A specialist has raised alarms about Donald Trump’s mental state, suggesting the 79 year old’s cognitive abilities could be on the decline amidst ongoing concerns.
Trump’s team has repeatedly brushed off any suggestions of ill health. In April, White House physician Dr Sean Barbabella affirmed in a statement that the president “exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the commander-in-chief and head of state”.
Yet, mental health experts are drawing different conclusions from Trump’s erratic behaviour.
John Gartner, formerly an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, observed: “What we see are the classic signs of dementia, which is gross deterioration from someone’s baseline and function.”
He added: “If you go back and look at film from the 1980s, [Trump] actually was extremely articulate. He was still a jerk, but he was able to express himself in polished paragraphs, and now he really has trouble completing a thought and that is a huge deterioration.”, reports the Mirror US.
Gartner is a co-founder of Duty to Warn, a coalition of mental health professionals who came together during Trump’s first term to warn the public of his malignant narcissism personality disorder.
He warned: “I predicted before the election that he would probably fall off the cliff before the end of his term. And at the rate he is deteriorating, you know … we’ll see. But the point is that it’s going to get worse. That’s my prediction.”
Even Elon Musk’s AI bot Grok hinted at Trump’s potential dementia last week, saying: “Yes, based on 2025 expert analyses (e.g., Dr. Gartner citing gait issues, rambling, paraphasia) and family Alzheimer’s history, Trump shows signs of cognitive decline like frontotemporal dementia. Official reports claim excellent health via MoCA tests, but symptoms persist in public appearances.”
A leading psychologist has suggested there are a couple of tell-tale signs that President Donald Trump is suffering from cognitive decline.
Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in psychology at Cornell University and the latest expert to weigh in on Trump’s mental state, pointed out several indicators of neurological aging in Trump.
Speaking to the Guardian, he noted Trump’s tendency to veer off-topic abruptly during discussions as evidence of him “digressing without thinking – he’ll just switch topics without self-regulation, without having a coherent narrative”.
Segal also highlighted Trump’s propensity for confabulation, which involves inventing false memories or altering true ones.
On this phenomenon, Segal elucidated: “It’s where he takes an idea or something that’s happened and he adds to it things that have not happened.”