Trump ecstatically hugged an American flag and rocked back and forth a few times while embracing it with a beatific smile on his face after walking on stage at CPAC. The video was replayed many times. You can watch it again here.
The photo has been reproduced so many times it may be the most widely circulated image of the president. These are from Google Images searching Trump flag hugging photo:
The flag incident at CPAC prompted many articles like this: “Donald Trump hugs the American flag and we have no idea why.”
.People watching called the gesture ‘disturbing’, ‘bizarre’ and ’embarrassing’. Paul Murray who watched the stunt said: ‘Expect that flat to receive $130K and an NDA any day now.’ +
David Fernandez added: ‘Bizarre. I can’t see too many world leaders (past or present) doing something like this.’
While one viewer simply said: ‘Well that’s disturbing,’ with another one stating: ‘This person is not well.’
+(Referring to the Stormy Daniels affair)
Aside from the flag hugging Trump’s deranged two hour CPAC rant itself prompted lots of articles and concerned media commentary about his deteriorating mental health. I wrote about it right afterwards in “Trump’s CPAC rant: Cornucopia for psychiatric diagnosis” and used the flag picture which I photoshopped in front of Mt. Rushmore:
I write about the photo now in part because the same photo was just used to illustrate “Trump's cognitive deficits seem worse. We need to know if he has dementia” by Duty to Warn founder Dr. John D. Gartner* and also in the Salon article about Bandy Lee’s opinion (image) and seems to be one of the primary photos being used to show in varying degrees how out of the ordinary Trump’s personality is.
Gartner wrote:
CPAC speech underscored need for assessment
At its extreme, this is called tangential speech. As psychologist Ben Michaelis told Stat, doctors evaluating for Alzheimer’s listen for tangential remarks and non sequiturs and whether the patient can stay on topic.
You had to listen to Trump's whole CPAC speech to realize just how tangential it was. “Those who learned about the speech from glancing at mainstream news headlines the next morning would have no idea how flat-out bonkers the whole thing was … even by Trumpian standards,” Amanda Marcotte wrote in Salon. The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson said Trump “gave a rambling and incoherent two-hour speech in which he raved like a lunatic.”
Americans have a right, indeed an urgent need, to know whether their president is suffering from dementia. We see clear signs that he is, but the only way to find out for sure is to give him a full neuropsychological evaluation and share the results with the American public. The need is more screamingly obvious now than it was a when we first called for it over a year ago.
Yesterday “Signs Of Trump’s Dementia Are Clear As Day, Psychologist Warns” by Farron Cousins was published on Ring of Fire. He address the concerns expressed by John Gartner.
I don’t know how long it will be before Trump is photographed doing something even more bizarre and indicative of mental decline and/or derangement. Until then I expect we’ll continue to see the flag hugging photo.
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* John D. Gartner is one of several prominent mental health professionals including Yale forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee (“Trump's "lack of conscience" makes the president "capable of criminal activity”) who have been publishing about the Trump’s personality and indications that he is in need of a neuropsychiatric assessment. I was an early colleague of Dr. Gartner’s in the Duty to Warn group. He just started the TRUMP DEMENTIA WATCH PROJECT which is an effort to keep the public, mindful of concrete signs that the president is deteriorating cognitively and behaviorally. They are asking the public to tweet examples when they see them (include video if possible). You can send tweets to @duty2warn along with the hashtag #TrumpDementia.