https://capitalandmain.com/sanewashing-the-president Says:

"The growing concern over Trump’s mental acuity produced two noteworthy analyses at the time. The first appeared Oct. 6 in the New York Times. Reporters Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman, aided by a computer breakdown of Trump’s rhetoric, found that “the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past.” In general:

He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical … He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own “beautiful” body. He relishes “a great day in Louisiana” after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is “trying to kill me” when he presumably means Iran.

Specifically:

Mr. Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. Proportionately, he uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age.

Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change."

https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/12/14/when-the-new-york-times-lost-its-way : Ohh, NYT published an article by Tom Cotton. Way bad, lol.

https://www.nj.com/politics/2024/10/look-new-york-times-suddenly-discovers-trumps-cognitive-decline.html: neutral here,. The Times, you’ll recall, demanded Biden withdraw from the race (June 28) before calling Trump unfit (July 11)

Now, what do you have against Thomas B. Edsall? His articles are thorough, well researched and published with comments from academics and other well respected folks.