Not really, there were a lot of people that suspected and rumored, but the press generally didn't say much about it until Bush was president. The media was more concerned with the economy and Iran-Contra type issues, and didn't talk about his health a lot. Late night hosts and comedians made jokes about his chin flaps, hair that never moved, and called him an animatronic or puppet. Not a lot about his mental state, other than disdain for his choices, not really health related. After it was publicly acknowledged there was of course a ton of 'As we all long suspected' type noises.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2026
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Which would suggest that Trump's actual mental decline is far worse than his public presentation implies.
That's pretty much always been known. Otherwise we'd know what meds he was on.
He’s a teetotaler, but on the flip side, by many reports he’s long been an enthusiast of the Colombian dancing powder.
What I've heard about is more about Ritalin abuse, but it's not actually that different IIRC
Reagan's diagnosis for Alzheimer's didn't come out until after he was out of office. There were rumors, but nothing confirmed.
While in office, Reagan was still popular. His approval rating was usually around 60% and his only major dip down was in 1983 due to inflation. It helped that Reagan generally had more competent staff than Trump.
As many flaws as Reagan had, he actually was a very intelligent person who cared deeply about politics and had the experience to back it up. It makes sense that he was surrounded by like-minded people. He was still a horrible person who made the world a worse place, but he was reasoned and not a hack.
I was early 20s then so I was not as aware of things as now. So my perspective of that time is smaller.
Regan had a much more effective team around him that ran the federal agencies. It wasn’t the absolute clown show that Donald Dogshit’s second term has been.
All the stuff about Ronald’s mental state that came out much later.
There also wasn't social media and news companies still had this sort of "you respect the office" mentality. I don't know that they would have come out with some expose if there were a link, for instance.
It wasn't as bad as Trump, but I'm going to disagree somewhat with the general idea here. It wasn't discussed on the news as much, but it was mentioned in comedy and satire. The cold war wasn't over so displaying weakness in the President would have been bad.
I don't know if I can link a video here, but to give an example, please look up the video for "Land of Confusion" by Genesis. This video had heavy rotation on mtv and was nominated for video of the year. This was 1986-87. Reagan left office in 1989.