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Donald Trump continued to criticize media coverage questioning whether he is cognitively impaired, telling crowds at a rally “I’ll be the first to let you know.”
The former president boasted that he has been “ranting and raving” for hours, sometimes up to three times a day, across the US, without making a mistake.
“Who the hell can do this two-three times a day?” he told crowds in Prescott Valley, Arizona on Sunday. “I speak for hours, mostly without a teleprompter, really, mostly... one mispronunciation of a word [they say] ‘He’s cognitively impaired. He’s getting old. He’s getting old… They watch for weeks and weeks, for weeks and weeks.
“I’m up here ranting and raving – last night, 100,000 people, flawless ranting and raving. I’m ranting and raving, not a mistake, and then I’ll be at a little thing, and I’ll say something a little bit [wrong] they’ll say, he’s cognitively impaired.
“No… I will be someday. We all will be someday, but I’ll be the first to let you know.”
Trump has taken much pride in his cognitive ability, and has repeatedly claimed that he “aced” a cognitive test in 2018. At 78, he is now the oldest presidential candidate in American history. If elected, he would be 82 years old when he leaves the White House.
Mental capacity was also one of Trump’s favorite attack lines against his former political rival Joe Biden, before the president dropped out of the 2024 race.
At Sunday’s rally, moments after assuring supporters he was mentally sound, Trump referred to Biden as “obviously cognitively repaired,” rather than “cognitively impaired.”
The former president’s rambling and increasingly angry speeches focused on the past have been fueling concerns about his age and fitness to lead the country.
Leading mental health experts, including a former White House doctor, have previously told The Independent that he is showing signs of “cognitive decline” and appears to “have lost touch with reality.”
Sunday’s rally came shortly after his now-rival, Kamala Harris, shared her medical report in what marked a thinly-veiled challenge to Trump to do the same.
In the two-page letter released on Saturday morning, the vice president’s physician Joshua Simmons writes that Harris is in “excellent health” and that she maintains a healthy, active lifestyle.
The 59-year-old vice president “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” the letter stated.
The Trump campaign quickly fired back at the report insisting that he is “in perfect and excellent health to be Commander in Chief”.
“He has maintained an extremely busy and active campaign schedule unlike any other in political history, whereas Kamala Harris has been unable to keep up with the demands of campaigning and reveals on a daily basis she is wholly unqualified to be President of the United States,” claimed Steven Cheung, Trump campaign spokesperson in a statement.
