Sir, This Is a McDonald’s

Jonathan Last, writing for The Bulwark:

The president of the United States gave a speech yesterday before a group of McDonald’s corporate workers and franchise owners. I’m going to quote a few sections of his remarks at great length, because if you have not listened to Trump speaking recently, the decline in his cognitive abilities is a bit shocking.

The point of this exercise is not to clown on Trump, but to give everyone a baseline understanding of where he is, with the mentals, as we try to understand how he will respond to increasing pressures in the coming months.

The video of his remarks is here and I’ll include timestamps for each section, in case you want to see what he looks and sounds like.

Bottom line: This is a man in noticeable mental decline.

The whole world is inured to listening to Trump speak like this — it sounds normal even to those of us who see that Trump is spiraling into dementia. Ah, that’s just Trump being Trump. But it’s not normal. Reading the transcript is jarring. Also jarring: listening to Juliet Jeske’s performative reading of a particularly nonsensical portion of Trump’s McDonald’s speech. It’s just gibberish.

★ Tuesday, 18 November 2025