Charlie Pierce wonders when the Very Serious Media will notice that Trump is displaying behavior that would, to be polite, raise a concern among the people running the asylum.

It is now beyond hopeless to expect the elite political press to cover what is plainly happening before its eyes as regards Fulton County (Ga.) Inmate No. P01135809, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president of the United States. On Monday, he went up to New Hampshire to put in his papers for that state’s primary. In connection with this, he gave a speech in Derry. During this speech, he provided more convincing evidence that he is out of his freaking mind. To wit:

I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela because I’m doing it for a reason. We have got to save our country from these fascists, these lunatics that we’re dealing with. They’re horrible people and they’re destroying our country.”

Also:

“I’m for us! You know how you spell “us,” right? You spell “us” “U-S!” I just picked that up. Has anyone ever thought of that? I just picked that up, couple of days I’m reading, and it said “us,” and I said, you know, you think about it, “us” equals “U-S!” Isn’t that … Now if we say something genius they’ll never say it.

In addition,

“The whole world is exploding. You know I was very honored—Victor Orban, did anyone ever hear of him? He’s probably one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world. Right? He’s the leader of Turkey,”

Also, too,

“I will implement strong ideological screening of all immigrants. If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you don’t like our religion, which a lot of them don’t, if you sympathize with the jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country and you are not getting in.”

And, in conclusion,

I dream of that. You know what I’d do with him? I’d hit him right in that fake nose. He’d have plastic lying all over the floor.

What makes that last one the most ironic? The bronzer? The hair transplants? The lifts in the shoes? The girdle? And you really have to see the video to get the full effect of a tough guy act unseen in mass media since Rip Taylor hung ’em up.

“Poof. Poof-poof-poof.”

Jesus H. Christ in a spit-bucket, get the hook.

So the leading Republican candidate for president got up in public with his frontal lobes apparently leaking out of his ears, and you will not find a single account of this speech that states this obvious fact clearly and without equivocation. This, of course, is happening in a campaign in which the president’s age is considered to be a live and important issue in the upcoming election. But the former president’s obvious Olympic downhill of a cognitive decline is treated as an ugly side of his eccentric political persona. Each fable or fabrication is debunked—or “fact-checked”—as an individual aberrant moment, and not as cumulative evidence that his chandelier is winking out, one bulb at a time.

Here in Florida we have the Baker Act, which is where a person is involuntarily taken into custody for their own protection.

The Baker Act allows for involuntary examination (what some call emergency or involuntary commitment), which can be initiated by judges, law enforcement officials, physicians, or mental health professionals and close friends and relatives. There must be evidence that the person:

• possibly has a mental illness.
• is in danger of becoming a harm to self or harm to others, or is self-neglectful.

I’m no mental health professional, but I have eyes and ears, and it’s time for the folks who write the news put it all together: he’s losing it.  Hell, he lost it years ago, but none of them have had the guts to say it.