In October 1991, around the time Fred Trump Sr. turned 86 years old, he visited his doctor, C. Ronald MacKenzie. In a report about that visit, the physician wrote that he had “significant memory impairment” with “early signs of dementia” and “obvious memory decline in recent years,” according to records disclosed in the court case.
Months later, a second doctor wrote in a neuropsychological evaluation that Fred Trump Sr. “did not know his birth date, was unsure of his age, and turned to his son [Robert] for help in responding to questions.” The exam by Rajendra Jutagir found that Fred Trump Sr.’s cognitive ability was below the 15th percentile for a person in his age group. He could only recall three of the previous nine U.S. presidents and could not draw the hands of a clock to show the time.
Those detailed medical reports, later entered into court filings, paint an early picture of what would be a long decline for Fred Trump Sr. — one that his son claimed not to notice for years.
“Do you recall your father suffering from any memory lapses in 1991?” an attorney asked Trump in a deposition conducted in 2000.
“No,” Trump responded.
“Do you recall him being diagnosed as having senile dementia in 1991?” the attorney said.
“No, I don’t,” Trump said in the deposition. To the contrary, Trump said that his father was “very, very sharp.”
Mary L. Trump said those claims were contradicted by other family members. Robert Trump, Donald’s younger brother, said that their father was in “notable decline” by 1990, as recounted by Mary L. Trump in a lawsuit over the will. Trump’s sister, Maryanne Barry, later was secretly recorded by Mary L. Trump as saying that “it was basically taking the whole estate and giving it to Donald” at a time when “Dad was in dementia.” (Maryanne Barry, who died last year, did not respond to a request for comment when The Post first revealed the secret tapes in 2020; Robert died in 2020.)
Regardless, by the mid-’90s even Donald Trump was publicly acknowledging the truth: that his father’s dementia was rapidly advancing.
[…]
Trump’s father died at 93 years old in June 1999, eight years after the first formal diagnosis of dementia.
Shortly afterward, Mary L. Trump and some other family members sued Donald Trump and two of his siblings, accusing them and others of seeking to take advantage of Fred Trump Sr.’s declining mental abilities in the attempt to rewrite the will. The allegation came as part of a broader argument that she was owed more health-care coverage.
“Fred Sr.’s will is the product of undue influence and coercion by defendants upon Fred Sr., who clearly lacked the requisite mental capacity to make a will,” the lawsuit said. Donald Trump denied the allegation and later said that Mary L. Trump was “a seldom seen niece who knows little about me, says untruthful things about my wonderful parents (who couldn’t stand her!) and me.”
The case was settled under a nondisclosure agreement.
[…]
Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, said such beliefs are noteworthy. “If intelligence is a genetically inherited state” as Trump believes, she said, “then something like dementia, Alzheimer’s, which do have very strong genetic components, is more of a concern to somebody who is directly related to Fred Trump Sr. as Donald is. I’m not saying he has dementia, but you can’t say the one thing and not also acknowledge the other.”
Experts said much remains unknown about how people get Alzheimer’s, but research has shown that genetics may play a role.
[…]
Trump has not said whether he has taken a number of specialized tests for Alzheimer’s, including genetic testing. Such exams can also include brain scans, cerebrospinal fluid tests and blood tests, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
Trump has not released a full medical report during the campaign, so far providing only the brief assessment from his physician, Aronwald.