Republican who was really suffering from cognitive decline.
The situation led some medical experts to question Trump’s health and suggest to The Independent that he had “lost touch with reality.”
Crockett’s call to arms comes as Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s heavily-trailed book Original Sin hit shelves.
Although the duo has been criticised by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, for one, for failing to present their findings earlier, while the book’s publicity push has been hugely complicated by Biden’s recent announcement that he is battling prostate cancer, to which even Trump responded with sympathy.
