Illustration by Jason Seiler
This is the year the first baby boomers—those born in 1946—turn 80, and that cohort includes Donald Trump. (His big day is June 14.) We have all recently lived through what it means to have an 80-year-old commander in chief, but at a political moment that’s simultaneously more horrific, erratic, and just plain befuddling than anything this country has seen in ages, we wanted to understand the brain of this 80-year-old president. Plenty of people are trying to discern whether his recent rants and raves are due to a more serious cognitive decline—we understand the instinct; we’ve done it too—but we went a different (if related) route. We’ve cataloged the cultural artifacts of the past that Donald Trump can’t stop bringing up at the strangest moments. You know—Rosie O’Donnell. Gone With the Wind. Hannibal Lecter. The song “Y.M.C.A.”
The more we dug into Trump’s many fixations, the more we realized that this man still thinks he lives in the 1980s. We also discovered—without too much surprise—that he often seems to fundamentally misunderstand the works he treasures most deeply. These items might not replace a brain map, but they do create a certain holistic view of what animates and splinters Trump’s mind. Sometimes, they just help explain his worldview. Other times, they seem to have had real influence on policy and the America that Trump is trying to create. Welcome to Trump Brain, the 25 things that define who the president is—and what he wants.
