The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Ailing Trump Is Paranoid About Mental Decline

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

Dr. John Gartner joins Joanna Coles to explain why Donald Trump’s worsening paranoia, erratic behavior, and visible health problems point to a dangerous mix of malignant narcissism and possible frontotemporal dementia. Drawing on clinical practice and the shift toward observable diagnostic criteria, Gartner argues that Trump’s public performances reveal more than enough: the “25th time” fixation, the aspirin theories, the right-side weakness, and the drifting, rambling speeches. The conversation ends with a stark question: What happens when a country is governed by a man whose greatest vulnerability is his own deteriorating mind? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Trump was paranoid before he developed dementia. Okay, that's the nature of malignant narcissism. Paranoia is one of the core component. That's why when you hear him speaking in these very articulate talks in the 1980s, he's like, ah, you know, China, they're just trying to screw us. They want to manipulate, blah, blah, blah. So it's still we're being screwed, right? It's still the paranoia, but at least the sentences were comprehensible.

Now, as he's starting to deteriorate, one of the signs of dementia is people becoming more paranoid. The paranoia is becoming more grotesque, more primitive. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Happy New Year. And what a year 2026 is going to be. We've got the midterms looming and everything we're thinking about, we're going to, well, everybody we're talking about, we're going to be looking at it through the lens of the midterms, I think, as we go ahead. But who better to talk to as we kick off January 20. 26, then Dr. John Gartner, who spent a lot of time observing Donald Trump and has all sorts of important thoughts bringing his 40 years as a clinical psychologist to bear on what is going on

with the president's mental health and how is it impacting the rest of us? And for those of you who haven't seen it, the Wall Street Journal did a long piece about Donald Trump's health this week. And when they rang up the White House for fact-checking questions. The president himself came on the line and Dr. John will analyze for us the president's response. So no time to waste. Let's get into it. What better way to start the new year than with Dr. John Gartner. Dr. John, you are one of our favorite guests. Our comments are full of excitement for what you have to say. I've even got my son. tweed jacket on as a note to your academic credentials, because I know you are super swanky at Johns

Hopkins University. I appreciate you're making me feel comfortable. Well, I'm trying. I don't have elbow patches, but I do bring questions. And one of the questions, of course, that lots of people have that I would like you to address is, can Dr. John Gartner actually form a genuine diagnosis about what's going on with the president because there's the whole Goldwater rule where, you know, psychiatrists and therapists aren't supposed to even think about a diagnosis for public figures.

And you've always said you've never sat down with him, but you've also said that he's so evident on the public stage, it's impossible not to form a diagnosis. Can you just talk to us about how you observe him? Sure. Well, first of all, people need to understand the Goldwater Rule means is a ban against diagnosing public figures without interviewing them. And it has a lot more to do with protecting public figures or protecting their relationship to the profession. In fact, we can diagnose patients without interviewing them, and we do quite all the time in clinical practice.

And it's not considered unusual or unethical. This was really more of an attempt to manage the relationship of the profession to public figures who could damage the profession, frankly. The other thing is we've had a shift in our diagnostic nomenclature in the 1980s. We went to the DSM-3 system, now DSM-5, which is based on observable. Which is the diagnostic manual, right? Just for people who aren't as familiar with it. Yeah. Right, which some people have called the psychiatric Bible, where we list all the diagnoses,

but they all have to have observable behavioral criteria. I know we're going to talk about this Wall Street Journal article that just came out about Trump, But one of the interesting things they said is that in the case of Biden, his handlers kept him out of the public eye as a way of basically deceiving the public about his level of cognitive decline. But Trump is taking the opposite strategy. He is basically filling the zone with so much flagrant, florid manifestations of dementia and psychopathology that we're essentially getting used to it. So his strategy is not to hide it, but to somehow say, like they say in men and black, hey, but on me, this looks good. All right. So let's talk about this Wall Street Journal. For people who haven't read it or haven't seen it yet, it's a very, it's a fascinating piece because the president calls in after the paper, which has put together a list of questions for the White House about Donald Trump's health, because they too have been diagnosing some of his odder behavior. strategies, they reach out to him and he in fact calls them to complain about the fact that everybody's obsessed by his health. What did you make of his response to the paper?

I'm glad you asked that question. You know, one of the things that happens when you really become a microscopic viewer of Trump's behavior is you start to notice that some of the deranged things he says actually have a loose chain of association that explain them. And actually Freud said it's not possible for the brain to produce random thoughts. There's always some chain of association. So I want to tell you that what he said is his exact words were, yeah, let's talk about health again for the 25th time. Now, why would you pick the number? 25. Ding go. You see where I'm going here.

Yes. 25th amendment. Just explain. Please explain what the 25th amendment is. We're talking about it for the 25th time because people can. keep saying it's 25th Amendment time. How could he give himself away like that? People talking about my health. That reminds me of the 25th Amendment.

So stop talking about it for the 25th time. So is he projecting that he's actually anxious someone is going to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office on mental capacity grounds? I'm sure that he's paranoid about that, actually, because he is paranoid and paranoid people are very quick to see any threat to their power. Malignant narcissists in particular, you know, Saddam Hussein used to execute people and they would say, well, was he a traitor? He says, no, but I could tell eventually he was going to be. Right, which is a very good way of undermining everybody in your room.

So, or everybody around you. So what do we make of the fact that his physical health is also clearly challenged in front of us? He said he's been taking an inordinate amount of aspirin because he wants thin blood rushing through his heart, not thick blood. What did you make of that? You know, I think that's probably true. And it's actually very funny because it's very in character. He just does wacky things medically. You know, this is the guy that told us to take hydroxychloroquine and to inject bleach and put light in our arms and, you know, is agreeing that vaccines cause autism.

So the fact that he would subscribe to some wacky, dated medical theory about aspirin and not listen to his doctor's advice actually makes sense. And it does actually, to some extent, make sense of some of the symptoms that they're trying to explain the bruises on his hand between his age and taking the aspirin that could cause him to actually be very easily bruiserable. We would kind of expect to see bruises other places than just the back of his hands, but we don't examine his whole body. it's possible that he is easily bruised. What I was disappointed about in that Wall Street Journal article was they mentioned nothing about his cognitive functioning. At least the New York Times article touched on it. They said, you know, his rambling speeches have become more rambling.

The closest they got in the Wall Street Journal article was saying that he, you know, he often veers from topic to topic, sometimes making factual errors. Okay. So that's, again, very mild, right? But we know, and this has been reported in The Daily Beast, that no story enrages Donald Trump more than the stories about his physical and cognitive health. And there's a reason for that. One, he knows that he's covering something up.

But two, as a malignant narcissist, the one thing you need to project is strength. It's okay to be hated and feared, but you have to appear strong. And so this is really, Donald Trump's Achilles' heel is his brain. And now, I guess, a whole bunch of other organs, you know, his ankles, his heart. his hands. You know, also his psychomotor performance is getting worse. His, you know, wide, right-based leg swing is becoming dramatically worse. We talked about that, I think, last time that footage of him and his grandson in the White House. But since then, we're also seeing other signs of weakness on his right side. He's having trouble raising his hand, his right hand

to salute. He couldn't flip a coin at the NFL game, where he was given that honor. He's, We see him pounding his leg before his right leg before he walks down the stairs from Air Force One onto the tarmac. He's clearly, we see the right side of his face drooping when he falls asleep. So clearly he's had some kind of, I think, mini stroke or stroke that's affected the right side of his body. And this is what happens when people have dementia. I think what we now have is a set of careening disorders, right, that when people start to not do well physically. And I think anybody with eyes in their head can see that this man is not well. Let me up.

I mean, he's basically melting in front of us cognitively and physically. So can you talk to us a little bit about one of the symptoms that I find very interesting around dementia? And that's paranoia. What actually is paranoia? I mean, it's one of those words that we use all the time. But without, I think, probably a true understanding of what it actually means. and I feel like you can give us both the sort of root of it and how Donald Trump is displaying paranoia. So look, this is what's sort of frightening about this deterioration that he's going through.

Donald Trump was paranoid before he developed dementia. That's the nature of malignant narcissism. Paranoia is one of the core component. That's why when you hear him speaking in these very articulate talks in the 1980s, he's like, you know, China, they're just trying to screw us. They want to manipulate, blah, blah, blah. So it's still we're being screwed, right? It's still the paranoia.

But at least the sentences were comprehensible. Now, as he's starting to deteriorate, one of the signs of dementia is people becoming more paranoid. The paranoia is becoming more grotesque, more primitive. But what does paranoid mean that you think that other people are coming after you? Is that the essence of paranoia? Yes. Well, you feel like people are threatening you.

they're trying to hurt you. You're projecting onto them, actually, your own aggressive and destructive impulses. And I just wanted to give you an example, by the way, of how his paranoia has gotten worse. Do you remember that scene where he was talking to children? He was sort of playing Santa. Yes, you know, they were falling into the White House and asking. Yes. That's right. And officially, the White House tracks Santa's sleigh. You know, that's sort of a faux thing that they do every year. So he said to one child, you know, we. We tracked Santa all over the world.

And we have to make sure that Santa's being good. Santa's a very good person, but we have to make sure he's not infiltrated. That we're not infiltrating into our country, a bad Santa. I mean, how crazy you have to be paranoid about Santa? I know. It's so. It might be infiltrating us. Although, to be fair, Santa or at least the image we have of Santa actually comes from Coca-Cola, right?

that Santa used to be green as St. Nicholas, and then it was an ad campaign to make people drink more Coca-Cola that turned Santa red or put him in his red suit because it's the same color as Coca-Cola. So I understand why people might be paranoid about Santa. But it is. I didn't know that was a thing, Santa phobia. I didn't know that was something people were going through. Well, I think it was a very clever marketing ploy on behalf of the Coca-Cola company. But does it also, I mean, I think he also, when he was talking to kids about Santa, referred to the governors of the states they were living in and then he used it as an opportunity to attack his predecessor. Why is he so paranoid and why does he keep coming back to Joe Biden? Because he beat Biden. He's in the White House now. Biden has since been diagnosed with cancer. So it's not like he's still a threat to him.

No, I think this is where he's just trying to shift the blame, basically. He's trying to project the blame. So, you know, we'll be three years into the Trump presidency, and he'll be talking about the Biden economy. So that's just a political... Yeah, just trying to shift the blame, which he's so good at. But he is, he does see enemies everywhere, okay? And basically, even the people who he considers to be allies become enemies, right? see that with, we saw that with Elon Musk and now maybe they're making up.

But in other words, everyone could betray him. That's when I talked about, you know, Saddam Hussein killing people. It was because he was scared of them. It was he was trying to, he was so paranoid that he thought his own people were going to turn against him. And he had to kill them proactively. Well, it's, I mean, people say that, oh, Trump is King Lear, but actually he's much more akin to Macbeth, who was really trying to kill all his enemies before they, could lunge at him and take his seat?

Well, you know, you think about a malignant narcissist. A gang boss, you know, is one kind of prototypical, prototypical example of a malignant narcissist. And what do gang bosses do, right? They try to rub out not only their enemies, but their rivals or someone who could even potentially rat on them. Maybe he had no intention to, but they have the potential to or they have the information where they could if they chose to. So it's a lot of proactive killing.

to protect yourself, right, against people who could harm you. And that's the kind of attitude that he has. Okay, so we're literally watching the wire in the White House. If that's a good line, the wire in the White House. So talk to us a little bit more about that. I mean, you've always claimed that Donald Trump suffers from malignant narcissism. Then there's a layer of age-related dementia on top of it. It's sort of, and then he seems at certain times highly cogent.

Highly cogent. Can you explain to us? I understand the process of dementia isn't linear. But as a doctor, when you look at someone's symptoms, what are you looking for and what should we be looking for to check that we shouldn't urge someone to invoke the 25th Amendment? Well, as you pointed out, there's a lot of variability when people are, in the decline of dementia.

They have good days and bad days. They have days when they'll recognize a relative and days when they won't recognize a relative. We talked about him not recognizing Hakeem Jeffries, who's someone he actually knows well when he was negotiating with Chuck Schumer. Well, I'm sure that two days later he would recognize Hakeem Jeffries.

But the fact that he could have moments where he doesn't even recognize Hakeem Jeffries shows that we really are at a serious level of deterioration. And what is... Can I ask you, what is that, do with, is that to do with brain tissue disintegrating? I mean, what is it physically triggered by? Well, the type of dementia that he probably has is frontotemporal dementia. So the frontal lobes are really deteriorating. And what's scary about that, if he had Alzheimer's, the memory component would be

what was more front and center. With frontotemporal dementia, what's actually more front and center is the behavioral disinhibition and the behavioral acting out. So it's even worse. if he had Alzheimer's and he was just for losing his memory, that would be one thing. But he has a form of dementia that disinhibits people to basically act out badly. So we have this person who has virtually absolute power and no guardrails who in a demented state is impulsively being driven to act out in these paranoid and destructive and crazy ways. I'll also point out, though, that I don't think he is that cogent even on his good days. I think the overall mean of his intellectual functioning is going down. So even his good days are not anywhere near as good at what his baseline was before.

I know this is just a trivial little thing, but I had to pull this quote. He was on Fox having a little softball interview. And they said, so barren, do you think his future's in business or politics? And Trump said, well, I think it's technology. You know, he can look at a computer. I tried turning off his laptop. I turned off his laptop. I said, oh, good.

And five minutes later, he's got his. laptop and it's on. I said, how did you do that? He said, none of your business. He's got an unbelievable aptitude for technology. That is just priceless. Absolutely. And we shouldn't be laughing because it's the president of the free world. But that is shocking that he thinks his son has an aptitude for computing because he can switch his computer on. You can press the on button. Yeah. And probably relates to his frustration as the father of a teenager who was always on his computer at some point, but surely Barron has got his own ability to switch his computer on and off. So we've got malignant narcissism. We've got a level of what you call frontotemporal dementia.

Does the stroke that many people say they think has happened and certainly would account for the weakness on the right side of the body and the drooping of the right hand side of the mouth? Does that accelerate dementia? Well, absolutely. I mean, if you've ever had, I had a demented relative in my family and what killed him suddenly was a stroke. So the deterioration of the Alzheimer's was very gradual, but the stroke was very sudden. And that's a very common way for people with dementia to die. So I think he could be vulnerable to having another stroke at any minute.

The other diagnostic layer is his hypomania, that he's always had a hypomanic temperament. I think I've talked about this. I wrote a book about Bill Clinton. I believe he also has a hypomanic temperament. So that's not necessarily in itself an evil or bad thing. It's people who have a lot of energy and confidence and charisma and creativity who are very driven and very dominant. And there also can be very arrogant and make errors in judgment and be impatient and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, impulsive. So a lot of the creative types who sort of start new movements have this temperament.

So it's a temperament, but it's your character that determines how you channel that temperament. So Bill Clinton has a very different character. I think he has a very benign character for the most part, whereas Trump has always had a destructive, malignant, narcissistic personality disorder. So he's always been tweeting into the night. He's always gotten very little sleep. And actually, they deal with that in the Wall Street Journal article. He says, well, I never really got it. much sleep. That's true. He is one of those people, like Clinton, who congenitally, his whole life, hasn't needed much sleep. But now he's passing out during the day, you see, and that's a whole other level of symptomatology that he, you know, they're trying, now in the Wall Street Journal article,

he says it's a lie, he's just blinking. He also has said that the people and his staff have begged him to try to keep his eyes open, but he can't do it. Even though he's enraged at the reporting about his falling asleep, he can't stop falling asleep because the point is it is actually that I think is the sign of the dementia. And it's perhaps disrupting his sleep somewhat at night, which might make him tired, or that's possible. But people need to understand his baseline is that he's always been a all-night hate-tweater. But I think over Christmas he had 150 angry posts. I mean, talk about this guy being the anti-Santa, you know, to be up all-night Christmas talking about all the people you hate is really anti-Christian, I think.

There are so many books now about sleep and why sleep is important. And one of the arguments they make is because it sort of washes the memory and it helps the brain process the day and then get ready for the next day. And I'm always mindful of people who say they don't sleep very much because I'm trying to figure out, well, when does your brain actually switch off? When does it relax? And you think of Margaret Thatcher, who famously only slept five hours a day and got terrible dementia towards the end. Disordered sleeping, is it a potential symptom of dementia? It can be because our diurnal rhythm is something our brain imposes. And so as people start to lose control of their basic functions, you know, thinking, remembering, talking, walking, you know, some of those functions are internal like maintaining a diurnal rhythm.

So in general, there is probably a deterioration in his sleep. We don't know that for sure because he's always been a low sleeper and he's always been someone who hate tweeted, you know, into the night. But I think the fact that he's passing out now during the day is definitely, it's meaningful and he can't stop it. He knows it's showing his Achilles heel and yet he can't stop the behavior because it's involuntary. So he's told us, however, that he's passed endless cognitive tests, including the Moka test. And you pointed out the last time you were on that it's not a question of doing these tests. What's obvious to any doctoral professional in the field is if you are repeatedly doing these tests, it's because you are being monitored.

Your baseline is being monitored. Absolutely. And of course, in his first presidency, he talked about being given a test where he was asked to repeat the words, man, woman, fish, television. I mean, some rando words. So we realize that he's actually been going through this before and actually as a responsible person whose father had dementia and whose symptoms Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece who's been on the podcast,

said she recognized, she said she looked at him one time when he was standing in the White House and she completely recognized the expression on his face, which was one of looking lost, which increasingly he does actually in videos that people release of him. Mar-a-Lago. Yes, I want to ask you about that. But can we talk about these tests? What are these tests? Do people actually pass them? Or what are they exactly? So there's really two issues here. One, the fact that he's taken the mocha so often. And the other that he's also indicated that he's taken other cognitive tests in addition to the mocha. So as you pointed out, nobody takes the mocha repeatedly unless they're being monitored for dementia.

It might be used as part of a general screening battery for an older person if you were doing a very thorough sort of physical. And some people have even argued that should really be part of the standard battery. But you wouldn't be giving it to someone six months later unless you really had perceived there is a problem. And we need to monitor it. We need to keep an eye on it. See if it's getting worse. So the fact that he revealed that he had taken the mocha six months later again is essentially revealing that his doctors believe that he is showing. showing signs of cognitive decline that require medical monitoring.

The other thing that he said is that he took a series of tests, plural. And he kept saying, oh, an AOC and Jasmine Crockett, they couldn't take those tests. I challenged them, you know, to a mocha off, a test off. Well, actually, I wish those Congress people would be very aggressive about insisting that they have that test off because I think that they would reveal how really demented he is. because he's bragging about passing something that really is a screening device. It has items on it like, can you identify which one of these animals is the lion? Can you identify which one is the giraffe?

Well, my two and a half-year-old grandson can do that. So it's not really something to brag about being able to pass. He would actually boast about that. So what does Mocha actually stand for? It's the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test. So it's a screening test that was developed in Montreal by a group. I don't remember who the group is as a screening test. And it's meant to be super, super easy, right?

Because the point is if you can't pass this, okay, now we've really got a problem. So to say, like, no one's ever seen anyone do this well. What do you mean, like, because no one's ever identified the lion as well as you have. I mean, wow, the way you got that lion right away. No one ever did that before. I mean, that's just crazy. It's crazy to say that you did well on the mocha. Okay.

And can people find it online? I mean, I'm actually very curious to take the mocha test. I want to self-diagnose. Because sometimes when you read off the symptoms, I think to myself, oh, Lordy, I feel like I show up on some of these. But I think we should encourage everybody. Everybody in America should try and take the mocha test. They should understand what the president says he has aced, especially. if it's not very hard.

The other thing is he keeps saying he took additional tests. And what that suggests is that they gave him not just the screening test, but he did badly enough on the screening test, that they felt they had to give him a battery of tests, some kind of neuropsychological battery. And what people have noticed is he was at Walter Reed for almost four hours. If they were just giving him an MRI or a CAT scan of one part of his body, that would be a 15-minute procedure.

But taking these cognitive tests, if you're really giving someone a real battery, it's about a three hour, can be even an all-day affair, frankly, because they get very thorough and there's a lot of tests. So he's told us he's taken the mocha three times. He's told us he took additional cognitive tests. Interestingly, in the Wall Street Journal article, he says, I wish I never took any of those tests, because now everybody's so curious about what they found. And I suspect he'll probably refuse future tests. If they say, we want to give you the mocha again or we want to give you an MRI, he may just say, no, I'm good, because He thought this would dispel suspicion, but of course, no, it's actually increasing suspicion. Dr. John, just hold on one second while we take some ads.

And I'm back with Dr. John Gartner and we're discussing what else but Donald Trump's mental health. So, Dr. John, what are the things that people should be most alarmed about? I know there are many things to be alarmed about, not least some of his so-called policies. But actually when you're watching someone and you've watched them deteriorate over a long period of time, are there certain mini tipping points that we should feel doubly concerned about? Well, objectively, looking at his behavior and his deterioration, this is someone who really probably can't take proper care of himself. How can he possibly discharge the duties of President of the United States? I mean, this is the real Emperor's New Clothes fiasco that we're living here.

You know, it's one thing to focus on how bad he is. I think we all know he's bad. Okay. But it's actually worse to be bad and demented because then there's no rhyme or reason to the way you act out. And there's no one there who can really corral him, you know, even Susan Wiles, you know, and sort of say, no, I don't think you should really bomb this random country because you read about. something, you know, on Twitter, that's not a good idea. I mean, this is the kind of thing. It sounds comical, but he really could do almost anything.

First of all, he has no moral compunctions, right, about anything that he would do. But also, given that he is so completely cognitively confused, he can also do something that just doesn't even make any sense or that completely reflects a disordered view of reality. And the fact that the Wall Street Journal is, like, they, taking on this now, maybe because the billionaire class that reads the Wall Street Journal doesn't like what's happening with the economy. But this is really the tip of the iceberg. I mean, they're being so euphemistic in the ways they're talking about his really gross decline that if you have eyes in your head, you can just see it. You don't need to be a professional to see this man's deteriorating physically and mentally. Okay, so of the moments over the last year or so, what are the

ones that have most alarmed you? Well, you know, I really want to recommend to people an excellent article in the New Republic. It was written by the entire New Republic staff. It's called Cognitive Decline. These were Trump's 11 most senile moments of 2025. So, you know, we've got all these best list, best movies, best books. So they're putting out a list of Trump's most demented moments. Yeah, a different spin on it. A different spin on it. But again, using that word. And so I just wanted to read their best list. So, number one, falling asleep. We've been talking about two, the word groceries.

If you remember him going, you know, groceries, it's an old-fashioned word, where people didn't, you know, don't like to use the word groceries, but groceries, groceries, you know, it's a bag where you put things, groceries. You know, I think that was basically a paraphrase of his groceries. His whole thing about magnets, you know, that no one understands magnets, they melt, and his obsession with magnets. So that one person picked that one. And do you remember that crazy?

He had a crazy moment where he talked about boats and sharks and electricity and that whole, none of which made sense. None of which made any sense. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So he's got that whole thing. Then someone picked the moment when someone asked him about Kirk's death.

This was like the next day. And he said, yeah, well, let me show you my ballroom, as if he just had no reaction to the context of Kirk's death. Just like he had no reaction to that person. who passed out in his office. If you remember that. Of course, the guy who was there talking about the GLP1 prices and he... Right, right, right.

And that was like... Yes, and it was like a comedy scene. You couldn't make it up. There was a man with his legs up in the air behind Trump. And that was the moment actually that Mary Trump said she looked at Donald Trump and he was standing there with this lost expression. He'd lost control of the narrative because some poor man had passed out in his office. And she said,

That blank expression is important. That blank expression is important. You know, the moment I think we lost the Republic is during the debate when they looked at Biden and he had that blank look on his face. It wasn't even anything he said. It was that blank look. And that you're right. Mary Trump has focused on that as one of her key diagnostic indicators.

You saw that blank look, that moment when that person passed out. You also saw that blank look when he was wandering in Japan. Yes. We've talked about that a couple of shows ago, right? where the prime minister had to sort of guide him around and he looked completely disoriented and eventually actually wandered off quite a far distance before somebody realized that he was wandering in the wrong direction. And you also saw, you also saw on her face, her expression of shock. She literally opens her mouth, which reminds me of an expression you saw on Doug's face, the second gentleman,

when they're all gathered to dance for June 10th. And he's standing next to Kamala. There is President Biden who's just frozen. And you can see Doug Emhoff looking at him with a side eye trying to figure out, oh, my goodness, what's going on. And President Biden is just frozen. Yeah. No, I mean, the thing about these symptoms is they're not subtle.

And normal people recognize them when they see them, you know. and we're seeing them. So they're just trying to gaslight the American people by saying, you know, nothing to see here when we're seeing it with our own eyes. And also people, I think the other thing, and I don't want to stop you in your list, but I think people recognize this because they have experience of it themselves with people in their offices, they're with their own families, with their friends. This is not something that people don't have experience of. They say, oh my goodness, that's like Uncle Frank or Auntie Eile. This is what happened to them too. So it's a very human reaction to getting older, unfortunately, for lots of people.

No, you mentioned the comments that we've gotten on these shows. And I know you and I both read the comments. We read them copiously. We do. We read them carefully. And I think one of the most common comments that we've gotten is this reminds me of my mother. This reminds me of my ex-husband. That they've been through the experience and they recognize it when they see it

because they've seen it before. Yep. Yeah, it's not unfamiliar people. Okay, I stopped you in the middle of your list. Please continue. Okay. Of the most senile moments. Japan was one of the things on their list.

Medbeds. I don't know if you remember this, but he had retweeted, quote, tweeted this promise that Trump is going to deliver med beds. And med beds, if those of you don't know, if you're not in the right-wing paranoid conspiracy, a sphere. There is this idea that they are these magic beds that cure everything that rich people have hoarded to themselves, and they're called med beds, but it's a conspiracy to hide them from the regular people. And so Trump weighed in on that saying, well, I'm going to provide med beds for everyone and they have a whole like long, like promissory thing about these med beds which don't

exist. So that was on the list. His use of the word skedaddle, which actually, we've actually read on this show a verbatim of his talking about the word skedaddle. Yep. His use of sounds rather than words, so da-da-da-da, bap-pap, boom-bam-boom, boom, bim-bam, you know, where he just actually loses language and can only communicate in sort of gutteral fronts and sounds. We shouldn't be laughing. It's not funny.

And yet it's, again, very noticeable. Yeah. Well, I mean, I know people sometimes do in the comments criticize us for, laughing and maybe maybe maybe they're right maybe we're mean girls i don't know but um you also some of this is so absurd you know that if you don't laugh at it really you know you i don't know how else to cope with it and there is a kind of comedic absurdity right to the fact that we're talking about these grossly thought disordered and symptoms and people are acting as if this is normal like the emperor's new clothes so that's what's really crazy and i think the way to not go

crazy is to laugh at it and go, this is absurd. Well, and again, it's a little bit how you deal with elderly relatives who've lost the plot. And so everybody's humoring them. And clearly it's very different when the man is sitting behind the resolute desk. Let's talk a little bit. Did you finish the list, by the way? Do we have a couple more to go? There's a couple more things.

One, him calling Trump Republicans, they should be called T-publicans. And then something about everything's a computer. And actually, I have to admit, I didn't even know where that quote came from. So that's their list. Well, I think that could have been the moment when Elon shows him a Tesla and Trump gets in the car and he goes, oh, wow, computer. And it was just a sort of bizarre. It just felt it felt unfortunate. So let's talk about one of the most complex things around dealing with people with dementia, which is how you handle them.

We talked on our last podcast just before Christmas about. Susie Wiles's comment, Courtney, in an interview she did with Chris Whipple, that Donald Trump has an alcoholic's personality, something she recognized, although Donald Trump doesn't drink. How do people contort themselves around people with issues like this?

And how do they, because you reference Saddam Hussein's erratic behavior and determination to just occasionally execute people to encourage others to fall in line. If you're working in a Donald Trump cabinet, how do you manage this behavior? And do you think there's a collective acknowledgement around the table, the guy is crackers, and we're all in on this knowledge? I think there is. I really do.

even in the, we found out after the fact in a Vanity Fair article that even after the first Trump administration, there was apparently a tax chain among Trump staff members that just where they would just do hashtag 25, you know, when he would do something really nuts, just as a way of kind of joking among themselves, oh, here he goes again, doing something crazy. And obviously, the level of deterioration is massive since his first administration. And so one of the things I think he's angry about it from the Wall Street Journal article is they cite. people who are inside the White House who are saying that he's showing signs of aging. Again, we're being euphemistic here by just calling it signs of aging and talking about his thin skin and physically thin skin, not emotionally thin skin. But the point is, yes, I think that, and I think actually Michael Wolfe probably has a hundred times more info on this than I do, but from what I've heard from some of the things that he said, that people in the White House are, you know, gossiping among themselves or speaking among themselves that they know they're dealing with this impaired, difficult person. The problem is how to deal with him, how to cope with him. And there is no really

easy answer. Look, even in nursing homes, just dealing with dementia people who don't have, you know, absolute power, it's difficult to deal with them. One of the reasons that there's so much antipsychotic abuse, which is actually something I've been a cause of mine for a number of years that we're over-medicating elderly people with antipsychotics because it makes them more pliable. It makes them more manageable, but it also basically kills them eventually. That's why there's a black box warning from the FDA saying, do not give this to elderly people, but yet they do because they don't know how to manage these people. Is there any evidence that Donald Trump is taking medication for the aging process or for early onset dementia?

We don't have any evidence. I think you could argue there's evidence that he could use some medication, but I don't think there's any evidence that he's taking medication. We don't know if those bruises in the back of his hand mean he's taking an anti-alzheimer's drug. I think we really have no information, you know, about that. But what I was saying is, no, go ahead. When you were asking about, well, you were asking about how do they manage him in the White House, or do they have, are they speaking among themselves, trying to come up with some strategy?

And I think what I was trying to say is even in a nursing home when you're dealing with someone who isn't your boss, who doesn't have absolute power, you're just trying to keep them from tearing up the place, it becomes a nightmare, actually, for the staff to manage some of these people, especially when they, around sunset, when they start sundowning, and the impulsive, aggressive, physical behavior can be very difficult to manage. And one of the things they do is often give them very damaging antipsychotic drugs just to make the same. them more manageable, even though it's very bad medically for the patient. Obviously, they can't do that with Donald Trump, but I'm saying that's just managing them in a facility. Imagine what it's like when that person is your boss and has absolute power. I think that people around him, frankly, are terrified because they know they can't manage him and they know he's out of control and they're just kind of like trying to survive through the day, basically, without something catastrophic happening. Well, and he's also very capable of either contradicting them in public or completely undermining them.

And one of the things that Carolyn Levitt, his White House press spokesperson, has done, is frequently say that the reason his hands are bruised is because he does so much shaking of hands, which, of course, then didn't make sense when his other hand, his left hand started showing bruises too. So his discussion with the Wall Street Journal, frankly, humiliated or at least. underlined the fact that she'd just been spinning on his behalf, but it wasn't true what she was saying. Well, I think that any attention brought to the issue of his cognitive and physical health is a bad media day for Donald Trump and a bad psychological day for Donald Trump. You see how irritated he is. You know, he said that of all the stories, the one that makes him the angriest are the ones that come out of places like the Daily Beast about his cognitive functioning. So no one's made him angrier than us, apparently.

Dr. John, Dr. John, we're just going to take a quick break for some ads. And I'm back with the clinical psychologist, Dr. John Gartner, and we are talking about Donald Trump's mental state. You mention the sort of. special hell of senior centres when sundowning is coming, but lots of people are being given drugs to help them stay calm. And we had a very interesting comment from a young woman who'd spent a year, obviously, as part of some research at an old people's home. And she just said it was actually a very frightening place to be. Do people with this kind of early onset dementia, do they ever get violent? Do you think it's possible that Donald Trump is violent?

violent? Well, they do get violent quite often. I mean, that's a very, because they become paranoid, they become aggressive, and they become disinhibited and confused. So it does make sense for them at some point to physically lash out, not out of an mean-spirited, you know, attempt to be hurtful, but because they're frightened and they're confused and they're paranoid and they feel like they're being under attack. But it does then make it, them very difficult to manage. I mean, my aunt was managing my uncle alone in her house. You know, my uncle was a wonderful person. For the most part, even when he got to manage it, he would say things like, I love you, honey. You know, and then five minutes later, he'd say,

I love you, honey. You know, he forgot that he said, he'd come back. I love you. He just keep saying it. But sometimes he would become disoriented and want to wander away into traffic, literally. One of the things I forgot to put on the list is that him wandering on the White House roof. That was one of the moments that some people picked. And I remember my aunt called me when Trump was wandering on the roof and she said, that's the worst thing you can happen to have a demented person wandering on the roof. Perhaps that's why somebody'd send him up there. So, yes, but more than his physical violence,

I'm worried that he could act out because he has all this power, right? He might physically act out by just deciding to kill a few hundred people. You know what I mean? Just blow up a few boats, not just lash out with his arm. You know what I mean? And so the fact that he's got all of this power and that he is fundamentally a malevolent person and now he's disinhibited to act out in these confusing, aggressive ways. I mean, it sort of really is the worst possible formula that I could possibly imagine for any

kind of stability. So what would you say to people who are working with him and around him and who deal with him on a daily basis closely? What is your advice for them? The 25th Amendment. If they're not prepared to do that, because perhaps they see a more cogent side of him than you do, what is the best way to handle someone who is the, you know, who's manifesting these symptoms? Well, part of I think what they do is stroke as ego.

We know from these like cabinet meetings, right, where they, you know, fall over themselves, right, to who can be more grotesquely embarrassing and praising the great leader. And I think one of the things that's happening is I think they're helping letting him focus on irrelevant things that pump up his ego but don't have much effect. So about the ballroom and what paint they use and what type of grass they use. And letting him, you know, he's now he's on a naming spree. Talk about grandiosity, right? When has a living president ever, when have we ever named anything after a living president? Well, the answer is never.

We've never named a structure after a living president. And certainly when as a living president insisted something being named after him? And when is a living president insisted something being named from this already named for another president? Right. I mean, the Kennedy centrist is amazing. And now he wants to build an arc to triumph, but it's going to be an arc to Trump. You know, it'll be like an invitation of the arc to triumph in Paris or in Washington Square. But instead, it's going to be a Trump monument.

So he's kind of on a, they're kind of letting him grandiosely run around. naming everything after himself and being obsessed with these little details, while, meanwhile, other people were actually running the government. I think that's one of the ways they're dealing with him is kind of distracting him with these narcissistic niceties, because he can't really grasp what's going on with policy. I mean, again, to show how he's really not functioning that well, one of the things that happened, it's a small thing, but he said, you know, I was a leader on 5G. Now they have 6G. What does that do? Give you a deeper. look into someone's skin.

Okay, so he's confusing, you know, 5G with the camera on your phone. Right, right. I mean, that kind of thing. He just doesn't get it, you know what I mean? He doesn't understand the simplest things anymore, right? So you can see what the chain of association was, okay, 5G is a technical, you know, upgrade for phones. Of course, he had nothing to do with introducing 5G.

That's just a grandiose lie. Now they have 6G, and what does that mean? You're going to have a hyper, you know, accurate phone. I mean, camera. They're just two technologies that have to do with phones, but they have nothing to do with each other. Right. Right. Oh, goodness. So, so what, if you were a predicting man, what would you predict for the year ahead as the president hits 80? Well, I think, I think, I don't see how we avoid some real catastrophic outcomes here. So here we are, we have the president. And one of the things that I think has confounded people is how. how he's become so friendly with people that were traditionally thought of as our enemies.

And in particular, Vladimir Putin, who he seems to think he's, he's corralled into his camp and he can do deals with him, even though he appears by supporting Russia to be undoing 80 years worth of essentially deterrents using NATO in Europe. And we're seeing a very profound shift in the global order. Is that also a symptom of grandiosity that he thinks he can always best Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping? Well, you know, we almost might need a whole other show to talk about this. Done. Booked. Booked. Now, I think with his grandiosity, he doesn't like to think of himself as Putin's poodle. So I think he liked to kind of posture that he was going to win this Nobel Peace Prize and everyone was going to listen to him.

and, you know, he's made peace in seven places. And, you know, now FIFA's giving him a peace prize, which, by the way, the one thing I loved about the FIFA peace prize, aside from the fact that it's totally fake and just there to stroke his ego is then he grabs the metal and he puts it around his own neck, you know, like Napoleon crowning himself emperor. Another example of his grandiosity. But the thing is, is that so, yes, I think he imagined that somehow he was going to, you know, be the big peacemaker and the big brouhaha. And, of course, Putin, you know, played him. But I don't think that we can ignore this, you know, traitorous collusion between Trump and our greatest enemy. And that is the reason that he's destroying NATO and the 70-year alliance that has kept Russia contained because he's working with Russia. I mean, it's really not complicated.

Is he working with Russia or does he recognize in someone like Putin or Xi Jinping who are, you know, who had a completely different political system? does he recognize them as strong men as he's often referring to them? And in so doing sort of projecting what he would like for himself. Yeah, no, I think he identifies with strong men and he wants to be one. No, to be sure, I mean, that's why he's had some kind of love affair with Kim Jong-un and talking about love letters that they were passing back and forth. But I think what people need to understand is Trump's connection to Russia goes back decades. In the 80s, Roger Stone was talking about running him for president,

and we have intelligence reports of the people in Russia thinking that they were developing him in the 80s. Okay. Well, on that note, Dr. Jean Gardner, we walk confidently into 2026. Eyes open for the symptoms you've told us to look out for. And we will see you back again very soon, I hope. I'd be happy to see you again. and I always enjoy talking to you. All right.

Well, you know, let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. I love talking to Dr. John Gartner because I love his medical terms and his ability to physically understand what's going on that manifests mentally. And the lack of sleep, the disinhibited behavior, the mania. It's all fascinating. And as he points out, we can see it. going on. This is not something that feels like it's being hidden from us. Donald Trump is one of the

most transparent presidents that we can think of, certainly in living memory. He's always available. He's always talking. He's always in front of the camera. And of course, the flip side of that is we can see exactly what's going on with him. Anyway, if you have been, thank you for joining us. On YouTube, you can join the Daily Beast community where you get extra content that's exclusive for members. You can become a Bee Beast tier member. And don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast itself, where we keep you up to date with minute by minute, nanosecond by nanosecond developments on what's going on in the White House.

And a big thanks to our Bee Beast level members, of whom we have several new ones. So thank you very much. Yvette Johnson, me thinks. Betsy O'Farrell, Mills and Linz, Shell B. Max Cupid, David Sherry, Thomas Moore, Maria Voltaine, D. Queer Watts, Sinia Lund, John Overrocker, Deb K. Ostrander, Sandra Clark, travels with Carl, Andrew Beaver, Cappanator, Harry Clark, Dawn McCarthy, Dogglover, M. Griner, Dye Stone, Fulvia, Orlando, Herbie, Andrew Mella, Tatnell, Val Love Francisco, Will Hutchison, Andrea, Andrea, Hodel, Bocock, D.C., Sharon Shipley, Connie Rutherford, Karen White, and Heidi Riley. And a big thanks to our production team, Devinrodgerino, Rachel Rosenfield, and our editor, Jesse Millwood.

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