President Donald Trump on Thursday made a series of remarks—perceived as either signs of forgetfulness or deliberate “walk-backs”—once again prompting some critics to question his mental fitness, a concern that frequently shadowed him during the 2024 presidential election.

During a White House press pool event in the Oval Office with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump —speaking to a group of administration-friendly reporters—was asked whether he still considers Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator”—a claim he repeatedly made just last week.

“Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that,” Trump responded to the reporter.

Q: Do you still think that Mr. Zelenskyy is a dictator?”

President Trump: “Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that.” pic.twitter.com/2yEY8VGJ0R

— CSPAN (@cspan) February 27, 2025

“Not a good sign of his mental well-being,” observed Jack Torrey, former DC Bureau Chief for the Columbus Dispatch.

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“President stumbles and admits to forgetting what he said about Zelenskyy that set back relations with Ukraine and hurt our standing in Europe. Will the press aggressively cover this evidence of cognitive decline?” asked elections data analyst Philip Germain, a former Lincoln Project associate.

“Trump is either lying or suffering from some type of cognitive impairment,” commented Sarah Rumpf, a contributing editor for Mediate. “He did call Zelensky a dictator, it was public, it’s not in dispute in happened, and it wasn’t very long ago. No honest person with a basic level of cognitive function would answer this way.”

Lisa Lyons Wright, a former conservative GOP congressional staff member, asked, “How could President Trump forget that?”

“Short memory, apparently,” mocked the Financial Times’ chief correspondent in Kyiv, Christopher Miller.

“If Biden had done this, the media would be doing wall-to-wall coverage on ‘the mental decline of the president,'” noted former DNC spokesperson Marco Frieri.

“Gaslighting? Memory issues? Classic case of Dictator’s Remorse?” Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov asked, offering a menu of options.

The MeidasTouch Network asked: “So Trumpers, three options: He’s senile. He’s a liar. Or both.”

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When questioned during the same press pool event about his administration’s reported strong, successful push to have Romania release the Tate brothers—accused rapists and human traffickers—Trump insisted, “I know nothing about that.”

Q: “Andrew and Tristan Tate landed in Florida today on a private jet after being released from custody in Romania. They are accused rapists, human traffickers, not thought of as good people in many circles. Did your administration pressure the Romanian government to release… pic.twitter.com/eQpuwsUa1Y

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) February 27, 2025

On Wednesday, during his first Cabinet meeting, Trump had attacked the European Union, telling his secretaries, that the EU was “formed to screw the United States.”

Again during that Oval Office presser, a reporter told Trump, “You said yesterday, that the EU was constructed to screw the U.S. when it comes to trade. What can our prime minister say to you to get you to not impose tariffs?”

Trump’s response? “Did I use the word that you said? That bad word?”

Meanwhile, The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake offered a different perspective.

“Some [are] taking these comments as Trump literally forgetting what he said before,” Blake wrote, pointing to his “bad word” remark. “Pretty clear that’s not what happened.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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A federal judge is hammering government lawyers with sharp questions about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to impose a broad ban on transgender service members, which, if carried out, could effectively purge an estimated 15,000 members of the U.S. Armed Forces.

President Donald Trump early on issued executive orders targeting the LGBTQ community, including erasing federal recognition of transgender people by defining what he says is the U.S. government’s official position on sex and gender.

On his first day in office, President Trump “signed executive orders proclaiming that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and ending ‘radical and wasteful’ diversity, equity and inclusion programs inside federal agencies,” NBC News reported.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s order from last week bans any new transgender troops and any procedures supporting transgender troops’ gender identity, despite the majority of the country supporting transgender troops openly serving.

A new memo moves to ban them.

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“The department must ensure it is building ‘one force’ without subgroups defined by anything other than ability or mission adherence. Efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our force and make us vulnerable. Such efforts must not be tolerated or accommodated,” Hegseth’s memo read, The Guardian reported.

Earlier, President Trump signed an executive order, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” that read:

“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity. This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”

Last week, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, appeared skeptical of both the President’s and the Department of Justice’s stance on transgender service members, and blasted Department of Justice attorneys.

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On Thursday, Judge Reyes was back, this time with even more pointed and specific questions about transgender troops serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Judge Reyes pointed to a Department of Defense memo ordering a purge of all transgender troops within 30 days, unless they can obtain a waiver stating their “warfighting” skills require them to continue to serve.

According to Politico’s Kyle Cheney, Judge Reyes has requested a detailed breakdown of Defense Department spending from 2015 to 2024. She appears to be attempting to determine how much the Defense Department spends on transgender service members compared to the total for all troops, in areas including psychotherapy, surgical care, and elective surgical procedures.

Reyes has also requested lawyers identify the total number of transgender service members, and any “mental health constraint,” other than gender dysphoria, that the DoD has previously deemed inconsistent with “honesty, humility, and integrity.”

Judge REYES has some specific questions for the Pentagon about its new guidance requiring separation for most transgender service members. pic.twitter.com/zhz6wtdfR9

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 27, 2025

Last week, Judge Reyes sparred with the DOJ’s attorney over transgender service members.

She said Hegseth’s order “calls an entire category of people dishonest, dishonorable, undisciplined, immodest, who lack integrity, people who have taken an oath to defend this country, people who have been under fire, people who have received medals for taking fire for this country. I want to know from the government whether that language expresses ‘animus.’ Does that express animus?”

Another extraordinary exchange just now about “animus” in the court hearing on trasngender members of the military: pic.twitter.com/Hmjg6SqInt

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 18, 2025

See the social media posts above or at this link.

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A little-known but far-reaching office within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has removed protections for LGBTQ+ people from a policy that restricted intelligence gathering on certain groups, following an executive order from President Donald Trump to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), one of 18 organizations that comprise the U.S. intelligence community—now overseen by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—reportedly has long faced allegations of civil liberties and civil rights abuses.

The Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has stripped the words “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” from a policy manual “that set guardrails on gathering intelligence,” Bloomberg Government first reported. “I&A’s work has attracted close scrutiny for years because of its domestic focus, with intelligence often involving US citizens and others in the country.”

According to The Advocate, an archived version of the text previously read:

“OSIC Personnel are prohibited from engaging in intelligence activities based solely on an individual’s or group’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, country of birth, nationality, or disability. The use of these characteristics is permitted only in combination with other information, and only where (1) intended and reasonably believed to support one or more of I&A’s national or departmental missions and (2) narrowly focused in support of that mission (or those missions).”

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The words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” have since been removed.

“The Office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) is a unique member of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC),” the office states on its homepage within the DHS domain. “I&A is the only IC element statutorily charged with delivering intelligence to our State, Local, Tribal and Territorial (SLTT) and private sector partners, and developing intelligence from those partners for the Department and the IC.”

“I&A specializes in sharing unique intelligence and analysis with operators and decision-makers to identify and mitigate threats to the homeland,” it continues. “I&A’s main focus is to provide the Department with the intelligence and information it needs to keep the Homeland safe, secure, and resilient.”

In January 2024, Just Security—an independent, nonpartisan law and policy journal led by co-editor-in-chief Ryan Goodman—reported that DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) “has for years engaged in abusive domestic intelligence practices targeting Americans’ political views and broadly painting certain groups of Americans as terrorists.”

“Since at least 2016,” Just Security’s Spencer Reynolds wrote, “I&A officers have conducted interviews with people held in jails without sufficient constitutional protections, targeted journalists and activists protesting local monuments under the guise of homeland security, surveilled racial justice demonstrators, and monitored political views shared by millions of Americans — about topics like abortion, government, and elections — that DHS baldly asserts will lead to violence.”

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It also alleged that “I&A too often disseminates questionable intelligence to thousands of officials nationwide. This pattern of abuse continues today: I&A is currently engaged in an intelligence campaign that has empowered Georgia authorities to weaponize state terrorism and racketeering charges in a crackdown against activists protesting a police training facility in Atlanta.”

Reynolds has an extensive background in intelligence and law, including serving as senior intelligence counsel in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “where he advised on operations and policy related to domestic intelligence, counterterrorism, social media monitoring, and other national security matters,” according to his bio.

As The Advocate noted, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem “has a history of targeting LGBTQ+ rights, including by signing executive orders banning transgender athletes from participating on teams that align with their identities and banning gender-affirming care for youth.”

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