Doctors Speak Out On Trump's Decline | The Daily Beast Podcast

We've seen many patients who've had previous strokes for President Trump. There was video of him shuffling and I thought that was weird. Then I saw him cradling his right hand in his left. He garbled words, and that suggested to me, along. with a 325mg of aspirin, he's had a prior stroke. Donald Trump's it is now sort of in control of the world.

because he has no frontal lobes, he has no advisers. We have no constitution. We have no checks and balances. It's like everything just radiates from his IDD. And there's not a single thing to sort of stop an impulse. in his disturbed brain from becoming a war. Welcome to the Daily Beast podcast. I'm Eudokia, executive editor of the Daily Beast. I am in for Johanna calls and privileged to be here. And in honor of President Trump's upcoming 80th birthday,

just three weeks to go, we have decided to run a very special episode of The Daily. Beast podcast all about the president's health, both physical and mental. We're going to talk about what. explains his feuds, his rants, and has crazed midnight posting sprees. But before we dive into the short, please take a moment. Share this podcast with your friends. Invite them to subscribe to The Daily Beast YouTube channel. We are closing in on 700,000 followers. and with your help, we can get to 1 million.

It's because of people subscribing that we have been able. to do something at the Daily Beast that we are really proud of. Ask questions and report on the president's physical and mental health. Just to be honest, it's only at times. In fact, we feel that we have been almost alone in covering those clear. questions over what is going on with the 79 year old president. That dam of silence is beginning to break, or at least there are some cracks in it. Just take a look at what Erin Burnett had to say.

Everywhere. This month on CNN, you can take a step back and go. If you did not tell me who was doing this. So you took all any kind of Trump Derangement Syndrome. that defenders might say, or or people who you would say, that's not okay. That's something to be concerned about. And look at these headlines in the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. That's why we are proud. We have been at this so long. and in such great depth that we have an amazing selection of Joanna's. conversations with two people who have lots to say about the president's.

health, doctor John Gartner and Doctor Bruce Davidson. They have been, I have to say, very brave to speak out, and every word they have to say is. well worth listening to as we close in on Trump's 80th birthday. We begin, of course, with the Daily Beast podcast. Fan favorite doctor John Gartner is a psychologist and clinical psychotherapist. He is perhaps the most dogged chronicler of President. Trump's declining mental and psychological state.

And I'm proud. to officially name the undisputed. Just when did this come out? Mr. speaker, the undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal. We have to proceed. Always. I don't use the word call. You know, it needs a PR job because had a bad reputation for a while. So we're not allowed to say the word coal anymore. It has to be preceded by beautiful, clean coal. Okay, we're cleaning it up. Very good.

Doctor John, first of all, fantastic to have you back. And please tell us what was going on there. I mean, we all mispronounce words, but that felt like something. so much more than just a mispronunciation. It's much more than a mispronunciation. You know, we've been talking for really months, actually years about his, what we call phonemic paraphrases, which is the inability to use. to form a whole word.

And so instead you form a kind of garbled version of the word, or there's a root of the word and you can't finish it. Or so if this is something that has been happening recurrently. and it's been something that's been happening. repeatedly and is happening more and more often because it's. a sign of his frontotemporal dementia and dementia gets worse. And so we're going to continue to see this inability to form. words is going to get worse as time goes on. And of course, what Doctor John, what does it look like in the brain?

I'm mindful of those brains, you see, with kind of like white patches in them. Is something sort of missing. Have neural pathways just collapsed. What's physically what's happening? What's so dangerous about the form of dementia that he most. probably has frontal temporal dementia. is that it's it attacks the frontal lobes, and the frontal lobes are actually what separates us from animals. It's what inhibits our our behavior forces us to kind of think it through,

to have some judgment, right, to be able to evaluate. conceptually what we're thinking or seeing or talking about. As that deteriorates, the main manifestation is not in memory. It's in behavior that as the breaks, the inhibition, the. the self-awareness right of the frontal lobe starts to deteriorate, people start to act out in an aggressive and.

chaotic, impulsive way. that can be very dangerous and gets very quickly out of control. So if you think about it, if he did have Alzheimer's, and actually I would recommend people. look at doctor Frank George's Substack called The Gaslight Report. He has a long discussion of why it's frontotemporal dementia. and not Alzheimer's. In terms of the symptoms, he's a neuropsychologist. If we're Alzheimer's, we would see more gross. deterioration in his memory as the primary symptom.

Instead, what we're seeing is gross deterioration. in his judgment and impulse control as the primary behavior, the worst possible deficit you could have in someone who. has control of the nuclear arsenal, who makes decisions about going to war. or peace. And he's making these decisions in an arbitrary, confused and paranoid way. It's like the Queen of hearts is in control of our military. He's going to make some kind of impulsive decision, you know, and actually,

you know, in at that Board of Peace, you know, where he it's interesting. These are not the thought disordered parts of what he said at the Board of Peace. We'll get to that. This is what he actually meant to say. He says. So we have to take it a step further. Or maybe we don't. Maybe we're going to make a deal. You're going to find out sometime, probably in the next ten days. So in other words, we might go to war. We might not. We'll let you know. We're not even telling you on what basis we're going to war or. when we'll go to war, or what criteria would make us not go where.

You'll find out if we can't make a deal and we feel like it's wrong, we're going to we're going to bomb. So, you know, look, I mean, Joanna, we've all been through this, right? Sometimes you just. The atmosphere is right, the lighting's right. The chemistry is right. Just feel like it's time to bomb in. What are the ways does this play out? And if you are around someone like this and Susie Wiles is chief of staff, famously talked about him not drinking, but nevertheless having an alcoholics. personality, given the stakes are so unbelievably high,

what is the best way for. people around someone like this to try and contain them? Well, you know, I don't work in a nursing home, and I'm saying that because I've never had to manage people like this. It's not been part of my professional métier. I think you should talk to a good head nurse. Okay, well, we can do that. We can do that. I just thought you might know, because you've. certainly had people wrestling with dementia in your own family.

When someone is expressing the grandiosity that our president is and with a war. pending, which he can't decide if he wants to go in. or he can't, and he's going to make the decision. just whether or not there are ways of coping with people like this, that address. their the sort of slow deterioration of the frontal lobe or, or if there's nothing you can do, well, it's hard to have anything you can do.

when the person has absolute power and all the people around them. are slavish toadies. You know one thing in theory, he shouldn't have absolute power, right? That's why we have a Congress. That's why we have a Constitution, right? Right. I mean, actually, in point of fact, practically speaking, in most nursing homes, what they do is they drug them into oblivion. And it's actually a trend I've been fighting in the field. But we give them these very powerful antipsychotic drugs. that put them into more or less of a stupor,

but keep them from raging through the ward when their son downing at night. So basically, I don't know if this is an option, but we would have to. medicate him to the point where he was practically drooling. to contain him from acting out. It's a term that's now sort of bandied around, and I've never fully understood. What does it actually mean when people sundown? Well, to some extent they're reversing night and day. Look, he's really losing control over the, over the basic biological functions that regulate his body.

So sleep wake okay. So with son Downing, they suddenly become very animated and disinhibited and start. acting out. as it starts to get towards evening, when it should be the opposite, they should be falling asleep and getting sleepy, and then during the day they're passing out and falling asleep. So that basic architecture of sleep, right, sleep in the night, be awake in the day is breaking down. So he's losing control of that function. Start up your new business now with Shopify.

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Beast that Shopify. And I'm struck by your point about the night and day. and his his sense of the world or his own senses being dysregulated, given the way he tweets and truth socials in the middle of the night. Yeah, well, the rest of us disturbed, I mean, it's it's. I think it's somewhat of his hypomania, but now I think it's also the sun downing. where he can pump out, you know, 50, 100, 150 posts in the middle of the night.

and then be passing out in the Oval Office at ten in the morning. You know, he's really his whole sleep wake cycle is, is distressed. or is and also of course because he's malevolent. What comes out is just this pure bile. Right. It was one of those middle. of the night screeds where he put out that tweet about Obama. And Michelle Obama is being monkeys, right? This is what I mean about the frontal temporal dementia, right? He's disinhibited and acting out.

these grossly racist impulses in ways that don't really help him. They're not even appealing to his base. It's not even like he's playing to the crowd. It's just like he's literally just having diarrhea, you know what I mean? He's not even holding it in. He's just explosively spreading out every bilious, you know, destructive, hateful thought that goes through his disturbed head. And so it's getting worse. It's getting more gross, more aggressive, more. frequent, more untamed.

And we're just, you know, the frogs now, the frog is now boiled. I think now the frog is basically on fire. Let's talk about the grandiosity. which you have mentioned before on this podcast. His insistence on naming things after himself. So Dulles Airport, Penn Station, which he held up a whole. a massive billion, billions of dollars, building a new tunnel. between new Jersey and New York on the grounds that it could.

only go ahead if they renamed Penn Station after him. Palm Beach International Airport, he wants named as the Donald Trump Airport. We saw him say, well, we saw we woke up. We all woke up one morning to find Donald J. Trump chiseled into the marble above the Kennedy Center, above. John F Kennedy sent his name and he said, well, I was almost assassinated, so I deserved to be to be there. What do you make of this obsession with naming things after himself?

Well, well, the grandiosity, frankly, goes back. to his fundamental personality disorder, which is malignant narcissism. Right. But as Erich from said, when malignant narcissists get power, their grandiosity quickly escalates to psychotic proportions. So he's had all these successes which only encourage him right, to reinforce his grandiosity and to make it even feel. it should be even more supreme. But you're right. With some of the.

With his. dementia, he's also doing it in a way which is more impulsive, more erratic, more like, you know, threatening New York. that they won't get a tunnel unless they name the train station after him. I mean, it's so ham fisted and sort of ridiculous, but. and as I mentioned, he recently unfurled a picture of himself. in front of the Justice Department. So now it's the Trump Justice Department. But it's so it's his basic personality. But this is what happens with frontotemporal dementia. or any form of dementia, whatever personality disorder or kinks or problems.

you have get ten times worse and they become. more gross, more disinhibited, more confusing, more erratic. And so we have someone who was an egomaniac to begin with. Now we have someone with an egomaniac who has very little behavioral. external controls and whose internal controls are melting. So, doctor G, if you were writing this as a series. and it's hard not to think of Trump playing the central character.

in a in a series of America, where does this go next? Do we just get more of same? Well, I think what has been concerning me for a long time. is this pivot that he's making towards international adventurism and imperialism. I don't see him stopping. I don't think people understand that. because we got off pretty easily with these last military interventions. He captured Maduro. There was no price to be paid.

We bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, probably just damaged them. But again, they didn't retaliate. They're making it very clear they're going to retaliate. This is going to be a war. And I don't think people Iran has one of the biggest militaries in the world. I forget what rank they are in. Ninth or seven people are going to correct me. I don't know it, but it's up there. It's not a small country. It's not a small military. American soldiers will die as a result of this. I want to reflect on the speech that he gave on January 20th, on the anniversary of his achieving power, because it shows, first of all,

what I've been talking. about in terms of his not only digressing into irrelevant stories, but that these stories are what we call in the field confabulation. It's a symptom of dementia, and in confabulation. there are holes in the memory. But people sort of. It's called honest lying because their memory fills in the stories. and they tell these anecdotes as if they happened, but they didn't happen. So here's an anecdote. He's talking about his his growing up. He's talking about his year in office. Somehow he gets to his growing up because, you know,

we used to have when I was growing up, we had in my area in Queens. I grew up in Queens. We had a place called Creedmoor. Creedmoor. Did anybody know that? Creedmoor. It was a big I said, A mom, why are those bars on the building? I used to play Little League baseball there place called. Cunningham Park, whose I was quite the baseball player. You wouldn't believe it. But I said to my mother, mom, she would be there, always there for me. She said, son, you could be a professional baseball player. I said, thanks, mom.

I said, why are those bars on the windows? Big building, big, powerful building. It loomed over the park. Actually it was, she said, well, people there are very sick in that building. I said, boy, I used to always look at that building. and see this big building, big, tall building. It loomed over the park. It was sort of now I think it was pretty unfriendly site, but I'll never forget it. I don't know if it's still there because they got rid of most of them. You know, the Democrats in New York, they took down took them down. And the people live in the streets.

Now, that's why you have a lot of people in California and other places. They live on the streets. They took the mental institutions down there expensive. But I say, why does that building have those bars? Boy, it didn't it wasn't normal. You know, you used to looking at a window, but this one, you looked. at the steel, vicious steel, tiny windows, bars over the place. Nobody was getting out. It's called a mental institution. That was an insane asylum. now. So first of all, it's so much that.

So much to unpack that what you see. Digression. Crazy digression. Okay, he can't even complete a sentence. Right? There's about 18 incomplete sentences there, right. where he can't even veer within his own digression. Right. To maintain a thought. within the digression, there's digressions essentially. Okay. The other thing is it's clearly a confabulation, because I'm. sure his mother never told me professional be a professional baseball player. His mother. was incredibly cold and distant, so I doubt. she ever went to any of his baseball games.

And the way we know it's a confabulation. is you can't see Creedmoor from Cunningham Park. Now, I wouldn't have known this, but I was on a show and all these people from Queens wrote to me. telling me, you. kept saying you can't see it, you can't see it and you can't see it. So the whole thing is made up. And again, it's confabulation. It's not lying. Because why would you tell this. crazy story about playing in the park and looking at a mental hospital? It's not like saying that, you know that eggs are down 500%.

Okay. Where he's. well, it's a little bit like when he said his uncle taught the Unabomber. I mean, the Unabomber didn't. go to the same university, but his uncle was a teacher. He didn't teach the Unabomber. Right. Exactly. It's very similar to that. And similar also in the sense that there was no political advantage. to his telling that story. He wasn't wanting himself in any particular way, but it was he was just telling it like it was kind of. a, you know, down home anecdote, kind of a funny little anecdote. that we know physically could not possibly have happened.

And so this is the level that we're getting to. This is someone who's having made up memories. Okay. His head is being filled with fantasy. And also, you know, that no speechwriter. And obviously he's got access to incredibly capable speechwriters. No speechwriter could possibly write that. I mean, it was just it was so obviously off the top of his head, it didn't fit in.

with anything to do with his one year. inauguration, you know, anniversary. It was just like some flying jetsam. that had come and come into his brain. and then went out the other side, and everybody was just like, what? Flotsam and jetsam just kind of spewing out of his brain randomly. Right. Because because also the other reason a speechwriter couldn't write that is, I remember when I was in graduate school, they would say, you can't make up thought disorder.

Like if I wanted to. sound like a schizophrenic and talk in a thought way, I really couldn't do it. I mean, I could tell a lie. I know how to tell a lie, but I don't know how to talk in this interrupted, random sort of way. It goes against the way our brains are organized. So really, no one could write this, right? This is the product of a disturbed and deteriorating brain. And we'll hear again from Doctor Gartner glitter into these episode. But before we get to that,

we wanted to share Joanna's conversation with Doctor Bruce Davidson. He's a pulmonologist and board certified internist, and he believes that Donald Trump suffered a stroke in 2025. He explains how stroke symptoms can affect a person's decision making abilities. It is a must listen conversation. So, Doctor Bruce, when did you first observe. that you thought the president might have had a stroke?

When I read. the report of his interview with the Wall Street Journal, I didn't. I didn't read that article, but I read the report. that he was taking 325mg of aspirin. And that is only recommended for people who've had a stroke to prevent. a second stroke from a partially blocked artery, major artery in the brain.

So when I read that, I said, well, he's had a stroke and he's taking the right medication. And. And that was followed by reading several. physicians advising the public that you should never do that. And that irked me because that's wrong. I mean, The Washington Post had a doctor. when who was the health commissioner of Baltimore?

Regular columnist, apparently. Laina. When? Yeah, you never do that, she wrote. And then a cardiologist who was the physician, apparently for Vice President Cheney said, that's never the thing to take. Well, the 2021 American Heart Association. guidelines for people who've had a stroke to prevent another stroke. Call it level one evidence that you take 325mg of aspirin a day.

And that's based on an excellent study that was published. God, who sold 15 years ago that showed people who did that. and took another pill for the first three months, had only a 12% recurrence at the end of the year going forward. And that's a that's a very good result. So so that's what got me started on this that I read.

He's taking a pill. And I said only one thing you take that for and that's a prior stroke. So just to have an understanding. of this, you did basically medical detective work. This is a specific treatment for a specific condition. What does 325mg. or milligrams of aspirin look like? How many pills is that a day? Just one typical aspirin pill once.

Deal it. Okay. And if you don't have or if you have, if you don't have symptoms of a stroke. or you haven't suffered a stroke, you don't need to take an aspirin every day, right? You don't take that. Some some people take a baby aspirate 81mg. And if you've had coronary disease, you take perhaps an aspirin. plus one of these other drugs or one of these other drugs if you have a stent. But that dose is solely for that and it's the right thing to take.

And I was pleased to see, however, he cloaked it, that he was taking the right drug for a condition. Okay. Now, can you tell from looking at the president that he might have had a stroke? And I appreciate you can't diagnose him directly. He's not your patient, but you've got years of experience of doing this. And I'm curious if there are symptoms,

you see, physically that might indicate he's had a stroke. Sure. Well, let me just take a moment to give you some background. So I was. I became a board American board certified internal medicine. specialist in 1981, in pulmonary. in 1983, and critical care for 30 years. And when we see patients in the hospital or in clinic, even if we're seeing them. for lung problems, we look at their drugs, we look at their past history.

We see many patients who've had previous strokes, and we know what that looks like. for President Trump. Earlier in the year, there was video of him. shuffling, and I thought that was weird. Then I saw him cradling his right. hand in his left, which is a common, involuntary thing.

that people with strokes had done when they have weakness. On one side, he garbled words. much more so a couple months ago than he's doing now are everyone loves. something at McDonald's is always something to have. I like the fish, I like it. That implicates broke his speech area, which is in the frontal left portion of the brain. So left portion.

And then recently there was video of him walking down the stairs. from Air Force One, holding the banister with his left hand. Yet he's right handed signs with his right hand. So that suggested to me, and his speech became much better. And that suggested to me, along with 325mg of aspirin, for which you only take, for one thing, he's had a prior stroke.

He's recovered from the stroke. So I now now, I think, again, based on what I'm observing, that he's suffering. two kinds of complications from stroke. What are the complications? And can I ask you, before we go on to the complications, it was also at 911. photos of him with what looked.

like the right side of his mouth drooping. Would that also be symptomatic of a stroke? It could be, but if I'm correct that he had a left sided. brain infarction, it would be the left. part of the face and the right part of the body. So, so so, Doctor Bruce, what are the other. two symptoms you were mentioning? Yeah, well,

it is common after strokes for people to have sleep. Disturbance and normal sleep is critically important. for all of us, but particularly after you've had a stroke, because the brain has what we call plasticity, that is, it can repair itself and does that primarily during sleep. So, so but but that requires good sleep. And so to have to have.

President Trump doing as he does sending. I guess I don't I don't I'm not on Truth Social. But I read that he has sent out tweets, you know, or whatever they're called. Yeah. He's frantically posting in the middle of the night in the middle of the night. And that tells me. he's not getting good sleep when his brain should be letting him sleep. And that is that's important symptom.

And that contributes to ill health and blocks. the brain fully improving. That's one thing. The second we saw with Pennsylvania Senator John Federer. that also had a stroke, right. So the public saw Senator John Fetterman's complication. I think it was 8 or 9 months after his stroke. and after he had had significant recovery.

He had what he described as severe depression. And depression is quite common after stroke. There's quite early after the stroke. People are depressed because, oh my gosh, that happened to me, you know, but they often recover from that. But then months later they can get significant depression. Now, depression is not always shriveled up. Staying in a corner away from people.

There is something called agitated depression. Agitated depression. I've never heard of that. And people who have been leaders in charge for their whole life. and finding themselves unable to do what they want to do. and think of the words and express themselves, will develop that sort of depression. And as I say, we saw with Senator Fetterman, we saw it afterwards.

The press reported he was in a meeting with union member, teachers. union members and banging on the table and talking about, why do people, why are they all angry at me and and drove his car too fast? A couple of times. Now, where does that leave us with President Trump? Well, he's he's up at night, which which can worsen depression. It's common to get to pression. And he's angry because he didn't get a Nobel Prize.

I mean, here's a man who's been elected president twice, and really, he cares about a Nobel Prize. I mean, Bob Dylan got Nobel Prize. You know, what's the big deal? And and other things seem to get under his skin. And, and so it concerns me. And and let me take a moment. there to mention what a physician role is.

A physician has three primary responsibilities. The first is relief of suffering. Second, prevent disability. And the third priority is postpone death. That's what we're supposed to do. So when I see the president. appearing like a patient having trouble, I want his physicians to to engage.

And this illustrates, I regret, say, a, a terrible, increasing weakness. in American medical leadership that were suffering from Doctor Bruce. We know that the president, by his own admission, doesn't really exercise. He has. what for. a lot of people would be a high stress life. It's not clear if he finds it stressful because he seems to enjoy it. so much, which, you know, fair enough, a lot of people in power do.

And he also doesn't have. the sort of diet that a doctor would recommend, even his own secretary or his cabinet secretary for health recoiled. when he discovered the president's diet of of chicken McNuggets and, you know, fried fish sandwiches and McDonald's. What would you be advising the president. if you were his doctor, to be eating post-stroke?

And would you be advising him to exercise post-stroke? Well, I want to come back to what should the doctor do? But let me answer your your question first. Public figure is I've known several. do and. say certain things to maintain an image. All right. I don't need exercise. I can eat McDonald's. I, you know, A, B and C, when in fact, in private they're taking care of themselves.

And it is it is not uncommon for people. for whom part of their image is to be tough to hide illness. An example. One you may go to lunch with someone, or dinner with someone. who you haven't seen in a while. And whereas normally they would take a steak and put butter.

and slather it on top. They're eating a salad with chicken on top and you say, what's going on? And they're not going to tell you that they had a heart attack. and angioplasty and a stent. They're going to say, well, I'm trying to control my weight a little bit. And, and my kids are making me eat a little better. So I really don't put any stock in what the president says. he's doing or others say about what he's doing.

And I want every patient to recover after an illness. And if I'm correct, and he had a stroke and he's I, I think based on what I've seen, he's made a pretty good recovery. And and you get there. According to the American Heart Association 2021 guidelines, which I've cited to you about the medicine, you control blood. pressure, you do some exercise, you do control diet and cholesterol and so on.

And for all I know, he's he's done those things and is doing those things. This might be the most shocking revelation we've ever had on the podcast. That doctor that President Trump might be a secret. salmon eater, that he might actually be eating salads. I've often wondered, actually, because Melania obviously. looks after her figure and they have a white House chef, whether or not he was in secret eating salmon and salad in the evening.

So at least you've raised the possibility. So, Doctor Bruce, what are those. really unsightly bruises that he has on his hands that he uses makeup to cover? But I noticed when he was in Davos, even the makeup wasn't covering. What what looks like really black bruises on his hands at this point. What is that to do with. Well, to be honest, I haven't seen seen.

more than black and blue, what we call black and blue marks of tissue. So first the skin gets thinner as we get older. Second, if a patient is taking a steroid. for any reason prednisone, hydrocortisone. that thins the skin systemically so it's more prone to bruising. Third, 325mg of aspirin.

every day interferes with your platelet function. So if you bang your hand around or shake hands. a lot or use it, it's going to bruise. So you would expect that to occur on the left hand as well. But if he's not using his left hand for writing, for shaking hands and so on, it wouldn't happen there. So we've we've been chronicling his bruising.

at The Daily Beast because obviously it's a. if the president has a serious health concern, we want to monitor it. And he's definitely had bruising on both hands. What about his swollen ankles. His cancels as they've become known. Well, again. I've just heard about those I haven't seen them medically. I need to send you some photographs. We have photographs of his legs which which don't appear to indent at the ankle.

They just go straight up and down as if they were a tree trunk. Okay, so. So. What he has said, I think they've said, is he has venous insufficiency. And that is certainly common as people get older. What's that about particularly in women who've had. who who've had babies. Okay. The uterus presses on the left iliac. vein and impedes flow.

Now, how does blood get from your ankles up to your heart and then to your lungs? The muscles of the legs constrict, and the veins. themselves have muscles in the walls and they constrict. And then you inhale. And that suck helps suck the blood up. Well, as you get older, you're still inhaling, but the muscles. on the veins of your legs become weaker.

And an abdomen that's been big. If you've been overweight or obese, that presses on the veins. and just being on your feet, a lot of your life. will lead to swelling in the legs. And and I can tell you how so many patients have that. And and elastic compression stockings are a good thing to wear. I've done a lot of work with blood clots in the legs and blood clots in the lungs.

Researched a lot of anticoagulants and this disease. And it's very common to have that after an episode of deep vein thrombosis. you might have had when you were younger, if you hurt your knee and it was wrapped up. So. So it can also be. a sign of more severe disease. But you know, and, and or of of sleep apnea, for example, which is very common among older folks.

But one doesn't need to invoke all of that. And again chronic venous. the legs again. if if he were my patient I would have him. Where. Elastic compression knee high elastic compression stockings. Job sigvaris 20 to 30mm at the angles of pressure. And that would relieve that and would also protect his skin down there.

And we will close our show with another appearance from Doctor John Gartner. This conversation focuses on what Doctor Gartner diagnoses as Trumps. God complex, his ill advised feud with portfolio, and his troubling patterns of disrupted sleep. Doctor John Gartner is in the House. Thank you very much for what feels like. a psychological emergency in the white House.

Yes, you have talked a lot about Donald Trump. showing symptoms of great grandiosity, but this week. we literally saw him portraying himself through. AI as Jesus Christ. What, John, what does this reveal about the president? I think what it reveals is that the president is now psychotic. I've actually really yes, I'm using this term in the medical sense.

I'm not using it in some sort of an exaggeration or for effect. And I've avoided saying that up till now. I've talked about him having grandiosity, but actually, Erich Fromm, who originated the diagnosis of malignant narcissism, said, at a certain point, malignant narcissists become so grandiose. that it's psychotic that they have delusions of grandeur. And I think that we have gotten there. He is suffering from delusions of grandeur.

You know, I used to say, what's it going to take? What's it going to take for people to bet that Donald Trump is unfit. if he babbles incoherently from the Oval Office, if he claims to be Jesus or the Messiah, if he wears a tinfoil hat. Well, we've got two out of three. We've got two out of three. How scary. And what. can you give us? An official diagnosis of what being psychotic means? Because I think people. throw around these terms, you know, you're hearing is a psychopath.

He's a sociopath. I know that you deal in the specifics and diagnostics. What does it mean to declare that someone is now. displaying symptoms of of being a psychotic? Well, I think he's having a manic episode. And the and the delusions of grandeur. are concurrent with that or consistent with that. You know, Harry Sisson put out a great, great, great timeline. I just want to read this to you, because actually the content of the tweets matter,

but also the process whereby he produces the matters. So at 9:40 p.m., that's when he posted the famous Jesus picture at 950. A minute later, he posted a picture of the Ark to Trump. at 1010, a news clip at 1032, a. news clip at 1053, and news clip at 1243. He announces the policy that there'll be a blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. This is how he announces the policy. Okay.

After midnight, on a tear of all night tweeting. or posting at 235 in the morning, he posted something. about Joe Biden at 237, something about Eric Swalwell at 237. He reposted the article about Joe Biden. At 238, he posted an article. about his ballroom, and at 410 he posted, I can't read my writing something else, but oh, he was posting all night. Okay, so not only was he posting crazy grandiose things,

but he's up all night doing it well, and there are slight gaps. of sort of 90 minutes or whatever where one assumes he's dozed off. Well, how do we I don't, I don't know I don't know if he's dozed off or not, but he's up all night tweeting crazy stuff and these delusions of grandeur, you know, look, he has not only, as he said, as he posted himself as Jesus. Okay. But just to recall, when they were picking the new pope,

he posted a picture of himself as the Pope. Right? He has said that that he was going to become president of Venezuela, that that. that he's running ahead in the polls and he's going to learn Spanish. really quickly and become president of Venezuela. He said that he's going to do that. He said that the Iranians have asked him if he would become the supreme. leader of Iran. He has said that they that they are, you know, they don't want to do it, but they should rename the Straits of Hormuz the Trump Strait. I mean, this is a psychotic level of grandiosity beyond tweeting.

What else is it a reflective of in terms of what's. actually happening in the brain and, and how does it manifest in behavior? Besides, besides posting frantically. and apparently having a very sleep disordered night? Well, I think that his frontal temporal dementia is contributing to this because.

as his frontal lobes are deteriorating, he's losing his ability. Even within his own disordered universe. Right? Trump has always created his own reality, but now he's really lost within that fake reality. that he is really unable to distinguish between lies. and fantastical ideas. And this is really where he's I think he's crossed the line. He doesn't know when he's lying or when he's claiming that he's the Second Coming.

So, so this is very, very serious. It's really hard to imagine that we that the American president. has gone stark raving mad, but he has all their specific things. that the president could do to reassure us that he might be. in on the joke, presenting himself as Jesus Christ. I mean, is there a way for him to come back from. what does feel like manic behavior?

I don't think he's capable of that. You know, the next day, yes, he took down the tweet of him as Jesus. The next day he put he posted Jesus in, putting his arm around him. and in some celestial light. So in other words, what. that implied is, okay, so I'm not Jesus, but I'm Jesus prophet, you know? Right? I'm coming. I'm specially chosen by Jesus right to bring, you know, the truth to the world. So it's insane. It is delusions of grandeur and he cannot be dissuaded from it.

I mean, you would think right after he I mean, first of all, how. he even think that anyone would not respond negatively to that. tweet of him as Jesus is crazy, but it's not even like he's backing down. He's really doubling down because he is messianic. Okay, remember, I'm the only one who can fix it now. That was messianic. That was crazy. But now, because he is deteriorating, right? It's the messianism is becoming more gross, more disconnected from reality.

It's one thing to say I'm the only guy for the job. It's another thing to say I'm Jesus and I'm the Pope and I'm, you know, I mean, that's a that's that's psychotic. And they're delusions, meaning they're not amenable to being disproven. The definition of delusion is something that is patently false or impossible, and the person is not amenable to any level of argument. or facts to dissuade them from it. He believes that he's the messianic one,

and no one is going to convince him that that's not true. So this is really serious. So you mentioned that he might be having a manic episode. What does that comprise of? Well, lack of sleep. and also lack of inhibition acting out. Now, I think it's because he's so complicated, so many things going on. His energy level is flagging, I think because of the dimension,

because he's not sleeping, but he is over activated. You know, he can't really reach a state of calm. Right? So he's agitated at night and then he's passing out during the day. But he he is in a state of over activation. where he actually believes these fantastical, grandiose ideas. And that's just incredibly shocking. The other thing that's happening is because he is a malignant narcissist. He's getting a thrill out of war.

He's discovering the that he can get. a dopamine rush from blowing stuff up. And if. someone with the. diagnosis that you say Donald Trump has, which is his psychotic, he's a malignant assist and he's now. got full on dementia, do they become violent? If you try and take away their power.

and take away the thing that gives, that feeds them? Absolutely. Well, I mean, first of all, malignant narcissist. rule by violence and intimidation and fear to begin with. They they like their bullies, their gang, their gang leaders, you know, so it's that's there, there, there métier. But certainly if they feel threatened, they wouldn't hesitate. And this is the problem, which is, you know, the more threatened he feels. and clearly he must be feeling the walls closing in on him to some degree.

He's dropped 40 points with his base. Even the evangelical Christians, you know, are outraged. You know, the Epstein files aren't going away and all and gas prices are up. And all this is going to be true during the midterm election. But the problem is, yeah, we've got them right where we want them. We've got a cornered, wounded animal. Well, that's not where you want to be. A cornered, wounded. animal is the most vicious and dangerous kind of animal there is.

And that's where he is right now. So the what I'm worried about is, even if we win the both houses of Congress, he's still the commander in chief, and he's still getting off. on the omnipotent destructiveness and power of blowing things up. So we're not going to be able to stop that. We can impeach him. We can, you know, send to the trial to the Senate. We can pass resolutions. We can start investigations.

He still is the commander in chief, and he's going to use. that to dominate. and potentially destroy the world, because he is. someone who has the kind of psychology like Hitler and his Nero decree, that. he could very well blow up the whole world and take all of us with him. I remember I was having dinner Tuesday night with a colleague. That was the Tuesday we had the deadline. You know, if by 8:00 or whatever it is, you don't, you know, agree to my terms if we're going to destroy a civilization.

I remember having dinner with my friend saying, so, is this our last night. on Earth? I guess we have another drink. Kind of like in Hamilton. You know, where they go out there, have to go to battle. And so they're all having a drink, you know. Right, right. Yeah, I remember that, that song. Well, so let me ask you something else, because the other thing he does is he makes wild claims. So this week he made the claim that the reason he drank so much Diet Coke. was because if you pour it on grass, it kills grass.

Ergo, it's very good for staving off cancer. There's a term we have in psychologists called magical thinking, and it's something that again, we associate with psychosis. We also associated with young children. Yeah. It's like Freud called a primary process. It's kind of the most primitive. type of thinking where if you imagine it, it must be true. But this is just magical thinking. Anything that occurs to him, any stray, crazy thought.

is true. I mean, we had kind of a warning about this, right? When he said you could inject bleach or use a light to get rid of Covid. We've desensitized right to how nuts this is desensitized. We have desensitized. What about his arch talking about grandiosity? He wanted something that was bigger than the Arctic Triomphe in Paris, and now he's got something which looks like it's going to be 250ft.

tall if you include the statues on top of it. But his grandiosity is so extreme, right, that not only does. he want to be the Pope and Jesus and the president of Venezuela and the. the Mullah of Iran, and, you know, he wants to be. all of these things at once, and he wants the world to worship him, and he wants to erect massive monuments to praise himself. So this obscene arc de Triomphe, this obscene ballroom, the ways in which he's been pressuring various states to rename their airports.

and their train stations and their tunnels after him. Okay, that he's put his face on a coin, that he's he's got banners on the right, he's got banners. on all the government buildings, banners and all the government buildings. It's he wants the world to worship him as a god. This is like the Sun King. We're getting back to the beginning. Him posting images of himself as Christ,

which, as you say, suggests the president is psychotic. Doctor John Gartner is always good to get your diagnosis. Depressing though it may be, and you've been talking about. these symptoms for several years now, and it really does feel like this week. we hit a new a new point in Trump's sense of himself. Well, we'll look forward to having you back on again.

at the next extreme behavior. But we really appreciate your time and your energy and your observational powers. Many, many thanks. Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for watching. We will be back tomorrow with an all new episode of Inside Trump's. Head featuring, of course, Michael Wolff and the inimitable Joanna Calls. And a special thanks goes to our production team Ryan Murray, Rachel Pastor, Heather Pissarro, and Neil Rosenhaus.

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