Conservative author Jonathan V. Last, editor at the center-right news site The Bulwark, is raising alarms after what he describes as a “shocking” display of mental decline by President Donald Trump. The trigger? Trump’s rambling remarks during a Monday speech to McDonald’s franchise owners and suppliers.
Last says the president is showing “noticeable mental decline,” pointing to several baffling statements made during the event. One example involved Trump claiming that Google’s co-founders personally called him after a McDonald’s drive-thru photo-op last year—a claim Last doubts.
“But I want to thank, uh, as you know the famous Sundar and Sergey, Sergey Brin. These are two guys that own and run a place called Google. They called me the following day after I did that McDonald’s little um, skit, because it was it wasn’t a commercial. You got it for nothing. It was a skit and they told me that it and I didn’t know them. I just I said, ‘Who are they?’ They own Google. I said, ‘That’s pretty good. That’s not bad.’”
Trump added that the supposed video “received more hits than anything else in the history of Google and that records, it still stands.”
Last questions the plausibility of these claims, asking whether Google’s CEOs actually called to congratulate Trump and what he even means by “hits.” He notes that this is not just exaggeration—Trump’s statements are detached from reality.
The president continued into a dizzying tangent about Coca-Cola and the Gulf of Mexico:
“I’ll bet they use real sugar in your Coca-Cola. You know, they didn’t in the United States. I said to the head of Coca-Cola, you got to go to sugar. They do in other countries. And you know what? They went to sugar. Isn’t that nice? I said, ‘You got to go to sugar.’ Just like I said, why is the Gulf of Mexico called the Gulf of Mexico? I said, ‘We’re changing the name.’ And now it’s the Gulf of America. Has nothing to do with McDonald’s, but maybe it does because it’s very nice cycle.”
As Last points out, Coca-Cola has not reverted to sugar in the U.S., and the Gulf of Mexico remains unchanged. He calls these remarks “nonsense,” a clear sign that Trump is no longer keeping his anecdotes straight.
The president also reminisced about his brief participation in a McDonald’s drive-thru event, describing the experience in a way that was, according to Last, “unintelligible”:
“I’ve been on that line many times. Actually, that line was incredible in the commercial. Right. It wasn’t a commercial. It was about, but, they have the line. The people had no idea. So I made the French fries. The guy was really good. He had a great wrist. He was, nyee, ‘Sir,’ he was going like, ‘Sir.’”
“Yeah. It was not that easy but I got it sort of finally. Not the greatest but I pouring it in asking him all sorts of stupid questions but it was very interesting. Amazing, a little thing is not, it’s a little complex, right?”
To Last, this was more than mere storytelling flourish—it was evidence of cognitive slippage. He writes that Trump has “a playlist of grievances and stories in his head” but now “can’t tell his stories apart. He starts talking about flow restrictions on faucets, which brings him to water. But the word ‘water’ triggers another of his obsessions—water supply issues and deliveries to farms in the American West.”
“And,” Last concludes, Trump’s “brain now mushes these two stories together into a single, unintelligible blob.”
Last titled his analysis “Sundown,” an allusion to the confusion and blending of narratives sometimes associated with cognitive decline.
Even from a conservative perspective, Last’s warning is stark: Trump is no longer just wandering off-topic; he is showing what appears to be real mental deterioration. “He’s not ok,” the headline could very well read, capturing both the concern and the urgency for those observing his public appearances.
