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- [00:00]
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Dr. John Gartner
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Joanna Coles
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Dr. John Gartner
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- [01:33]
Dr. John Gartner
Trump, because of his cognitive decline, is focusing on things like the ballroom and the paper that he writes things on. If any of you have ever had someone who in your family or friends who had dementia, one of the things you'll notice is they'll pick up on one concrete physical detail and then they'll free associate to that detail completely, leaving the conversation. Whatever the original topic of the conversation was. Let's set the stage. He's brought 1200 generals from around the world, right? You know, for this very important meeting and you have to forgive me, I automatically go into my Trump voice when I do this, when I have a general and I have to sign for a general because we have beautiful paper, gorgeous paper. I said put a little more gold on it. They deserve it. I want the A paper, not the D paper we used to sign that piece of garbage. I said, this guy's gonna be a general, right? I want to use the big beautiful firm paper. I want to use the gold writing. After all the work you do to become a general or an admiral, your commission. That commission is beautifully displayed. And I sign it. You know, I actually love my signature. Everybody loves my signature, but I sign it very proudly. And I think to myself, how can you have an auto pen do this? So disrespectful to me, it's totally disrespectful. As it turns out, almost everything he did was by auto pen, except when he gave his son Hunter a pardon. He signed that one, actually. It's the worst signature I've ever seen. The auto pen looks better. It's right there. Plain sight. We're all seeing it, but no one's calling. It's like the emperor has no brain, but the media is afraid to say it. The professionals are afraid to say it.
- [03:12]
Joanna Coles
I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And no one, no one has provoked more comments from you than our podcast with Dr. John Gartner. He was an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University for 28 years. He's a psychotherapist in private practice. And for a long time, he had the podcast Shrinking Trump, where he analyzed Donald Trump, the president, through his own words. And his argument has always been that he's actually a very straightforward person to diagnose for a shrink because there's so much of him out there. Donald Trump is a man who's been astride the modern media, whatever form it takes, taken for, well, I was going to say hundreds of years. It feels like hundreds of years, but dozens of years. So actually, there is a baseline against which to diagnose his thought processes that we see in his weaves and his endless conversations and press conferences going on right now. So no time to waste. I'm armed with many of the questions that you had for the doctor. We're going to get straight into it. Dr. Gardiner, as someone who studied, studied psychotherapy, psychiatry, personality disorder, dementia from thousands of people, can you give us your diagnosis again? And then let's see what you've seen coming out of Trump's behavior over the last month.
- [04:49]
Dr. John Gartner
His personality disorder is a rare, severe personality disorder called malignant narcissism. Malignant narcissism is actually a personality disorder that was first introduced by Eric fromm in the 1940s when he escaped Hitler. And it was his attempt to explain the psychology of Hitler and other evil dictators like Hitler. So he was meant to describe it as a type. So when I compare Trump to Hitler, what I'm saying is we can argue about, you know, the differences but the essential similarity is that they're cut from the same cloth. They have the same personality disorder. And I predicted before Trump was elected the first time that he would rule like Hitler because he has the same personality disorder as Hitler. And now finally, of course, sadly, we're seeing that he is actually following Hitler's playbook almost to the letter.
- [05:42]
Joanna Coles
John, is there the possibility that you're being alarmist here, that the parallels you're making to Adolf Hitler are parallels that Donald Trump wants you to make because he wants to frighten people? But actually, the fact that you and I can talk openly about this is a sign that we're not in Germany hurtling towards 1941 or 1942. Is thisare you confident that the diagnosis you make is not alarmist?
- [06:12]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, I think you're about eight years late with that question, because when I first started saying it, I got a lot of pushback from journalists who were saying, well, come on, it's not like he's going to form concentration camps. You know, stop calling him Hitler. And I said, no, he will form concentration camps. And I don't know if you remember this, but in his first administration, he was building out camps in the desert to keep immigrants, and they were building out a capacity for a quarter of a million beds. That was his plan. Then with the childhood separation plan, it became so abhorrent. You know, that was the one thing that the country really pushed back on, that he kind of backed off the concentration camp for immigrants. Now he's going full tilt. I mean, think about this. They're literally just snatching people off the street, whether they're citizens or not citizens, you know, whether they have ID or don't have id. Masked secret police, right? Beating people up, smashing their windows, abducting them, disappearing them. Then people can't even find out where they are putting them in camps, or in the most extreme case, putting them on a plane to death camps. Okay? I often explain that a concentration camp is not a death camp. The internment of Japanese in World War II was a concentration camp. Concentration camp means we're concentrating an undesirable population because of their race or their religion or whatever in an enclosed prison like village, okay? Or area that's a concentration camp. It becomes a death camp when you start killing them. So what he's doing with these third world countries is he's outsourcing the death camp part so they can just disappear people into these third World hellholes and never to be seen again. So that's just one example of. I don't think it's alarmist, okay? At this point, we're like, we're past Kristallnacht, okay? It's not alarmist anymore. It's happening. Just look on social media.
- [08:12]
Joanna Coles
I think one of the things that people find very interesting, you know, when you're reading about history, or indeed when you're looking at what's going on around the world now, is how can we. One man managed to amass so much power and so much sycophancy around him is. And you think of Vladimir Putin, who's also managed to create the same environment for himself. And indeed, there are many strong men, as they're being called. Are they all malignant narcissists? Is that an ingredient that you need to be a strongman leader?
- [08:48]
Dr. John Gartner
Yes. The short answer is yes. That's the type that Eric Fromm was talking about. And one of the things that these people do. Our colleague Robert J. Lifton recently passed away. He's been studying malignant narcissism in leaders for, like, 60 years. And one of the terms that he came up with is malignant normality. And malignant normality is when a malignant narcissist takes control of their society and establishes a new set of norms, establishes a new reality through propaganda, and basically converts the entire country to their psychosis, converts the entire country to, or most of it to operating under their delusional, destructive beliefs. So that's what's happening right now. The way in which, you know, now all liberals are being labeled as antifa. You know, recently Carolyn Levitt said all Democrats, you know, the only democrats are people who are Hamas terrorists and left wing terrorists. And I forget what the other group was.
- [09:47]
Joanna Coles
That was truly a disturbing, very strange comment.
- [09:50]
Dr. John Gartner
But the demonization of the opposition, the dehumanization of the opposition, the shutting down of free speech, the demonization of an ethnic minority. I've said this over and over again. As a Jewish person, I need to say immigrants are the new Jews. You know, when my people say never again, we don't just mean never again to Jews. We mean never again to any ethnic group. And now these immigrants are being treated in much the same way the Jews were. They're being knocked to the ground, disappeared, put in camps, and in some cases, yes, death camps. El Salvador is a death camp. We know from Abrego Garcia that they were told over and over again, you will never live outside of this camp. And we'll talk about this later. But Stephen Miller, I think, is also an extremely disturbed individual. He is. And I'm not saying this is a joke, a Jewish Nazi. He is actually showing an identification with the aggressor. It's actually a defense mechanism that Freud identified where you identify with your oppressor, you identify with the person who's abusing you. It's a very common psychological phenomenon, actually. That's why a lot of people who have been abused as children become abusive adults. We're going to talk about Trump's cognitive decline before the election. People say, well, what's going to happen if his dementia gets worse in the White House? And I said, well, it's going to be like the Weekend at Bernie's White House. Trump, because of his cognitive decline, is focusing on things like the ballroom and the paper that he writes things on. And, you know, he's sort of meandering about all of these sort of side issues. But the real driver of the Hitlerian agenda is actually Stephen Miller. And I think people need to know that.
- [11:36]
Joanna Coles
Perhaps we'll do a special episode on Stephen Miller and get you to analyze some of his dialogue for us. In terms of Donald Trump. He's a malignant narcissist, you say. You also say that he's suffering from some level of dementia. And you gave us some incredible examples, one of which triggered all sorts of people. And this was when he was saying, and I'm going to read it, I'm quoting you here. He was saying that they're going to send all these immigrants from insane asylums. And then he goes, anyone seen Silence of the Lambs? And then he goes, the late, great Hannibal Lecter, nobody likes to talk about him anymore. And everybody remembered that exchange. And your explanation of it being a symptom of dementia was very helpful. Can you re explain that for people who didn't hear it the first time?
- [12:27]
Dr. John Gartner
Sure. So it's a chain of loose associations, Right? So he's telling a lie. He's saying that all these immigrants are coming from insane asylums. Okay? So that's the malignant narcissism. He's just lying. But then thinking about an insane asylum reminds him, oh, I saw a movie about insane asylums. Okay. And then that makes him remember the main character from the movie. And that makes him think, hey, whatever happened to that guy? No one ever talks about him anymore. So we're seeing like a stone skipping along the water. He's going from one association to another, but it doesn't make any linear sense. So saying, hey, nobody ever talks about the late, great Hannibal Lecter. Well, first of all, he's a fictional character. So he can't be dead. But how did you get there? From immigrants coming from insane asylums? Because he had this loose chain of associations.
- [13:15]
Joanna Coles
And is it a loose chain because it sounds like something? Because one of the other symptoms you noticed was that people who are beginning to suffer dementia can't often say the whole word, so they go crrsch instead of Christmas. That was an example you gave us.
- [13:31]
Dr. John Gartner
Yes, it's called phonemic paraphasias. They can't complete the word properly, so they just kind of add a nonsense ending. So you can't say Chris miss you say Christus or missiles mishous. And there are dozens and dozens of examples of that. And they're on social media almost like as kind of super cuts of like things to make fun of him or. Right. Or to be humorous. But they're actually very serious signs, very serious and well known medical signs of dementia. People don't make those kinds of phonemic paraphrases if they're tired or if they're aging. That's just not something they do. It's something very specific that is linked to dementia and organic cognitive decline. And actually in terms of this sort of sounds like, I think I might have mentioned last time that, you know, someone asked him a question about Harvard and then he went on to talk about Harlem, you know, and it wasn't just that he misunderstood the word because then he goes back and circles back and says, you know, the people in Harvard, in Harlem, they really approve of what we're doing at Harlem, Harvard. So what they had in common is they begin with H. Other than that, I think we would agree that Harlem and Harvard are very different places.
- [14:44]
Joanna Coles
So we've seen a lot of Donald Trump on the world stage and many stages. I mean, he gives endless press conferences. We simply can't complain that we don't see enough of him. You also referenced sometimes people with dementia have phases of great grandiosity. And one couldn't help thinking last week when he was claiming peace in the Middle east, they said it couldn't be done. It's taken 3,000 years, but here I am. That that was far from being modest, which a lot of actual peacemakers are. He put himself center stage and unfortunately we've already seen a slight outbreaking of fighting over the weekend. And I think a more sort of modest person might have thought this might take some time. You can't. Just because you say it doesn't mean it's going to happen.
- [15:29]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, the grandiosity is certainly part of his personality disorder. So we do these things interact. So it's easy to kind ofin real life. They get confused or they interact with each other. But his cognitive decline is a, is a physiological thing that's been deteriorating now over a number of years. His personality disorder is who he is and who he's always been, although that also gets worse over time. Eric Fromm said that people with malignant narcissism tend to get worse because with any degree of success, their grandiosity becomes inflamed, their paranoia becomes inflamed, their sense that I can do no wrong becomes disinhibited. Their violence against others becomes disinhibited, both because they feel they can do anything they want and because they're becoming increasingly grandiose and paranoid. And the other thing is though, when we see people with dementia, whatever personality disorder they have tends to get dramatically worse, more disinhibited, more sort of grossly raw, more primitive. So I think we're seeing that with him too. So we're really seeing is he has the worst personality disorder a human being can have. But now as he cognitively deteriorates, he expresses it in ways that are more impulsive, more coarse, more disorganized. You know, we can, we'll talk maybe about some of his AI videos.
- [16:50]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, well I was going to ask you about that when you said, you know, they become more coarse and disinhibited. I mean, yesterday he released an AI video of him flying a plane over Times Square and then it opening a whole ton of sewage and dropping on the people below. That seems something that a nine year old boy is more likely to do. Not the leader of the free world.
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Dr. John Gartner
Right, Exactly. So it shows that kind of disinhibited. It's the real him. You know, I know there's a lot of controversy about the pee pee tape. One of the things that I've always. Or the alleged pee pee tape, one of the things I've always said about it is whether or not it's true. It's certainly in character pleasure. Because someone with malignant narcissism wants to defile and degrade other people. They get immense sexual pleasure out of it. They're sadists. That's one of the components of malignant narcissism. It's narcissism, paranoia, antisocial personality disorder, or psychopathy and sadism, those four components. So the idea that he really just wants to shit on everyone who disagrees with him, that's like literally how he feels because of the personality disorder. The other Thing, though, about recent. His recent talks is we talked about his confusing Harvard and Harlem. Recently. He's been confusing India and Iran. You know, he's been talking about Pakistan being at war with Iran, and he's trying to broker a peace. And he says Iran several times when he's talking about India. As an example, if you look at Pakistan and Iran, I told them I was in the midst of negotiating a trade deal with actually with Iran, and Pakistan was going to be in line. Well, Chris, what do those two countries have in common? You know, they begin with, I sort of like Harvard and Harlem. So that's the level of free association we're talking about.
- [18:40]
Joanna Coles
And is that just because he's the president and he's got a lot of details to keep on top of? I mean, I agree that getting India and Iran confused is a deadly. Potentially a deadly mistake, but is there any benefit of the doubt you could give him that he's, you know, trying to master a ton of detail here?
- [19:01]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, look, as an older person, I tend to give people a lot of benefit of the doubt. I mean, even on my own podcast, sometimes I say, oh, yeah, you know, the person from Germany, you know, you know, what's his name? What's his name? You know, then we have to edit that out. But he tends to mishmash them together in a way that shows a deeper level of thought disorder. For example, the other thing he was saying about India and Pakistan, he's saying, well, then he. I think he's starting to say India. Now. He's saying, well, you know, India's had a lot of change of leadership. They haven't really been stable. That's true of Pakistan. It's not true of India. So first he confuses their names, then he confuses the countries themselves, their political leadership and their history. So it's one thing to get a name wrong, maybe even to reverse it, although that still seems very rare, but he's actually confusing the countries themselves. Another example of this kind of really clearly demented memory loss would be when he was negotiating the government shutdown, he met with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. Right, the minority leader of the House and the Senate. And he said, yeah, I had a talk with, you know, Chuck Schumer, and he brought a very nice man with him who I didn't know.
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Joanna Coles
He didn't know Hakeem Jeffries.
- [20:10]
Dr. John Gartner
Yeah, he knows Hakeem Jeffries. Okay? He's not an obscure congressman. He's the minority leader. He deals with him on an almost daily basis. This is like what when you go to visit your, you know, your mother in the nursing home and you bring your sister and she goes, who's that nice lady that you brought with you? Oh, honey, that's your daughter. That's my sister.
- [20:29]
Joanna Coles
Wow.
- [20:29]
Dr. John Gartner
I mean, it's that level of non recognition that we're talking about.
- [20:33]
Joanna Coles
And if you're, if you're dealing with someone like this, if you're J.D. vance or you're a cabinet member, how is the best, or what is the best way to deal with someone like this?
- [20:44]
Dr. John Gartner
The 25th Amendment?
- [20:46]
Joanna Coles
All right, well, let's assume they're not going to invoke the 25th Amendment, perhaps because they're too frightened to actually. What are the other ways that you try to mitigate this behavior?
- [21:02]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, I suspect I've heard that people don't want to be hanging around the Oval Office, that he's so cantankerous and confused and irascible that it's actually very unpleasant to be with him. And so I think what they're trying to do is sort of moll him while the Stephen Millers and the Russell Vaughts, you know, are dismantling the government and, you know, attacking minorities and destroying our Constitution. He's all in favor of that, but he doesn't have the cognitive capacity to do that. He's delegated that to other people. And now they sort of have him, you know, designing the ballroom, putting up pictures along the walk near the Rose Garden. You know, he's very obsessed with appearances, talking about the gold leaf that he's painting on the, on the office. Later, I'm going to read you his description about the very fine paper that they use, you know, to send promotions to generals that he talked about at length at Quantico. So I think they're just kind of keeping him busy with little hateful, small hateful tasks while, you know, the blitzkrieg is going on around him.
- [22:10]
Joanna Coles
So Michael Wolff, one of our regular contributors and my co host of Inside Trump's Head, talks about how Donald Trump won't shut up, that whenever you talk to him, he just talks. And indeed, we heard that he just had a two hour conversation with Putin. And what appeared to come out of that was that Putin said nothing and Donald Trump just talks and talks and talks and that if you go past the Oval Office, he's in there just talking to people. But we know he loves giving press conferences. Joe Biden would rather be in the fetal position hiding on the floor than give a press conference. I, I think he gave six in his last couple of years. Whereas Trump wants to give sort of a two hour press conference every day, there is nothing he likes more than the sound of his own voice. Is that also a sign of. Well, what is it a sign of?
- [22:55]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, it's a sign of his malignant narcissism. Right. He's a narcissist. He thinks everything he has to say is brilliant and wonderful, even if it is a complete, you know, cognitive train wreck. Right. But he thinks everything that emanates from him is wonderful. At one point in Aquanac, we were talking about how wonderful his signature is. Everyone loves his signature. And so he goes on and on and on. And this is where the press is really not being honest with us. Right. They will quote a snippet of it, and some of it's the limitations of these short broadcasts, but they'll quote a snippet of it. Sometimes. It's a very provocative snippet where something he's threatening to do, something illegal or unconstitutional. But what they're not capturing is the meandering, illogical, sort of thought disordered quality of his mentation that you do hear when he goes on and on for an hour. He just has all of these diatribes, all of these really sort of irrelevant non sequitur, you know, side conversations where he just basically has free associations, talking about whatever he wants to talk about because he thinks he's so wonderful. Anything he talks about is wonderful.
- [24:00]
Joanna Coles
And he calls it his weave.
- [24:02]
Dr. John Gartner
Right, right. Well, the weave was a brilliant way to cover up his dementia. At some level, he knows his thoughts are completely fragmented, that he can't follow a train of thought to save his life. So then what he does because he's so narcissistic is, well, that just shows how. What a genius I am. The fact that I can't actually complete a thought just shows how smart I am because I'm so brilliant that I can just weave all of these disparate ideas into some new creation. But it's not a manifestation of genius or creativity. It's a manifestation of. Of pathology and cognitive decline.
- [24:38]
Joanna Coles
John, hold on one second. We're going to take some ads.
- [24:42]
Dr. John Gartner
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Dr. John Gartner
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Joanna Coles
B R-I K.com we love our sponsors, but we also love Dr. John Gartner, who's back diagnosing Donald Trump's state of mind. Okay, so what are the medications that we might expect a man of his age to be on? We've seen that he's got swollen ankles that spill over the top of his oxford shoes that he loves to Wear. We've seen the bruising on his hand and the weird makeup that apparently he insists on applying himself, which might explain why it's the wrong color for the rest of his hand. It's almost drawing more attention to it than less attention to it. But you know, to be fair, he's almost 80 years old. There's no reason why he wouldn't be on certain medications. What are the sort of typical medications someone like Donald Trump would be on at this age, knowing what you know about him?
- [28:39]
Dr. John Gartner
So I'm not a medical doctor, but I've done some research into things that other medical doctors have been saying about what we know. First of all, there is some strong suspicion that he had some kind of stroke around Labor Day. Or it could be what we call a transient ischemic attack, which is sort of a minor stroke and it kind of reverses itself. And the drooping that he had on the right side of his face At.
- [29:05]
Joanna Coles
9 11, it was very, very evident.
- [29:07]
Dr. John Gartner
At 9 11, it's very evident and it's very diagnostic. There's really only almost nothing else other than Bell's palsy, which I don't think he has, that could cause that. There's simply nothing else. It's not aging, it's not fatigue, it's not, you know, being. There's nothing you could do to make someone's face droop halfway like that other than a stroke. And you mentioned his medication. Now, this is again, a little bit beyond my kin, but some doctors have been saying, well, first of all, he's on aspirin every day. Well, well, we did used to give aspirin every day for cardiac health. We stopped doing that years and years ago. Now, when we give someone aspirin every day, it's often because they have had a stroke and we're trying to, you know, break up any potential blood clots. He's also on a medication. I'm not sure if I can pronounce this right. At Tzembe, they're saying it's to lower cholesterol, but we rarely give that medication to lower cholesterol if they're already on cholesterol lowering medication. Unless again, we're compensating for some kind of stroke. So they're not explaining. First of all, I don't think they're even telling us all his medications. But the logical explanation for that might be that they are trying to treat a stroke. And the other thing that suggests that is that they brought him back to Walter Reed for a second annual physical. Well, if it's a second one, then it would be a semiannual physical. It wouldn't be a second annual physical. Obviously it was provoked by something. They brought him there. And we know that they did full brain imagery. We know that they did MRIs, they did Cat scans. Okay. We don't do that unless we suspect that someone has had some kind of cerebral event. It's something we do when we think there's potentially a crisis or a problem. And so the fact that they brought him back, that they did the scanning, that the medicine suggests a stroke, that his clinical presentation suggests a stroke, it's all very suggestive.
- [30:59]
Joanna Coles
And how seriously should we take a stroke in Donald Trump at this stage? I mean, I think we all know people who've had TIAs and gone on and been highly functional. Is this something that we now know how to treat and it's not as serious as it sounds?
- [31:21]
Dr. John Gartner
I think it sounds serious. I think it is serious. Especially given that he may be having a series of these. You know, he's having circulatory problems and he's already showing immense cognitive decline. So all of these things are kind of swirling together to really make him essentially, I think, to the point where basically Stephen Miller is going to be the equivalent of Mrs. Wilson, you know, if you remember.
- [31:48]
Joanna Coles
Good Lord, let's hope not. Yes.
- [31:50]
Dr. John Gartner
And his wife ran the government for, you know, a few months. I think that we're kind of in a Mrs. Wilson sort of situation, or it's developing into that.
- [32:00]
Joanna Coles
How very alarming. So anything that anybody can do, and certain people when you came on last time, said, oh, it's impossible to diagnose someone unless you've sat in front of them until talked to them. Just tell us why you think actually with Donald Trump it is possible to diagnose him?
- [32:20]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, first of all, people need to understand that it is not actually part of the ethical code that you cannot diagnose someone you haven't interviewed. It says you cannot diagnose a public figure that you haven't interviewed. This rule was set in the mid-60s when Goldwater sued a magazine for saying he was mentally unstaged when it wasn't true. And it embarrassed the APA and they established that rule, but it's only about public figures. In other words, it's really a kind of a cover your ass thing for the profession because we don't want to be pissing off public figures. We can actually make diagnoses because especially in the 80s, we switched to a different diagnostic system, the DSM 3, than it was the 3, now it's 5. In which we. He said all psychiatric disorders must be diagnosed by observable behavioral criteria. Which means that if I can observe someone's behavior or if I can talk to someone, like a parent or guardian who has observed their behavior, I can make a valid diagnosis. Maybe if they're a public figure, ethically, you might argue I shouldn't, but I can actually make one. So we don't have to pretend that we can't see what we're seeing. We can't hear what we're hearing. You know, it reminds me of that joke about the person who finds his wife in bed with a golf pro and she says, look, it's not what you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? With our lying eyes, we can see that Donald Trump is deteriorating. And also we've actually done studies that his vocabulary has gone from an 11th grade level to like a fourth grade level, that he started evidencing all of these things like phonemic paraphrasias or these kind of tangential thinking. We've seen a massive increase in those sorts of clear clinical signs of dementia. And, you know, we've talked here about how he can't complete a thought, how he confabulates and makes things up, how he doesn't remember people. You mentioned Michael Wolff. Michael Wolff in his original book said he was there when he met people he'd known for years and couldn't recognize them. So these are clear behavioral signs. And so we actually can make a diagnosis. And I would argue ethically, in fact, it is incumbent on us to make a diagnosis because protecting, you know, the Goldwater rule is less important than protecting the population of planet Earth who are potentially going to be extremely harmed by this person's disorder.
- [34:50]
Joanna Coles
So you make it sound incredibly urgent, and I think a lot of our listeners and viewers would agree with you. What's the logical end of this? I mean, there are probably many people listening and watching this who've dealt with relatives, friends, neighbors, who've started down the path of dementia without any of the personality issues that Donald Trump has. And I think most people would say it ends badly. As you're watching this, with all the experience you have and all the visibility into Donald Trump that we all have, frankly, as you say, you know, we can see this happening with us. We can see this happening in real time. What is the inevitable path for this?
- [35:39]
Dr. John Gartner
It would be impossible to overstate the danger. It really would be impossible to overstate the grave risk that all of us are at right now. Because first, first of all, he starts out with a malignant narcissist, and we know that doesn't end well, Right? And he's pursuing the Hitler playbook. But when you add dementia, you know, some people said, oh, well, maybe that's good. You know, maybe he'll be so disorganized he can't carry out his evil scheme. Maybe it's a race between his dementia and his malignant narcissism. And I've always said, no, no, no, first of all, he now has underlings who are willing to do it for him. But also, he's not someone who surrenders power easily. And so he's going to be exercising in ways that are more erratic, more irrational, more destructive even. Look at the way he's been about the tariffs. You know, he wakes up from now, today, I'm going to put 100% tariff on China. Yeah, that's right. That's the ticket.
- [36:30]
Joanna Coles
You know, remarkably good.
- [36:36]
Dr. John Gartner
You know, it's so impulsive and erratic and there's no kind of. And this guy has the nuclear footprint, you know, I mean, this is really someone who could wake up and in a state of complete confusion and kind of irritation, do something catastrophic, and there's no one who's going to stop him.
- [36:53]
Joanna Coles
Right? And we've seen over the last couple of weeks, him suddenly deciding to take out with drones, little boats in the Caribbean.
- [37:04]
Dr. John Gartner
Yeah, that's a great example. It's a blatant violation of our law, of international law. It's going to get worse, all right?
- [37:15]
Joanna Coles
It's going to get worse. It's a very gloomy diagnosis from you. Let me ask you something which we didn't talk about last time you were on, but I realized I should have asked you, and especially provoked by what you're saying about. Some of these symptoms are really obvious. They're hiding in plain sight, and we're not taking them seriously. Did you think that about President Biden?
- [37:39]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, no, and I was famously wrong about Biden in many ways, but for the reason that you said they were hiding Biden. You know, you cannot diagnose something if you can't see it. Right? So if it's on display on television, yes, you can diagnose it because you can see it, but if it's being hidden, you can't. And so I think one of the great disservices that Biden's advisers did to the country was, first they hid him, okay? And then they lied to us and said he was fine. And that he could run for reelection. If he's bad enough that you need to hide him, then he's bad enough that you should gracefully pass the baton. And so really, the debate was a catastrophic moment, right, where I mean, I think I must have been one of millions of people who felt their heart drop, right, and sink three floors down, you know, into the next floor when he was staring at the camera, looking like a deer in the headlights. I don't know what his issue is are because I don't have enough evidence. But clearly there was something there. But with Trump there, it's all on display. Although the exception was around Labor Day when he allegedly had that potential stroke. Right. He actually was hidden from public view for about four days and people were commenting on it. So at that point, they may have pulled a Biden, I suppose, and tried to keep him out of public view. But that's the difference is here we have the data. It's right in front of us.
- [39:06]
Joanna Coles
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- [40:40]
Joanna Coles
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- [41:22]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, one would be to have the balls to do it.
- [41:26]
Joanna Coles
Well, you're doing pretty good. You've had a whole podcast talking about this, and you've certainly been very open about your diagnosis. On our podcast.
- [41:35]
Dr. John Gartner
Yes. And actually at one point, we actually had a petition. We got hundreds of medical professionals to sign it. But medical professionals are notoriously risk averse. And the Trump administration is being extremely threatened. Threatening. So I think people are now more afraid than ever to speak out. And of course, you know, that's one of the ways that Hitler rises, right? By people being silent. And actually, in this regard, the American Psychiatric association is really complicit in keeping people silent because instead of abrogating the Goldwater Law, they've actually doubled down on it during the Trump. The first Trump administration said nothing. Not only can you not make a diagnosis, you can't even make a public statement about a public figure. They stated because I think they wanted to mollify the Trump administration. So, you know, my co host got very nervous when you asked ChatGPT, is Trump showing signs of dementia? And they say yes, Dr. John Gardner and Dr. Harry Siegel and Shrinking Trump have argued that he's showing signs of dementia. Like I felt we felt like the comedians like Laurel and Hardy when they're in the army and they say we need two people to volunteer for a suicide mission, everyone else takes a step backward. So they're the ones there in the line of fire. I think that if you were to talk privately to almost any random mental health professional, they would tell you some version of what I'm saying. But there's a tremendous amount of fear out there about stating it publicly.
- [43:05]
Joanna Coles
Well, thank you. Thank you for stating it publicly here and giving us your diagnosis. And we would love to have you back on the podcast, really, to analyze Donald Trump's behavior as he inevitably heads towards his 80th birthday. And as we see crazier and crazier things, like the memes that he started doing with AI. And I know you had one example you wanted to give us about paper.
- [43:33]
Dr. John Gartner
Yes. So when he was at Quantico. That was sort of an inflection point. When he was at Quantico, you had Madeline Dean. You may have seen this little piece of tape where she confronts Mike Johnson and she says, the president is not well.
- [43:46]
Joanna Coles
The president is unhinged. He is unwell.
- [43:50]
Dr. John Gartner
What are you doing? What politics on your side are too.
- [43:52]
Joanna Coles
I don't control. Oh, my God, please.
- [43:54]
Dr. John Gartner
And he sort of starts laughing. Well, a lot of people on your side aren't so. Well, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not talking about that. No one else on my side is president, But I'm really approaching you in a very honest and sincere way. The president is not well. It was after that Quantico speech. One of the things about the speech was that he seemed low powered. He had difficulty. He was sort of stumbling on his words, slurring a little bit. That can be a sign of a stroke. But also one of the things that happens when he perambulates right around these issues is what people remembered from Quantico was that he said, we're going to use the cities as a testing ground or training ground for the military, which was a horrible thing to say. And that's really signaling that we're going to establish martial law in the blue cities of our country. It was a very damaging and dangerous signal as to what he was up to. But what they didn't focus on was how disordered his thinking was. And so, if I may, I just have one paragraph that I typed out verbatim. And this is also typical of what I call his soft thought disorder, which is, if any of you have ever had someone who in your family or friends who had dementia, one of the things you'll notice is they'll pick up on one concrete physical detail, and then they'll free associate to that detail completely, leaving the conversation, whatever the original topic of the conversation was. So here it is. Let's set the stage. He's brought 1200 generals from around the world, Right. You know, for this very important meeting. Right. And what does it. He has to say, so this is a paragraph, and you have to forgive me, I automatically go into my Trump voice when I do this, when I have a general and I have to sign a jit for a general because we have beautiful paper, gorgeous paper. I said, put a little more gold on it. They deserve it. I want the A paper, not the D paper we used to sign that piece of garbage. I said, this guy's going to be a general, right? I want to use the biggest beautiful firm Paper. I want to use the real gold writing. After all the work you do to become a general or an admiral, your commission. That commission is beautifully displayed. And I sign it. You know, I actually love my signature. Everybody loves my signature. But I sign it very proudly. And I think to myself, how can you have an auto pen do this? So disrespectful. To me, it's totally disrespectful. As it turns out, almost everything he did was by autopilot pen. Except when he gave his son Hunter a pardon. He signed that one, actually. It's the worst signature I've ever seen. The auto pen looks better.
- [46:19]
Joanna Coles
It is like a sort of. Yeah, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. So that to you is an example of not a genius weave, but in fact a disintegration of someone's thinking.
- [46:34]
Dr. John Gartner
Of course. Exactly. And as you say, it's right there in plain sight.
- [46:38]
Joanna Coles
Sight.
- [46:38]
Dr. John Gartner
We're all seeing it, but no one's calling it. It's like the emperor has no brain. But the media is afraid to say it. The professionals are afraid to say it.
- [46:48]
Joanna Coles
Well, to be fair, I think a lot of the media are saying it. I think YouTube is full of people saying it. I mean, you know, meta's networks are full of people saying it on Instagram, on Facebook, people are saying it on X. So it's not as if people are aren't saying it. But there's something about Donald Trump thatwell, perhaps I should be asking you. Thisis there something about him that still appeals to people because of this sort of peculiar rambling and weaving and occasional flashes of humor?
- [47:24]
Dr. John Gartner
I just have to correct you about one thing though. It's the independent media that's reporting it. I would challenge you to show me something at abc, cbs, NBC, cnn, where they're talking about his cognitive decline.
- [47:34]
Joanna Coles
I was going to ask you about his comments. So we have another one like the paper one, which is the most brilliant thing, which is when he says, we know a lot about the drones and we know a lot about the jets, the great ones, the B52s, which were totally stealth. They were undetectable. And the B52s are from. When are they from? The 60s?
- [47:52]
Dr. John Gartner
We know a lot about the drones and we know a lot about the great jets. The great ones. The ones. Well, and the B52s, which were totally under. They were stealth.
- [48:02]
Joanna Coles
You've just been critical of the mainstream press saying they don't cover this. How do you cover it?
- [48:07]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, first of all, you ask the question, right? In other Words. Okay, let's say you don't want to diagnose someone that you haven't met, that's fine. But if you see, if this were your grandfather or your father and you were seeing this, these gross signs of cognitive decline, you might not diagnose him, but you would run, not walk to a neurologist or a neuropsychologist, probably both, and say, evaluate this guy. Tell me what's going on. Okay, so at this point, if the press were being honest, and they're not, we would have doctors. It wouldn't necessarily me, but doctors who would at least be asking the question, are we seeing signs of cognitive decline? Does this piece of behavior suggest cognitive decline? Does this memory loss suggest cognitive decline? Does this, you know, nonsensical meandering about paper? At least ask the question. We're not even asking the question.
- [49:07]
Joanna Coles
Okay. Dr. Gardiner, thank you so much for your most recent diagnosis of the President. And I hope you will come back and analyze his behavior over the next month for us.
- [49:20]
Dr. John Gartner
I'd be happy to. Thank you for having me.
- [49:21]
Joanna Coles
Thank you very much. So there you have it. The diagnosis has not improved very much. Want to get your comments? We would love Dr. Gartner to come back in a month or so and give us his thoughts on how the next month plays out. So please send us your comments. Don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast. We are independent media, so we appreciate your support. Please subscribe to the podcast wherever you get them. You can join the Daily Beast community if you like and get special access to me, to Michael, hopefully to Dr. Gartner in the next few weeks and months. And don't forget whatever our first lady is saying. Bebeast and we will see you back here for Inside Trump's Head tomorrow. That's Tuesdays, Thursdays and we've just added one on Saturdays. And we'll be back with the Daily Beast podcast on Wednesday. And a shout out to our top tier Beebeast members, Karen White, Heidi Riley, Connie Rutherford, Sharon Shipley, Andrea Hodel and Free dc thanks to our production team, Devon Rogery Know, Anna Von Erson and Jesse Millwood.
- [50:37]
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Joanna Coles
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Dr. John Gartner
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Joanna Coles
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Joanna Coles
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- [52:27]
Dr. John Gartner
Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast the Last Laugh and our Star Studded the Daily beast podcast@thedailybeast.com podcasts.
- [52:35]
Joanna Coles
If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your.
- [52:42]
Dr. John Gartner
Podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline.
- [52:46]
Joanna Coles
Head to thedailybeast.com com membershippodcast and sign up today.