Doctors Speak Out On Trump's Decline

Summary

The Daily Beast Podcast

Episode: Doctors Speak Out On Trump's Decline

Date: May 26, 2026
Host: Hugh Doherty (filling in for Joanna Coles), The Daily Beast
Guests: Dr. John Gartner (psychologist), Dr. Bruce Davidson (pulmonologist and internist)

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Episode Overview

This special edition of The Daily Beast Podcast focuses on the physical and mental health of President Donald Trump as he approaches his 80th birthday. Framed by mounting public and journalistic concern over his increasingly erratic behavior, the episode features candid conversations with two longtime Trump-watchers: psychologist Dr. John Gartner, who discusses Trump’s apparent frontotemporal dementia and exacerbated psychological issues, and pulmonologist Dr. Bruce Davidson, who provides evidence Trump suffered a stroke in 2025 with lasting effects. Both offer insight into how these medical and mental conditions might endanger Trump's decision-making at the highest level of government.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Medical Observations: Trump's Stroke and Its Implications

Guest: Dr. Bruce Davidson

• Stroke Diagnosis & Evidence
  • Dr. Davidson deduced Trump suffered a stroke in 2025 after reading he was prescribed 325 mg of aspirin daily—a regimen recommended only for stroke survivors ([22:58], [24:03], [25:27]).
  • Witnessed physical symptoms: shuffling gait, cradling of right hand, right-side body weakness, word garbling, mouth droop—all consistent with left-brain stroke ([01:28], [26:32], [27:51], [29:09]).
  • "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... He garbled words... that suggested to me, along with a 325 milligram of aspirin, he's had a prior stroke." — Dr. Bruce Davidson ([01:28])
• Post-Stroke Complications
  • Persistent sleep disturbance, affecting brain recovery ([29:25])
  • Emotional aftermath: ‘agitated depression’ seen in leaders who struggle post-stroke, referencing parallels with Senator Fetterman ([31:33])
  • Intermittent physical weaknesses still visible
• Diet, Bruising, and Physical Signs
  • Questions the veracity of Trump’s public persona as a fast-food devotee, noting public figures often mask private medical care ([34:33])
  • Explains unsightly hand bruises as side effects of aspirin and age ([37:25])
  • Attributes swollen ankles (‘cankles’) to chronic venous insufficiency, common in elderly and overweight individuals ([39:01])

2. Dementia, Disinhibition, and Dangerous Decision-Making

Guest: Dr. John Gartner

• Frontotemporal Dementia Hypothesis
  • Attributes Trump's increasing errors, word-garbling, impulsive aggression, and lack of inhibition to frontotemporal dementia ([05:16], [06:13])
  • “It’s much more than a mispronunciation...It’s a sign of his frontotemporal dementia. And dementia gets worse.” — Dr. John Gartner ([05:16])
  • Contrasts symptoms with Alzheimer’s, noting the main issue isn’t memory loss but catastrophic judgment and impulse control ([06:13])
• Behavioral Manifestations
  • Sundowning and disturbed sleep drive midnight social media sprees ([10:49], [12:46])
  • “He can pump out 50, 100, 150 posts in the middle of the night and then be passing out in the Oval Office at 10 in the morning...what comes out is just this pure bile.” ([12:46])
• Communication Deterioration
  • Increasingly frequent and severe phonemic paraphasias (garbled speech), digressions, and confabulations ([05:16], [16:37])
  • “Crazy digression...he can’t even complete a sentence, right? There’s about 18 incomplete sentences...” ([19:31])
  • Points to made-up, impossible anecdote about Creedmoor and Cunningham Park as an example of “honest lying” and confabulation ([20:12])

3. Grandiosity and Psychosis

• Evolving Narcissism
  • Dr. Gartner traces Trump’s grandiosity from malignant narcissism toward full-blown psychosis, evidenced by delusions like portraying himself as Jesus, Pope, or other heads of state ([15:01], [42:19])
  • “What it reveals is that the President is now psychotic...He is suffering from delusions of grandeur...now we have someone with an egomaniac who has very little behavioral, external controls and whose internal controls are melting.” ([42:19], [15:01])
• Delusional Thinking and Magical Thinking
  • Magical thinking replaces reason; e.g., claims about Diet Coke preventing cancer (magical cause-effect; [53:03])
  • Harries between grandiose claims, erratic policy announcements, and worldwide megalomania ([43:44], [45:32])
  • “He has said that the Iranians have asked him if he would become the Supreme Leader of Iran...They should rename the Straits of Hormuz the Trump Strait. I mean, this is a psychotic level of grandiosity.” ([45:32])
• Sleep Disruption and Mania
  • Manic episodes characterized by frantic late-night posting, sleep deprivation, and loss of self-restraint ([45:03], [49:14])

4. The Danger of Absolute Power

• Uncontainable Impulses
  • Dementia patients are typically controlled in institutions with antipsychotics; “when the person has absolute power and all the people around them are slavish toadies...we would have to medicate him to the point where he was practically drooling to contain him from acting out.” ([10:08])
• Threats of International Impulses
  • Unfiltered, aggressive foreign policy decisions (“Everything just radiates from his id” — Dr. Gartner, [01:53])
  • “He’s going to make some kind of impulsive decision, you know...Sometimes you just, the chemistry’s right, and just feel like it’s time to bomb.” ([08:44])
• Cornered, Wounded, and More Dangerous
  • As his power is threatened and public support narrows, Trump’s volatility intensifies: “A cornered, wounded animal is the most vicious and dangerous kind of animal there is.” ([50:33])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Dementia’s Risks:

  • “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.” — Dr. John Gartner ([06:13])

• Trump’s Sleep and Mania:

  • “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 10 in the morning. And also, of course, because he’s malevolent, what comes out is just this pure bile.” — Dr. John Gartner ([12:46])

• On Delusions of Grandeur:

  • “He has said that he was going to become President of Venezuela...that the Iranians have asked him if he would become the Supreme Leader of Iran...rename the Straits of Hormuz the Trump Strait. I mean, this is a psychotic level of grandiosity.” — Dr. John Gartner ([45:32])

• On the Perils of Unchecked Power:

  • “It’s hard to have anything you can do when the person has absolute power and all the people around them are slavish toadies...in most nursing homes, what they do is they drug them into oblivion...Is this an option?” — Dr. John Gartner ([10:08])

• Stroke Evidence:

  • “When I read that he was taking 325 milligrams of aspirin, I said well, he’s had a stroke and he’s taking the right medication.” — Dr. Bruce Davidson ([22:58])
  • “Earlier in the year there was video of him shuffling...then I saw him cradling his right hand in his left...He garbled words...that suggested to me, along with a 325 milligram of aspirin, he’s had a prior stroke.” — Dr. Bruce Davidson ([01:28])

• Honest Lying and Confabulation:

  • “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—physically, it could not possibly have happened.” — Dr. John Gartner ([20:12])

• Psychosis as Medical Fact:

  • “I think what it reveals is that the President is now psychotic...I’m not using it in some sort of exaggeration or for effect...He is suffering from delusions of grandeur.” — Dr. John Gartner ([42:19])

• Magical Thinking Example:

  • “‘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.” — Dr. John Gartner ([53:03])

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Important Timestamps

• [01:28] — Dr. Davidson points to visible stroke symptoms in Trump
• [05:16] — Dr. Gartner introduces “phonemic paraphasias” as proof of dementia
• [06:13] — Key distinction between Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia
• [10:08] — Powerlessness to control those with absolute power and dementia
• [12:46] — Sleep cycle breakdown and midnight posting sprees
• [16:37] — Confabulation and digressive speech in Trump’s public remarks
• [22:58] — Dr. Davidson’s stroke deduction based on aspirin prescription
• [27:51] — Observations of right-sided weakness, facial drooping
• [31:33] — Explanation of agitated depression post-stroke
• [37:25] — Bruising and cankles explained
• [42:19] — Dr. Gartner’s diagnosis of psychosis and delusions of grandeur
• [45:32] — Evidence of full-blown, psychotic-level grandiosity
• [49:14] — Manic episodes and lack of inhibition
• [53:03] — Example of magical thinking (Diet Coke anecdote)
• [54:04] — Obsession with monuments, renaming, and worship

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Conclusion

This episode delivers an urgent assessment of President Trump's alarming cognitive and behavioral decline from two clinical standpoints. Dr. Davidson marshals observable behaviors and medical evidence to argue Trump has survived a significant stroke, while Dr. Gartner lays out persuasive clinical evidence for advancing frontotemporal dementia and the escalation of Trump’s narcissism into psychosis. Together, their analysis exposes the risks—personal, institutional, and global—posed by a president whose unchecked medical and psychological issues now threaten not only his own judgment and stability but the safety of the nation and the world.

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For further discussion and future episodes, subscribe to The Daily Beast Podcast or visit thedailybeast.com.

Transcript

[Host/Interviewer]

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[Dr. John Gartner]

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[Hugh Doherty]

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[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

many patients who've had previous strokes. For President Trump, there was video of him shuffling and I, 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 325 milligram of aspirin, he's had a prior stroke.

[Dr. John Gartner]

Donald Trump's ID is now sort of in control of the world because he has no frontal lobes, he has no advisors, we have no constitution, we have no checks and balances. It's like everything just radiates from his id and there's not a single thing to sort of stop an impulse in his disturbed brain from becoming a war.

[Hugh Doherty]

Welcome to the Daily Beast Podcast. I'm Hugh Doherty, Executive editor of the Daily Beast, and I am in for Joanna Coles 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 his crazed midnight posting sprees. But before we dive into the show, 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 felt lonely 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 earlier this month on cnn.

[Host/Interviewer]

You can take a step back and

[Dr. John Gartner]

go, if you did not tell me

[Host/Interviewer]

who was doing this.

[Dr. John Gartner]

So you took all any kind of

[Host/Interviewer]

Trump derangement syndrome that defenders might say

[Hugh Doherty]

or people who you would say, that's not okay.

[Dr. John Gartner]

That's something to be concerned about.

[Hugh Doherty]

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 had lots to say about the president's health, Dr. John Gartner and Dr. 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 Dr. John Gartner is a psychologist and clinical psychotherapist. He is perhaps the most dogged chronicler of President Trump's declining mental and psychological state.

[Dr. John Gartner]

And I'm proud to officially name the undisputed. 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

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

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.

[Dr. John Gartner]

Okay, we're cleaning it up. Very good.

[Host/Interviewer]

Dr. 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.

[Dr. John Gartner]

It's much more than a mispronunciation. You know, we've been talking for really months, actually years, about his what we call phonemic paraphasias, 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 this is something that has been happening recurrently and it's been something that has been happening repeatedly. And it's 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 gonna get worse as time goes on.

[Host/Interviewer]

And of course, Dr. 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?

[Dr. John Gartner]

What's so dangerous about the form of dementia that he most probably has frontotemporal dementia is that it's, it attacks the frontal lobes. And the frontal lobes are actually what separate us from animals. It's what inhibits 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 brakes, the inhibition, the self awareness 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 Dr. Frank George's substack called the Gaslight Report. He has a long discussion of why it's frontal temporal 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, 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 gonna find out sometime, probably in the next 10 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. You'll find out. If we can't make a deal and we feel like it's wrong, we're gonna. We're gonna 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's right, and just feel like it's time to bomb.

[Host/Interviewer]

In what other ways does this play out? And if you are around someone like this, and Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, famously talked about him not drinking, but nevertheless having an alcoholic's personality, given the stakes are so unbelievably high, what is the best way for people around someone like this to try and contain them?

[Dr. John Gartner]

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 metier. I think you should talk to a good head nurse.

[Host/Interviewer]

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

[Dr. John Gartner]

address

[Host/Interviewer]

the sort of slow deterioration of the frontal lobe, or if there's nothing you can do.

[Dr. John Gartner]

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. And, you know, one thing, in theory,

[Host/Interviewer]

he shouldn't have absolute power. Right. That's why we have a Congress.

[Dr. John Gartner]

That's why I 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, you know, raging through the ward when they're sundowning 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

It's a term that's now sort of banded around and I've never fully understood what does it actually mean when people sun down?

[Dr. John Gartner]

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 sundowning, 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

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[Dr. John Gartner]

Yeah, well, the rest of us very disturbed. I mean it's, it's, it's, it's. I think it's somewhat of his hypoman. But now I think it's also the sundowning 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 10 in the morning. You know, he's really, his, 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, the Obamas being monkeys, right? This is what I mean about the frontotemporal 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 frog is now, the frog is now boiled, I think now the frog is basically on fire.

[Host/Interviewer]

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 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 once 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 Center's name. And he said, well, I was almost assassinated, so I deserved to be there. What do you make of this obsession with naming things after himself?

[Dr. John Gartner]

Well, the grandiosity, frankly, goes back to his fundamental personality disorder, which is malignant narcissism, right? But as Erich Fromm 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. 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 10 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

So, Dr. G, if you were writing this as a series, and it's hard not to think of Trump playing the central character in a series of America, where does this go next? Do we just get more of same?

[Dr. John Gartner]

Well, I think what has been concerning me for a long time is, 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 really 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 resist. Iran has one of the biggest militaries in the world. I forget what rank they are. 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 20, 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 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 Queensland. We had a place called Creedmore. Creedmore. Did anybody know that? Creedmore. 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. Who's. I was quite the baseball player. You wouldn't believe it. But my 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 sight, 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. They're expensive, but it's. I say, why does that building have those bars? Boy, it didn't. It wasn't normal. You know, you used to looking out a window, but this one, you looked at the steel. Vicious steel. Tiny windows, bars all 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 in that, so much to unpack there.

[Host/Interviewer]

Crazy digression.

[Dr. John Gartner]

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. 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 he 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

[Host/Interviewer]

telling me, you can't say you can't see it.

[Dr. John Gartner]

It's miles away 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 that it's not like saying that, you know, that eggs are down 500%. Okay. Where he's.

[Host/Interviewer]

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, but he didn't teach the Unabomber.

[Dr. John Gartner]

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 vaunting himself in any particular way, but he was just telling it like it was kind of a 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.

[Hugh Doherty]

Okay.

[Dr. John Gartner]

His empty head is being filled with fantasy.

[Host/Interviewer]

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 into his brain and then went out the other side and everybody was just like, what?

[Dr. John Gartner]

Flotsam and jetsam just kind of spewing out of his brain randomly. Right. Cause also the other reason a speechwriter couldn't write that is I remember, 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 disorder 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.

[Hugh Doherty]

And we'll hear again from Dr. Gartner later in today's episode. But before we get to that, we wanted to share Joanna's conversation with Dr. 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

So, Dr. Bruce, when did you first observe that you thought the President might have had a stroke?

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

When I read the report of his interview with the Wall Street Journal. I didn't read that article, but I read the report that he was taking 325 milligrams 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 Dr. Wen, who was the health commissioner of Baltimore, regular columnist, apparently.

[Host/Interviewer]

Lena Wen.

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

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 2021American Heart association guidelines for People who've Had a stroke to prevent another stroke, call it level one evidence that you take 325 milligrams of aspirin a day. And that's based on an excellent study that was published. God, it's all 15 years ago that showed people who did that and took another pill, clopidogrel, for the first 30 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

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 mgs of aspirin look like? How many pills is that a day?

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

Just one typical aspirin pill. One staler.

[Host/Interviewer]

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.

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

Right. You don't take that. Some people take baby aspirin, 81 milligrams. 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

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.

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

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 have done when they have weakness on one side. He garbled words much more so a couple months ago than he's doing now. Everyone loves something at McDonald's. There's always something to have.

[Dr. John Gartner]

I like the fish, I like it.

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

That implicates Broca's 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. Yeti'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 a 325 milligram of aspirin for which you only take for one thing, he's had 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

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?

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

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.

[Host/Interviewer]

So, so, so Dr. Bruce, what are the other two symptoms you were mentioning?

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

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.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. He's frantically posting in the middle of

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

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 an 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 Fetter, that is also had a stroke.

[Host/Interviewer]

Right.

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

So the public saw Senator John Fetterman's complication. I think it was eight or nine 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

Agitated depression, I've never heard of that.

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

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 drove his car too fast a couple 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 depression. 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 a Nobel Prize. You know, what's the big deal? And other things seem to get under his skin. And so it concerns me, 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 we're suffering from.

[Host/Interviewer]

Dr. 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 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 str. Post stroke?

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

Well, I, I want to come back to what should the doctor do? But let me answer your, your question first. Public figures, and I've known several do and say certain things to maintain an image. All right, I don't need to 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, 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 my kids are making me eat a little bit 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 done those things and is doing those things.

[Host/Interviewer]

This might be the most shocking revelation we've ever had on the podcast that Dr. 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, Dr. Bruce, what are those really unsightly bruises that he has on his hands that he. He uses makeup to cover? But I noticed when he was in Davos, even the makeup wasn't covering what looks like really black bruises on his hands at this point. What is that to do with. Well,

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

to be honest, I haven't seen more than black and blue. What we call black and blue marks, soft 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, 325 milligrams 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

Okay. We've been chronicling his bruising at the Daily Beast, because obviously, if the President has a serious health concern, we want to monitor it. And he's definitely had a bruising on both hands. What. What about his swollen ankles, his cankles, as they've become known?

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

Well, again, I've just heard about those. I haven't seen them medically.

[Host/Interviewer]

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.

[Dr. Bruce Davidson]

Okay, so. So what he has said, I think, or 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, 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't 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 it can also be a sign of more severe disease, but you don't. And, or of sleep apnea, for example, which is very common among older foes. But one doesn't need to invoke all of that. And again, chronic venous insufficiency of the legs. Again, if he were my patient, I would have him wear elastic compression knee high elastic compression stockings, 20 to 30 millimeters at the angles of pressure, and that would relieve that and would also protect his skin down there.

[Hugh Doherty]

And we will close our show with Another appearance from Dr. John Gartner. This conversation focuses on what Dr. Gartner diagnoses as Trump's God complex, his ill advised feud with Pope Leo, and his troubling patterns of disrupted sleep.

[Host/Interviewer]

Dr. John Gartner is in the house. Thank you very much for what feels like a psychological emergency in the White House. 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. John, what does this reveal about the President?

[Dr. John Gartner]

I think what it reveals is that the President is now psychotic. I've actually.

[Host/Interviewer]

Really.

[Dr. John Gartner]

Yes, I'm using this term in the medical sense. I'm not using it in some sort of 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 it, 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 admit 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

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, oh, he's a psychopath, he's a sociopath. I know that you deal in specifics and diagnostics. What does it mean to declare that someone is now displaying symptoms of being a psychotic?

[Dr. John Gartner]

Well, I think he's having a manic episode and the delusions of grandeur are concurrent with that or consistent with that. Harry Sisson put out a very 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 them matters. So at 9:40pm that's when he posted the famous Jesus picture. At 9:50, a minute later, he posts a picture of the Arc de Trump. At 10:10, a news clip. At 10:32, a news clip. At 10 53, a news clip. At 12:43, 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 2:35 in the morning, he posted something about Joe Biden. At 2:37, something about Eric Swalwell. At 2:37, he reposted the article about Joe Biden. At 2:38, he posted an article about his ballroom. And at 4:10, he posted I can't read my writing something else. But he was posting all night, okay? So not only was he posting crazy, grandiose things, but he's up all night doing it.

[Host/Interviewer]

Well, and there are slight gaps, aren't there, of sort of 90 minutes or whatever where one assumes he's dozed off?

[Dr. John Gartner]

Well, how do we. 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 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

Right.

[Dr. John Gartner]

He has said that he was going to become President of Venezuela, 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 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

Beyond tweeting, what else is it a reflective of in terms of what's actually happening in the brain and how does it manifest in behavior besides. Besides posting frantically and apparently having a very sleep disordered night?

[Dr. John Gartner]

Well, I think that his frontotemporal 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 this is very, very serious. It's really hard to imagine that the American President as gone stark raving mad, but he has.

[Host/Interviewer]

Are there 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?

[Dr. John Gartner]

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 posted Jesus 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's 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 came and thinking 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, 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, that's, that's psychotic. And they're delusions, meaning they're not amenable to being disproven. The definition of a 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

So you mentioned that he might be having a manic episode. What does that comprise of?

[Dr. John Gartner]

Well, lack of sleep and also lack of inhibition, acting out. Now, I think it's because he's so complicated. There's so many things going on. His energy level is flagging, I think because of the dementia and 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 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 that he can get a dopamine rush from blowing stuff up.

[Host/Interviewer]

And if someone with the diagnosis that you say Donald Trump has, which is he's psychotic, he's a malignant narcissist, 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?

[Dr. John Gartner]

Absolutely. Well, I mean, first of all, malignant narcissists rule by violence and intimidation and fear to begin with. They're bullies, they're gang leaders, so that's, that's their metier. But certainly if they feel threatened, they wouldn't hesitate. And this is the problem which is 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 evangelical Christians are outraged. The Epstein files aren't going away and gas prices are up, and all this is going to be true during the, the midterm election. But the problem is, yeah, we've got him right where we want him. 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 what I'm worried about is even if we win 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 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 in his neurodecree, 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. If by 8 o' clock or whatever it is, you don't 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 have to go to battle and so they're all having a drink, you know.

[Host/Interviewer]

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.

[Dr. John Gartner]

There's a term we have in psychologists called magical thinking. And it's something that again, we associate with psychosis. We also associate it with young children. Freud called it 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.

[Host/Interviewer]

We've desensitized. We have desensitized. What about his Arch, talking about grandiosity. He wanted something that was bigger than the Arc de 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.

[Dr. John Gartner]

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 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, this obscene Arc de Trump, 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

[Host/Interviewer]

he's got banners on the build, right? He's got banners on all the government buildings.

[Dr. John Gartner]

Banners on all the government buildings. He wants the world to worship him as a God. This is like the Sun King.

[Host/Interviewer]

We're getting back to the beginning. Him posting images of himself as Christ, which, as you say, suggests the President is psychotic. Dr. John Gartner, it's 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 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.

[Dr. John Gartner]

Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

[Hugh Doherty]

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 Coles. And a special thanks goes to our production team, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro and Neil Rosenhaus.

[Host/Interviewer]

So the good news is we have so many Beast Tier members now, there are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.