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- [00:00]
A
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A
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C
Paige desorbo they are Tommy John. And yes, I'm stocking up because they make the best holiday gifts.
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B
So generous.
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C
Well, I'm a generous girly, especially when it comes to me. So I'm grabbing the softest sleepwear, comfiest underwear and best fitting loungewear.
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B
So nothing for your bestie?
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C
Of course I'm getting my dad Tommy John. Oh, and you, of course.
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B
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- [02:00]
B
I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast, and as regular listeners and viewers know, over the past few months we've been diving deep into a subject most of the mainstream media has completely ignored, the state of Donald Trump's mental and physical health. From Dr. Gartner's chilling analysis of Trump's language, gait and behavior, we've explored how Trump's malignant, nasty narcissism intersects with cognitive decline and what it means when a man in so much power begins to unravel. We've Looked at key moments from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to public appearances that reveal patterns of disinhibition, word salad, and alleged mini strokes. And ask the hardest questions. Is Trump more dangerous as he loses touch with reality, or is he still cunning enough to. To conceal his decline? In this video, we're taking a look back and reflecting on all of these conversations. So stay with me. You don't want to miss a single insight. Dr. Gartner is in the house. We are extremely excited to have you here. You are a man who has diagnosed President Trump as having dementia. John, what are the symptoms of dementia that you can see in our president?
- [03:28]
A
So the first most important thing to realize about a diagnosis like dementia is we're really evaluating someone against their own baseline. So we have to see a major deterioration in functioning in language and thinking, in psychomotor performance and impulse control in a whole variety of areas. So what a lot of people don't realize is that Donald Trump used to be a very articulate person. He used to speak with a high level of vocabulary in very polished paragraphs. Now, what we see is not only has his vocabulary gone down, but his ability to actually put together sometimes. And sometimes he's very articulate, right? Because with dementia, people go in and out right of functioning. But there are times when he's really unable to complete a thought, actually sometimes is unable to complete a word. It's called a phonemic paraphasia. There's dozens of examples there online as sort of humorous bits, you know, where he mispronounces words but really says words that are not actually English words that have a fragment of an English word, and they're like saying mishes instead of missiles or christious instead of Christmas. This is something that only people who have organic brain disease do. It's not something people just do when they're tired or when they get old. So one of the things that we see is this great deterioration in his language, in his ability to put together sentences and words. But also he's starting to show what we call this kind of random sort of thought where he really free associates and a tangential speech where he's talking about one thing, and then he starts talking about another thing and then another thing. For example, the Hannibal Lecter example is one I like to use. You know, he was saying he was lying and saying that they're sending all these immigrants from insane asylums, right? And then he goes, silence of the Lambs. Anyone seen Silence of the Lambs? Well, Silence of the Lambs is a movie about insane asylums.
- [05:24]
B
Okay.
- [05:25]
A
So now we've moved from immigrants to has anyone seen this movie? And then he goes, the late, great Hannibal Lecter. Nobody likes to talk about him anymore. Well, first of all, he's not dead, so he's a fictional character. So he can't be the late Hannibal Lecter as someone who's psychodynamically oriented. The fact that he would choose Hannibal Lecter as some kind of great figure tells us something about his psychology.
- [05:46]
B
Right, right.
- [05:48]
A
That that would be his ego ideal. Someone who is a serial killer who eats people. That sort of tracks. But in other words, it really doesn't make sense. Or another example would be when he was asked about the Harvard situation. He said, well, aren't you challenging academic freedom? And he said, oh, in Harlem, you know, all the black people voted for me because Harlem sounds like Harvard. And he didn't just mishear it, because then he goes on to say, you know, the people in Harlem agree with what I'm doing in Harvard. So, I mean, this is really a gross.
- [06:16]
B
Right.
- [06:17]
A
It doesn't make any sense. And he does this meandering kind of speech.
- [06:21]
B
Yeah, right. Well. And of course, what's interesting is we have digital breadcrumbs and we have, you know, 14 seasons of the Apprentice to study him, and then look at him. Now give us the phrase again that you called it. Was it phenyl something?
- [06:39]
A
Phonemic paraphasia. Phonemic. He uses sounds that aren't really words. There's also a semantic paraphasia where you use a real word but in the wrong context. Like saying the oranges of the investigation when he meant the origins of the investigation.
- [06:54]
B
Right. Although I promise you, I do that, too. And I'm hoping I don't have dementia, but what is it in the brain that is sort of disintegrating, if you like? Is this just a symptom of old age, or is it actually something in the brain no longer working as it used to?
- [07:13]
A
Yeah, it's not just a symptom of old age. This is really a breakdown in. It's actually a breakdown in all of the mental functions. In thinking, in psychomotor performance, in impulse control. So we're seeing this in all areas of his life now, of course, with him, sometimes it's hard to tell because he has a severe personality disorder. He is a malignant narcissist.
- [07:37]
B
So is the personality disorder. Did that come before the dementia?
- [07:43]
A
Absolutely. Absolutely. No. He's been a malignant narcissist his whole life. A personality disorder is a lifetime Disorder. So, you know, when he was 10 years old, he was throwing rocks at babies in the neighborhood. I mean, he's always been this malicious, malignant person that's core to who he is, and that's what makes him so dangerous and untreatable. Now, on top of that, this really is the worst case scenario.
- [08:09]
B
Well, hold on, hold on. You're throwing so many things out there. He's untreatable. He was throwing rocks as babies. I'm assuming you meant that metaphorically.
- [08:18]
A
No, no, literally. He was throwing rocks at babies.
- [08:21]
B
Is that a story about him? That he was literally throwing rocks at babies?
- [08:24]
A
Yes, yes, yes. When he was a child, there was babies, neighbors, a neighbor baby. He was throwing rocks at them.
- [08:33]
B
Okay, I didn't know that story. And that certainly does seem like a symptom of some sort of personality disorder. Please continue. And then let's come back to how one treats something like this.
- [08:45]
A
Malignant narcissism is untreatable. That's the official position. We can't cure people who are this sick in this way. But also it makes him incredibly dangerous. Every one of the great dictators has more or less been a malignant narcissist. The term was invented by Erich Fromm, who himself escaped the Nazis to explain the psychology of Hitler and other dictators like Hitler. He understood Hitler to be one of a type, maybe the most extreme, but one of a type. So that's what we started out as a baseline, but now what we have is this chronic organic deterioration from his own baseline. So we have, in a sense, the worst of both worlds, because his judgment was always bad. He was always impulsive, he was always a liar. But now he really is losing his ability to think clearly, to plan, to understand things, and to inhibit his speech and his behavior. So, you know, one minute it's 400% tariffs on this country, the next minute he forgets all about it. It's much more chaotic and impulsive. And because the people around him are exercising no restraint, he's now got a cabinet of enablers, right? There's nobody to kind of rein him in either, in terms of his worst authoritarian impulses. But even in terms of his confusion, if you saw the recent Cabinet meeting where the Cabinet was falling all over each other to praise the Dear Leader and talk about how he's changed American history and he should win the Nobel Prize. The ironic thing is that as he's increasing his grip on power, he's actually losing his faculties, as you say.
- [10:24]
B
We've seen him in plain sight for the last 40 years. So we can definitely see his change. I think even in the presidency this time round, you can see physical changes. He's slowing down, which is not unexpected in a man of 79. And he still seems to have an astonishing schedule. I mean, he's traveling. I mean, you know, I was watching him with King Charles as they gave their speeches side by side. Is King Charles also a narcissist? I mean, here was someone who was born to power. Donald Trump has been elected to power. King Charles hasn't been. What is the difference between them? And in Donald Trump's defense, not three words, I often say, but he appeared to deliver his speech at Windsor Castle, you know, playing to the crowd. He could obviously feel the energy in the room. He had a couple of asides which made people laugh. So it didn't feel like he was detached from the reality around him as he sat with Tim Cook and Satya Nadella and Marc Benioff and, of course, King Charles and Queen Camilla and the unusual sighting of Melania by his side. So can you just talk to. You mentioned that people with dementia go in and out, as it were.
- [11:49]
A
Absolutely.
- [11:50]
B
And what's the difference between his narcissism and someone like King Charles, who was born to take over a throne?
- [11:59]
A
There's a big difference between narcissism and malignant narcissism. A malignant narcissist, in addition to being a narcissist, which, as you point out, maybe most or even all politicians are to a certain extent, or else they wouldn't run it, has three other psychopathy, which means that he has no conscience, that he breaks laws and norms and lies and has no regrets, has no anxiety, has no remorse, has no empathy for other human beings. Paranoia, which is why he feels like such a victim. And he feels persecuted, even though he's the one who's doing the persecuting and demonizes minorities, demonizes people who oppose him. And the fourth component is sadism, that he takes enormous pleasure. He relishes in harming and degrading and debasing other and frightening other people. So. So Frome called it the essence of evil. So not all narcissists are evil. I wrote a book about Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton is very narcissistic, but I happen to think Bill Clinton is a very benign character. He has a great deal of love and concern for people. He radiates a lot of love. And Donald Trump does have some charm and some charisma, but he exercises it in this very destructive way. You know, Bill Clinton saved Hundreds of millions of lives in Africa after his presidency, you know, just because he wanted to. So we're talking about very different types of characters who have some traits in common. I also think they also have some hypomania in common, just to make things more complicated. So Trump has a lot of energy, as you pointed out, I think. And I wrote my book about Bill Clinton saying that he also had hypomania. Hypomania being Greek. Hypo is for less than. So it's less than full blown mania. It's more of a personality temperament to have hypomania. But for Donald Trump, he's up, you know, in the middle of the night. Hate tweeting, you know, 20 tweets a night, you know, so all of his energy is going into his evil. But we are talking about someone who is truly evil, and therefore, that's one of the reasons that he's untreatable.
- [14:09]
B
So. And can we just include King Charles in this? Because looking at the two of them, they're two old white men, one who's been elected to power, one who's been born to power. Did you see any. I'm not asking you to be critical of King Charles. I was just interested in the juxtaposition of the two leaders together.
- [14:31]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, to put it simply, I don't see any evidence that he's relentlessly evil.
- [14:38]
B
Well, that's a relief. I'm sure that's a relief for the monarchy. They have other problems. They have other problems. But he seems a benign king. I mean, he certainly seems to want to want to unite the country. Okay, so this going in and out of dementia, what is that about? And is it connected to what we've been told is his chronic venous interruption and the sort of the physical symptoms that we're seeing now?
- [15:10]
A
There's a number of physical symptoms that we're seeing. One of them, I point out, is his chronic falling asleep. You know, I'm a senior citizen. I fall asleep sometimes at home and after a beer or in the evening. But he fell asleep most of the days during his criminal trial, which is literally unheard of. It never happens that people fall asleep while they're in the dock during their own trial. It certainly doesn't happen every day of their trial. He fell asleep at the finals of the US Open, where he was being cheered and jeered by thousands of people. He fell asleep there at Windsor Castle, apparently. So this inappropriate falling asleep, it's a small thing, but it is a real meaningful sign. The other thing is his psychomotor performance has gotten worse, but in a very specific way that's worth focusing on. This is actually a sign of a specific type of dementia, frontotemporal dementia. And one of the dementia experts that I've consulted with is convinced he has frontotemporal dementia because of this symptom alone, which is. Is it's called a wide based gait. But if you look at his right leg, sometimes he just swings it like a dead weight in a semicircle. And if you saw that footage where he met Putin at the airport and they came down the red carpet and some people sort of sped it up like a kind of Benny Hill sort of, you know, takedown, right? You see him weaving across the carpet like a drunk driver. If you actually take that same footage as. And slow it down, what you see is the reason he's weaving to the left is because his right leg is swinging this wide swing to the left, which is causing his whole gait to move in that direction. We have a lot of different pieces of tape where we see that wide base gait. And the expert that I consulted with said this is what we call pathognomonic. You don't see this in anyone unless they have frontotemporal dementia. So it's a very specific symptom that, that really an expert would understand the significance of. And of course, now we're seeing a more general deterioration. He seems to have clearly serious circulatory problems. We don't know if the venous deficiency is really. The chronic venous deficiency is really the story. It might be actually heart failure with the swollen ankles. And we don't know why. He's got, you know, black marks on his, on the back of his hand, probably getting some kind of intravenous fluid. But the other thing is he just looks like he's sort of falling apart. And the other thing is, you know, he's. A lot of people are predicting that he's having a series of mini strokes. Because if you saw him at the 911 memorial, half of his face was drooping like this, you know, and that's not something that comes with age or fatigue. Like, not. I can't even do it right. I'm trying to make half of my face droop. I have to like pull it down. It's not something you can just do or something just happens. It really is suggestive of some kind of potential mini stroke. So all these things could be related, right? The circulatory problems could be related to the deterioration in his brain. They could even be causal. Or he could just have both dementia and some chronic medical problems. We don't know. This is really an area where we're really not sure. But he's clearly deteriorating mentally and physically.
- [18:24]
B
I have to say, it's completely terrifying talking to you because first of all, these medical terms, which I like, and I'm sort of stabbing at guessing what they mean, but I've already diagnosed myself with severe dementia, personality disorder, hypomania. It's very, very nerve wracking talking to you. So assuming you're right, and we can certainly see because of his television and his digital media trail, that he has definitely changed. Yes. How does one manage the change? I mean, you always hear about dictators or malignant narcissists, that they are very unpredictable and they're very frightening even for their closest colleagues to be around because of the unpredictability. You see Trump's cabinet looking extremely anxious, having to sit near him. And in fact, what Michael Wolff, who's frequently on our podcast, says is that within the White House, it's better not to be in the room. Usually, certainly in corporate America, people long to be in the room where it happens. Obviously the famous song from Hamilton, in the room where it happens. But actually people want to be out of the room because if you're in the room, Donald Trump's gaze may suddenly settle on you and it will trigger him to either go off on you, it'll remind him of something. How do you. How should people handle someone who's going through this?
- [19:55]
A
Well, this is what's really frightening because. Right. So many people have had relatives who have been through this, and we get notification from so many viewers who are saying, you know, I went through this with my mother, I went through this with my father. I recognize all these signs that you're talking about. But this was someone that, you know, they were able to. And it's not easy to manage someone with dementia, actually.
- [20:17]
B
Right. I mean, anybody watching this. Yeah, Anybody watching this who's got someone with dementia in their family will know it can be very unpredictable. And people can also get very bad tempered.
- [20:27]
A
Exactly. And some people in my family are dealing with this. But then imagine that that person has sort of omnipotent power. Right. And is paranoid about anyone trying to control them and will attack anyone who contradicts them. It's really kind of like a worst case scenario. Right. That the person holding the nuclear codes is incompetent, but nobody can rein him in. He won't listen to anybody. And no one dares to oppose him. So one of the things that I think we're going to start to see is as he deteriorates, the lackeys around him are going to be more and more kind of if we thought the last cabinet meeting was crazy, you know, he says crazy stuff, and it's not just the people in his government, it's even the press, right? He says crazy stuff and nobody follows up on it, nobody comments on it. It really is like the Emperor's New Clothes, but without the punchline, without the person saying, he's naked and then everyone going, oh, my gosh, he's naked. I thought it was only me that saw it.
- [21:26]
B
But isn't the complexity that people have actually called it out? I mean, you called it out with 45,000, I think professional doctors, psychotherapists who were pointing this out during Trump 1. And the press have relentlessly called it out, as Donald Trump himself would say. I mean, look at his reaction to Jimmy Kimmel this week. So isn't the problem that people have called it out, but people also don't seem to care or they might even like it? I mean, in some ways, it's seen as a sign of strength.
- [22:01]
A
Well, I don't think it seems a sign of strength to be demented. I think he, however, is very good.
- [22:06]
B
Well, okay, just to clarify, I'm not saying it's seen as a sign of strength to have dementia, but his leadership, or his bombast is misinterpreted as a sign of leadership.
- [22:22]
A
Malignant narcissists have a certain appeal. First of all, we talked about his charisma, but also the psychopathic part of them makes them have a will to dominate and a will to control that is very, very powerful. And people identify with that. So, you know, a lot of people are thrilled by the fact that he's taking this kind of strong man control and beating up on their shared enemies. So there is a kind of psychological appeal that a Hitler like character has. And actually there was. There was a psychologist named Adorno, right, who wrote about the authoritarian personality in the late 40s, trying to really try to understand what kind of a person is attracted to a malignantly narcissistic leader, to an authoritarian leader, someone who feels disempowered and who feels re. Empowered by someone who in a punitive way is attacking their shared enemies and making them feel powerful and making them. Them feel entitled to dominate. So there is this way he appeals to a certain group of white Americans, right, who really want to reassert the dominance of whites in America and who might be feel disempowered because they're not that educated or they're not that powerful or that wealthy. And so they identify with this powerful, wealthy white man who's saying what they think, but is socially unacceptable that they're superior to minorities, and we need to keep them out of this country, and they don't have brains.
- [23:52]
B
How significant is it that the first lady seems to have moved away significantly from Donald Trump? And his daughter Ivanka, who was very present during Trump one with her husband, Jared Kushner, now seems nowhere to be seen. In fact, she said that politics wasn't for her, that it was such a brutal game. So he doesn't have, as far as we know, any close women around him. I mean, he certainly has Suzy Wiles, his chief of staff, and he's got people in his office, but he doesn't have any female family members who appear to be in his close circle. And he seems increasingly isolated.
- [24:29]
A
Yeah, well, one of the things about malignant narcissists is they are literally incapable of love. They're incapable of love. And so nobody really loves Donald Trump. He doesn't really have any figures that really love him. He's got, you know, followers who worship him, but to know him is really to hate him. And I believe, basically, his family has decided it's intolerable to be around him. Like you said, you don't want to be in the room with him. And so they're trying to distance themselves. I mean, his sons are certainly making lots of billions in crypto in his name, but nobody really wants to be around him because he is unpredictable, aggressive, and you have to just submit to it. You know, the other thing about his thinking is I just want to point out a few other symptoms. One of them is something we call confabulation. I would actually argue it's very hard to distinguish a lie from confabulation, but confabulation. And again, these people who are listening who have relatives who have dementia will recognize this trait. There's so many gaps in their memory that they actually remember things that didn't happen by way weaving together different sort of little pieces of memory. So, for example, he told this long, elaborate story about how his uncle taught the Unabomber at mit. And he said, I talked to him. What kind of student was he? He said, well, he was a know it all, and nobody really liked him. And, well, look, the Unabomber never went to mit. Ted Kaczynski didn't go to mit so he couldn't have been in his uncle's class. And by the time they discovered he was Unabomber, his uncle was dead. Now, this isn't like saying, I have the highest poll numbers when he has the lowest poll numbers, or we've added jobs when we've lost jobs. That's lying for where we know he has a purpose. It's going to make him look better. Okay, but telling this long, rambling story about his uncle and the Unabomber doesn't really serve any purpose when he's telling it. I believe he actually thinks he's remembering something. This is another sign of dementia. The other sign of dementia, Dementia that we see is people with dementia. Then they really can't come up with any thoughts, just use a lot of superlatives. So, like, for example, when he was at Gettysburg, he said, gettysburg, wow. It was, like, amazing, and it was horrible, but it was, like, beautiful in a way. So just all these superlatives. And I think he's standing there and he really doesn't know what Gettysburg is. And then he's like, looking at a hill, and he said, you know, and Robert E. Lee said, never fight up hill, me boys. And he says it for some reason in an Irish accent, never fight up hill, me boys. Which he never said, but he was looking at a hill, so he just kind of made that up. I think he was just in a confused state. And so he was just using all these superlatives and then making up this story. And I guess where I would maybe push back a little bit is I don't think people are commenting on it. You know, you'd have to show me the receipts, I guess. Show me where in the press. They're talking about his mental deterioration. I don't think you're going to find it. And when you do, unfortunately, it'll be them quoting me and my co host, Harry Siegel, which is actually uncomfortable for us, because then if you put in chatgpt, Is there evidence for Donald Trump having dementia? You say? Yes, because Dr. John Gardner, Dr. Harry Siegel said so on shrinking Trump. The doctors are afraid to comment on it.
- [27:44]
B
I do think, well, certainly late night comedians. I mean, Jimmy Kimmel's just lost his job over it, right? I mean, certainly late night comedians.
- [27:51]
A
Some have.
- [27:51]
B
I mean, there are definite. And I, I definitely think there are. I mean, certainly at the Daily Beast, we've relentlessly followed his cankles as they've been spilling over his oxfords. Let me ask you something else. Joe Biden appeared to be failing in Plain sight, too. I mean, your point about Donald Trump is we can see this happening in front of us. Joe Biden also seemed to be failing. You saw him freezing. You heard the voice. I mean, he seemed to have every symptom of. Of Parkinsonism that there was without anybody acknowledging it. Did you see that in him, too?
- [28:32]
A
Well, I think that what's interesting about what happened in the Biden situation is I think they did a better job of hiding him when he was deteriorating. It seems like about six months before the election is when he really took a bad turn. And yet that by keeping him out of the public eye, we weren't able to really see the same signs and symptoms. Although the press was a lot harder on him, I think, in terms of his mental competence than they were on Trump. And that's what really upset us is the double standard, right, that they were commenting on his gaffes, but they weren't really saying much about Trump's. And, and, you know, a lot of the things with Biden, you know, the slow voice, you know, the slow movements, could be Parkinson's, could be normal aging. I think what was really a shock was the debate was that's when the public really saw, oh, my God, these rumors about his having some kind of deterioration are true because he literally looked blank right when he was staring at the camera. And that's really the moment when I think the election turned. So he shouldn't have run again. The people around him shouldn't have urged him to run again. They knew that he had these deficits, and they were hiding the deficits from the public. Okay? So if, you know they're serious enough to hide them from the public, then don't urge the man to run for president.
- [29:56]
B
So, but that's a good example of where Donald Trump would still have had dementia and as you're saying, you know, malignant narcissism and a personality disorder. But he appeared to win the debate.
- [30:13]
A
One of the ways that. That he won the debate. Well, first of all, I think Biden was very, you know, I think Biden.
- [30:19]
B
Lost the debate, right? Well, he had a challenged opponent.
- [30:23]
A
Yeah, he had a challenged opponent. But one of his techniques, it's been called Gish galloping after a certain congressman, I think, in, like, the 1800s, where, or to put it the way Steve Bannon called it, flood the zone with shit, which is to spew out so many outrageous lies, but like a Gatling gun, right? Boom, boom, boom, boom, one after the other so that your opponent doesn't even know if you Say five outrageous lies, you know, where do I even begin to rebut that person, you know, when they're not even related to each other, they're like off topic, you know. And so that technique is actually pretty effective that he just keeps spewing out lies in this pressured speech that then people really don't have a capacity to respond. Now, of course, he's just intimidating people so they're afraid to respond. But it actually turned out to be a fairly effective technique in the debate if the person can't respond effectively.
- [31:22]
B
So Donald Trump is supposed to be extremely good at sniffing out his enemies weaknesses. What are his weaknesses? I mean, we know that he appears to be haunted by his old friend Jeffrey Epstein, who followed him to London for his amazing visit to Windsor Castle. And we saw the projection of the film on, on the side of Windsor Castle, thus hijacking the trip and making sure that all the headlines included Epstein. Is Donald Trump, do you think, actually sort of haunted by Jeffrey Epstein? What are the things that make Trump truly paranoid?
- [32:09]
A
Yeah, I mean, one of the things about the psychopathy is they have no remorse for anything bad they've done and no fear of about being exposed. But when you have someone who's a narcissist, at every moment, there's a feeling that their grandiosity could collapse. So they're fighting to win each moment, right, to keep inflating themselves. So in a sense, in his paranoia, he's threatened by everything and everyone, right, who could potentially in any way pierce his veil of invulnerability and grandiosity. So that's one of the reasons he attacks everyone. Every reporter that asks him a question, you know, with any kind of a challenge, you know you're disgusting and you know you're no good and your publication's failing and you should go to jail, that's hate speech. You know, recently told Jonathan Karl that he was committing hate speech by asking him a question of what Pam Bondi said about hate speech. But the thing is, is that that is the fear is that his grandiosity will collapse or that he'll be exposed to something less than, you know, omnipotent. So in a sense, he's in an existential battle every second that makes sense.
- [33:16]
B
In terms of him just lurching moment to moment, pushing the narrative forward and not really answering specific questions, but constantly changing directions. So as you say, it's very hard to sort of follow him or understand how to pin things down. Do you think he is genuinely scared of the Epstein story?
- [33:39]
A
Well, I Think that he, you know, he's been able to duck everything and he now has a criminal justice system which is colluding in covering up the Epstein story. I mean, think about this. You know, when in the history have you ever heard of an assistant Attorney General going to meet with someone in jail? Right.
- [34:04]
B
Clearly a sex trafficker who's been sentenced to 20 years.
- [34:09]
A
Exactly. And we know that she could implicate Trump. Now, usually when someone from the Justice Department meets with a criminal in jail, it's to implicate.
- [34:17]
C
Right.
- [34:18]
A
Another wrongdoer. Right. And lo and behold, of course, she gave them what they wanted. She said she'd never seen anything to cause her concern, which we thought was funny on the show, because what would cause her concern? She's, she's a child molester herself. But anyway, never saw anything to cause concern. And lo and behold, then quid pro quo, right in front of everyone's eyes, she's transferred to this sort of spa camp prison, you know, as a reward. It was obvious. And, you know, we said Kash Patel said that he had thousands of FBI agents working around the clock to find any reference to Trump in the Epstein files. Well, we know there's hundreds of references to him. And lo and behold, he's now claiming there's no references to him. Yeah. So in other words, he actually sent thousands of FBI agents with some whiteout to go through all the files to basically hide all the references to Epstein. So he thinks he's going to get away with it because he's gotten away with everything. And that's part of the psychopath psychology. They always think they're going to get away with it. They're not worried about being exposed. And he probably will get away with it.
- [35:22]
B
And is there copycat behavior from the people around him? I mean, I was watching the Cash Patel hearings this week and his determination to shout downcertainly Adam Schiff and some of the other senators talking to him, it felt very reminiscent of Trump. And Michael Wolff, who's my partner on the Inside Trump's Head podcast, and I know you have your partner, Dr. Harry Siegel, on your podcast Shrinking Trump, which I highly recommend for anybody listening and watching to this. It's delightfully entertaining. And you invite guest doctors on to analyze people, in particular Donald Trump. Where am I going with this? I'm going with copycat behavior. Is there a sort of knock on effect from this kind of grandiosity? Is that why everybody else is suddenly getting much more aggressive?
- [36:14]
A
It's a great question. I think. I think the Answer is yes. You know, I sometimes think of Trump as being a malignant narcissist, as being similar to a malignant tumor in the body politic. And we had a chance to remove the tumor and save the patient. We failed there, obviously. But what happens with the tumor is it spreads its DNA around the body, and cells reproduce with that DNA. I think Trump's sort of psychological DNA has now seeped into the people in his administration. They're also, you know, as you say, shouting people down and devaluing people. But also what we see, too, is that there's been a process. This always happens with all of these dictators, of purging and purging and purging till you get down to the worst of the worst. You know, what's called a kakistocracy. You know, government by the worst. So in the first administration, you had people who might have been colluding with him to some degree, but they had some moral limits, right? There had some point where they say, well, wait a minute, Mr. President, we can't do that. You know, those people are gone. Even Bill Barr, right, who covered up the whole Mueller report. You know, he had a limit. He wasn't going to invalidate the whole election. You know, that was where he got off the bus. And so then he became an enemy. Right? Now, Bill Barr is reviled. So what he did, what happens is there's a systematic process of. Of purging people. And it's happened within the Republican Party generally. Right? There used to be some Republican representatives and senators, like Jeff Flake, for example, who had a conscience, who believed in the Constitution. But those people have been systematically purged. And so now what you have left, it's sort of like a reduction sauce. You know, you have the true believers, the true psychopaths, the true wing nuts, the people who are all in with no inhibitions, no conscience, no soul. And so, of course, they're going to imitate the behavior of their dear leader.
- [38:06]
B
How do you diagnose, or what is your diagnosis of someone like Elon Musk?
- [38:13]
A
Well, Elon Musk is actually a complex character. I mean, he appears to be on the spectrum. I think he also has bipolar traits. You know, when he was manically pursuing this whole Doge thing, you know, he brought his bed into the. Famously into their offices and said, we work 24 hours a day and on weekends, and that's how we're going to defeat these bureaucrats, because they only work nine to five.
- [38:36]
B
Right. That seems like some sort of mania.
- [38:39]
A
Exactly, exactly. And even his behavior with the chainsaw, you know, waving the chainsaw around wildly. It was also irresponsible and erratic and extreme and hyped up, you know, and. And there may even been drug involvement, too. We know that he's got. Allegedly has a whole case of drugs. He's on ketamine, he's on this, he's on that. So he could be hyping or firing up his hypomania, perhaps with drugs. But. So I think he's a complex case. There's a lot of things going on in his case. But what you have in common among all of these Trump people now is they do have a kind of psychopathic core, right, that they're like, you know, that Levitt, his press secretary, said he's got the highest poll numbers in history. Actually, he's got the lowest poll numbers in history. I mean, you know, it's what I call oppo speak. I think what you're hearing from public service is apo speak, meaning it's literally the opposite, the polar opposite of what they say.
- [39:35]
B
I'm going to re. Listen to this and jot down all the medical terms that you've given us, because I find it. I find it absolutely fascinating. Fascinating. John, you're describing what feels like a very extreme personality. How common is this among people?
- [39:53]
A
That's actually an excellent question. So the guest that we had on this Week, Dr. Vince Greenwood, is a scholar of psychopathy, and he has said that Donald Trump really meets the very strict criteria for a severe psychopath. And what we know is that only 1 in about 150 people meet these strict criteria for psychopathy. So just as a start, just as a baseline, it's already a very rare disorder.
- [40:21]
B
1 in 150 people.
- [40:23]
A
1 in 150 people would meet criteria for being a psychopath. Now, in his case, psychopathy is really only part of his disorder, as we've said, because as a malignant narcissist, there's four components. Psychopathy, narcissism, paranoia, and sadism. But actually, the get we had on argued that those other components could be included in the psychopathy diagnosis, if you're really being strict about your diagnostic criteria. But in any case, it is very rare. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's hard for normal people to understand.
- [40:56]
B
But one in 150 doesn't seem rare. I mean, you know, I can't remember who it is that says that most people have, or the. The peak number of friends you can have is 150, which means that we all have a psychopath in our friend group. That seems alarming. I think 1 in 150 is actually. There's a hell of a lot of psychopaths wandering around then. I mean, this is a country of 330 million people.
- [41:21]
A
Our expert also said he felt that Donald Trump was the most extreme example that he'd seen in his entire career. So in that small group, he would be in, like, 99th percentile.
- [41:35]
B
Well, I'm very excited to see what comments we get from listeners and from viewers on YouTube. I think there will be many, many, many questions, and, well, we'd love to come. We'd love to have you back and to have you address them. Sure. John Gardner, thank you very much for your time.
- [41:50]
A
Thank you for having me.
- [41:54]
B
Dr. Gardner, as someone who studied psychotherapy, therapy, 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.
- [42:14]
A
His personality disorder is a rare, severe personality disorder called malignant narcissism. Malignant narcissism is actually a personality disorder that was first introduced by Erich 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.
- [43:07]
B
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?
- [43:37]
A
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 quarter of a million. 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 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. So that's just one example of. I don't think it's alarmist, ok? At this point, we're like, we're past Kristallnacht, okay? It's not alarmist anymore. It's happening. Just look on social media.
- [45:37]
B
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 one man manage to amass so much power and so much sycophancy around him? 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?
- [46:13]
A
Yes. The short answer is yes. That's the type that Eric Frome was talking about. And. 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, 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 wings terrorists. And I forget what the other group was.
- [47:12]
B
That was truly a disturbing, very strange comment.
- [47:15]
A
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 Anna 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 he, 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.
- [49:01]
B
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 the 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?
- [49:52]
A
Sure. So it's a chain of loose associations. Right? So he's talking, 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.
- [50:40]
B
And is it a loose chain because it sounds like something. Because one of the other. 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 instead of Christmas. That was an example you gave us.
- [50:56]
A
Yes, it's called phonemic paraphasias. They can't complete the word properly, so they just kind of add a nonsense ending. So. 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, you know, and the people in Harvard, in Harlem, they really approve of what we're doing at 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.
- [52:09]
B
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 reference 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. 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.
- [52:54]
A
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 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 increasing, 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, 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.
- [54:16]
B
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. A 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.
- [54:40]
A
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 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 his recent talk 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, and Pakistan was going to be in line. Well, Chris, what do those two countries have in common? You know, they begin with I.
- [56:00]
B
Right.
- [56:01]
A
Sort of like Harvard and Harlem. So that's the level of free association we're talking about.
- [56:05]
B
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, 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?
- [56:26]
A
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 that 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.
- [57:33]
B
He didn't know Hakeem Jeffries.
- [57:35]
A
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 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.
- [57:54]
B
Wow.
- [57:54]
A
I mean, it's that level of non recognition that we're talking about.
- [57:58]
B
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?
- [58:09]
A
The 25th Amendment.
- [58:11]
B
All right, well, let's assume that. 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 behaviour?
- [58:27]
A
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 irrational, implacable, that it's actually very unpleasant to be with him. And So I think what they're trying to do is sort of mollify him while the Stephen Millers and the Russell Voughts, 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 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 hate, hateful, small hateful tasks while, you know, the blitzkrieg is going on around him.
- [59:35]
B
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 that 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 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?
- [60:20]
A
Well, it's a sign of his malignant narcissism. He's a narcissist. 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 a Quantico, 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, unquote, 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.
- [61:25]
B
And he calls it his weave. Right?
- [61:27]
A
Right. Well, the weave was a brilliant way to cover up his dementia because at some level, he knows his thoughts are completely fragmented, that. That he can't follow a train of thought to save his life. So then what he does, because he's so narcissistic, he says, 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 pathology and cognitive decline.
- [62:03]
B
Okay, so what are you doing? 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. 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?
- [62:47]
A
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.
- [63:13]
B
9 11, it was very, very evident.
- [63:16]
A
At 9 11, it's very evident, and it's very diagnostic. There's really 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, 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 I can pronounce this right. At Dzembe, 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 evidence 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. 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.
- [65:07]
B
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?
- [65:29]
A
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.
- [65:57]
B
Good Lord, let's hope not. Yes.
- [65:58]
A
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 we're. So it's developing into that.
- [66:08]
B
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 and talked to them. Just tell us why you think actually with Donald Trump it is possible to diagnose him.
- [66:28]
A
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 unstable 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. Then it was the 3, now it's 5. In which we said all psychiatric disorders must be diagnosed by observable behavioral criteria. Which means 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, 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 Wolfe, 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.
- [68:58]
B
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, 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?
- [69:47]
A
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 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 it in ways that are more erratic, more irrational, more destructive even. Look at the way. 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.
- [70:39]
B
You know, remarkably good.
- [70:45]
A
You know, it's so impulsive and erratic and there's no kind of. And this guy has the nuclear football. You know, I mean, this is really someone who could wake up and in a state of complete confusion. And Iraq kind of irritation, do something catastrophic and there's no one who's going to stop him.
- [71:01]
B
Right. And we've seen over the last couple of weeks, him suddenly deciding to take out with drones little boats in the Caribbean.
- [71:13]
A
Yeah, that's a great example. It's a blatant violation of our law, of international law. It's going to get worse.
- [71:23]
B
All right, it's going to get worse. So 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?
- [71:47]
A
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 you're to going, look, 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 issues are because I don't have enough evidence. But clearly there was something there. But with Trump, they were. 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.
- [73:15]
B
So, Dr. Gartner, what else can your profession do to warn people?
- [73:20]
A
Well, one would be to have the balls to do it.
- [73:25]
B
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.
- [73:34]
A
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 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 first Trump administration, they said not only can you not make a diagnosis, you can even make a public statement about a public figure, they stated, because I think they wanted to mollify the Trump administration. So, you know, when 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, 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.
- [75:04]
B
Well, thank you for stating it publicly here and giving us your diagnosis. And we, 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.
- [75:31]
A
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.
- [75:45]
B
The president is unhinged. He is unwell.
- [75:48]
A
What are you doing? What politics on your side are, too. I don't control.
- [75:51]
B
Oh, my God, please.
- [75:52]
A
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. 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 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. Right. And that's really signaling that. 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 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 is it he has to say? So this is a paragraph, and forgive me, I automatically go into my Trump voice when I do this. When I have a general and I have to sign a J 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 big, beautiful, firm paper. I want to use the real gold writing. After all the work you do to be 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.
- [78:18]
B
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.
- [78:32]
A
Of course. Exactly. And as you say, it's right there in plain sight. 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.
- [78:46]
B
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 aren't saying it. But there's something about Donald Trump that. Well, perhaps I should be asking you this. Is there something about him that still appeals to people because of this sort of peculiar rambling and weaving and occasional flashes of humor?
- [79:22]
A
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 on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, where they're talking about his cognitive decline.
- [79:32]
B
Dr. Gardner, can you hold on one second? Let's just take some ants. This episode is brought to you by Royal Kingdom, the visually stunning Match 3 puzzle adventure. I first tried Royal Kingdom when I was waiting for a coffee and suddenly I was whisked away into this fun, story driven world with a king, a princess, and even a slightly anxious grand duke who's just trying to keep things together, which I might resonate a bit with. The story's immersive, equal parts charming and clever. What do I love most? Royal Kingdom's beautifully animated scenes that make you laugh out loud. Royal Kingdom is smart, seamless and crucially ad free and no WI fi required. So it's perfect for those quick in between moments we all have. So if you're looking for a fun and adventurous escape, download Royal Kingdom now. It's free on the App Store or Google Play. Try one Kingdom today. Hannah Berner.
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A
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C
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B
So generous.
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C
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B
So nothing for your bestie?
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C
Of course. I'm getting my dad, Tommy John. Oh, and you, of course.
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B
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A
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B
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A
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- [82:15]
B
And I'm back with Dr. John Gartner, clinical psychologist who is diagnosing what's going on with Donald Trump' mental health. I was going to ask you about his comments. So we have another one like the, 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?
- [82:42]
A
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 was stealth.
- [82:51]
B
You've just been critical of the mainstream press saying they don't cover this. How, how do you cover it?
- [82:57]
A
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 you, if this were your grandfather or your father and you were seeing these growing 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.
- [83:57]
B
Okay. Dr. Gardiner, thank you so much for your most recent diagnosis of the President. And I hope you will come back back and analyze his behavior over the next month for us.
- [84:09]
A
I'd be happy to. Thank you for having me.
- [84:14]
B
Dr. John Gartner. I am wearing my tweed jacket to look more academic to speak to you. And where's your tweed jacket? You've. You've just turned up in a shirt.
- [84:24]
A
I left it back at the university.
- [84:25]
B
Typical. I'm playing a pseudo academic and the real academic has rolled up in his. In his shirt sleeves. So, Dr. John, since we last spoke to you, there have been, I suspect, aspects of our President's behavior that might lead you to still believe that he is in some sort of at least decline. Can we talk about it? And I was thinking about the time he had trouble raising his arm on Veterans Day during the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier ceremony.
- [85:01]
A
Well, if you look at that tape, you do see he's having difficulty raising his hand to salute and part of dementia and. Or stroke. Because it really could be either or both of those. Because it appears like it is on the right side of his body that he had the droop with the face.
- [85:17]
B
Right.
- [85:18]
A
It's also on the right side of his body that he has the wide based gait where he swings his leg in kind of a semicircle, which we.
- [85:24]
B
Saw when he was. Was walking towards to meet Putin. Right, In Alaska.
- [85:30]
A
That's right. Especially if you slow it down. If you slow the tape down, you can really see very prominently this wide base gait where he's swinging his right leg like it's kind of a dead weight in sort of a semicircle. This kind of psychomotor deterioration is one of the things that we see in.
- [85:49]
B
Dementia that feels like a very significant significant symptom. Is it?
- [85:54]
A
No, it's definitely a significant symptom. And actually it's something that could be a symptom of either the mini stroke. We think he had on his left side because his right face was also drooping. Or it could also be a symptom of dementia, because in dementia, very overlearned motor behaviors, things we don't actually think about because they're so overlearned, those programs start to deteriorate. So either the neurons are not. The brain is not able to communicate with the hand, or the actual parts of the brain that control those overlearned behaviors are starting to deteriorate, but it's not normal behavior. Now, in and of itself, it could be a glitch, but it's part of an ongoing pattern of behavior, and that's what makes it more significant. In dementia. We see a deterioration in at least four main areas. Language, which we were going to talk about. Memory. We talked about last time about his not recognizing Hakeem Jeffries. I think on the last time I was on the show, he called him that. Very nice man that Chuck Schumer brought. Right. Behavior, you know, and we're going to talk about that. His disinhibited behavior, and then finally, psychomotor performance. And what we're seeing is consistent, gross progressive deterioration in all of these four areas.
- [87:06]
B
Right. Okay. So he also had an event at a McDonald's. McDonald's. Where he made a weird noise. And I don't even know what to say there. And then he goes, no matter who you are, everybody loves something at McDonald's. Possibly true. I love their fries. There's always something to have. And then he resorts to what can only be described as that word we all learned in school, onomatopoeia. It's a sort of onomatopoeic noise of if it's possible a fish sandwich.
- [87:39]
A
I like the fish. Well, you know, yeah, he made that weird noise. And I think, actually there was a Daily Beast headline, president makes weird noise.
- [87:51]
B
That sounds like us.
- [87:52]
A
Yeah. And I thought about, boy, how things have fallen. You know, you would normally see headline, the president makes controversial statement, but now it's, president makes weird noise. But again, I want to point out this is part of.
- [88:03]
B
A.
- [88:03]
A
Part of a pattern, right? That he, you know, he. At one point, he was going, ding, dong, bing, bang. You know, he is losing his ability to use language. And sometimes then he degenerates to just using sounds. Another example that people might remember is during a campaign event where he said, I'm tired of talking. Let's just sway to the music for 40 minutes. They played a playlist, and he just.
- [88:32]
B
Okay, so Dr. Gartner, a lot of people, myself included, are probably thinking oh, Lord. I lose words from time to time, especially when I'm tired. The one thing we do know about Donald Trump is he appears to have an abnormal amount of energy. And to be fair to him, he travels a lot. He's constantly got, you know, big state visits going on. He's, you know, endlessly giving press conferences, he's endlessly having big cabinet meetings. He's not a man that's hiding in the basement. Is it possible that these are just signs of extreme fatigue?
- [89:06]
A
Well, no, it's actually not possible.
- [89:09]
B
Okay.
- [89:09]
A
No matter how tired you or I might be, no matter how drunk we might be, no matter how stressed we might be, not our old we might get. You don't commit what we call phonemic paraphrases, which is to use a word that is actually not a word, it has a kernel of a word in it. But then we just kind of flub the ending because we can't complete the word. And we've got tons of examples of that. I mean, during the campaign, there were supercuts of people making fun of him for his mispronunciations or malpropism, as it were. But these are actually medical signs of a serious cognitive decline and most likely of dementia. This just. Just since this last time I was on the show, you know, I was on the show a month ago, and I have to say, Joanne, I've actually been itching to get back on because every time he does something demented, I say, I can't wait to tell Joanne about this one.
- [90:00]
B
Well, the weird noise he made was he goes at the McDonald's, he says, I like the fish. I like it.
- [90:09]
A
Right?
- [90:10]
B
And you're like, what are you saying? And also, I like the fish. And then he makes a sort of jerky motion with his hand as he splutters out the noise. And it just felt like this is something different we're seeing, right?
- [90:24]
A
Exactly. This isn't something people do when they're tired. You know, we don't lose our ability to use language altogether when we're tired. We don't lose our ability to follow a thought. We don't. So it really. It would be really euphemizing, you know, or sane washing it to make it sound as if it's something within normal limits. Limits. It's not within normal limits. And one of the things that I'd like to point out is I believe his doctors who have examined him know that this is not within normal limits. And I think the information that has leaked out is enough for us to conclude that they know he has organic cognitive decline. Two pieces of information came out since the last time I was on the show. We knew he had this second presidential annual physical. They said they did advance imaging. Okay, well, Trump said not once, not twice, but three times that he took cognitive tests. Plural. Okay. So not just a screening exam like the moca. They gave him multiple tests. Okay. We do not give people multiple cognitive tests unless we suspect there's a serious cognitive problem. We also never, ever, ever in medicine give someone an MRI unless we suspect or need to rule out a serious problem. So we know they gave and he leaked out that the advanced imaging was an mri. So we know his doctors gave him multiple cognitive tests and an mri. They didn't say explicitly because of the brain, but we can certainly be sure they scanned his brain. If they're giving him neuropsychological battery. They're scanning his brain because if Donald Trump were just an ordinary patient and you saw these kinds of serious signs of dementia, a responsible doctor would give him both a neuropsychological battery and an mri. Of course, they're not telling us why they gave those tests. They're not telling us the results.
- [92:12]
B
Oh, dear. This is. This is. Well, this is nerve wracking. It's nerve wracking, isn't it? The other thing that we've noticed. And then I want to get into his sort of disinhibited behavior, the way that he names people. We just had him shouting, be quiet, piggy torture. I mean, that just seems so inappropriate for a president, even for one who likes to buck the trend and like to, as they call it, say it as he sees it.
- [92:47]
A
You know, he's so crude and so offensive that it's easy to kind of miss the fact that he's deteriorating. But. But when people have a personality disorder, as he does, as we know, he has severe malignant narcissism. And by the way, I also think he has hypomanic temperament. That's all his energy and why he's up all night, et cetera.
- [93:07]
B
Hypomanic energy. What is that exactly? Because, I mean.
- [93:11]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, I wrote a book about it called the Hypomanic Edge. Actually, there are people who are on the bipolar spectrum who don't meet criteria for bipolar disorder. They have hypomania. Hype will be in Greek for less than. So they don't have full blown mania, which is a serious psychotic disorder, will end you up in the psychiatric hospital. But they have energy, grandiosity, creativity, confidence, arrogance, impatience, irritability, actually. I think Bill Clinton actually also has the same temperament. I wrote a book about that, too, biography of Bill Clinton, analyzing him as having hypomania. That temperament combines with your character. I happen to believe that Bill Clinton has a basically very life giving or positive character. He wants to help people. So he drove his. Andy also has hypersexuality, but he drove his energy through those venues. Trump is essentially, has always been a malignant, malevolent person. This personality, these personality disorders are lifetime disorders. And in his case, it's actually an untreatable personality disorder. We believe that malignant narcissism is untreatable. When people develop dementia, they become the worst versions of themselves. They, whatever personality issues or problems they have, begin to deteriorate and they become even more crude, disorganized, aggressive, confused versions of that personality disorder. So, you know, he was always that way. But in this term, he started cursing a lot. That was a departure, right. And this kind of saying, quiet, piggy. It's so disinhibited and crude and other ways in which he's been disinhibited and impulsive. He was supposed to have trade negotiations with the Prime Minister of Canada. And then because Doug Ford, the Premier of Ottawa, posted some video of Ronald Reagan saying that he was against tariffs.
- [94:59]
B
Yeah, it was an ad campaign.
- [95:00]
A
It was an ad campaign. Yeah. And Donald Trump. And he was against tariffs. So fair to play to him. He put a video out that had Ronald Reagan talking about. He got so irritated by that video that he called off the trade negotiations. I mean, who does that? Who calls off a high level meeting with the head of state because you got pissed off about something you saw on social media over your corn flakes that morning? I mean, that's the kind of level of impulsivity we're talking about. And even with his tariffs, it's almost like the Queen of Hearts, you know, off with her head, you know, 200% tariffs. I saw something on social media that annoyed me.
- [95:33]
B
It, it's so interesting. And when you say that this is, you know, he's a malignant narcissist. This has been with him since childhood. I remember you saying, and frankly, I thought you were being hyperbolic when you said that. He, there was an incident of him throwing rocks at little children when he was growing up in Queens. And I thought, that can't possibly be true. And then, in fact, I found the anecdote in Maggie Haberman, the reporter from the New York Times Times book. I think the book is called Confidence, where she has the very anecdote you were talking about. So I apologize if I looked slightly quizzical when you said that, because I couldn't believe it would be true. But do these symptoms of dementia also get worse when you are under a period of real stress? Because I'm thinking about the. Absolutely right. So the impact of the Epstein files, which has been going on and on and on, and it's the story that no matter how he tries to change the narrative, it always comes back to the Epstein files. Is that something that will be gnawing away somewhere within his brain that just makes things worse?
- [96:47]
A
Absolutely. Well, first of all, that kind of stress would grind anyone down. But if you're vulnerable, the way he is is it's going to express itself even more dramatically. And also because he's a malignant narcissist, anything which doesn't affirm his grandiosity and his omnipotence, because his grandiosity has gotten to almost psychotic degrees at this point, is a mortal threat mobilizing, you know, an atomic reaction. So the fact that he's perpetually being bombarded by waves and waves, waves of these threats, it is going to take a toll and it is going to be disorganizing for him.
- [97:23]
B
Dr. Gardiner. John, can you just explain? I mean, Trump says he lost it when he was asked about his raspy voice, and he sort of exploded. And he appeared to have heard the word polyp, which wasn't in the question.
- [97:40]
A
I was shouting at people because they were stupid. Well, I think one of the reasons he exploded is because it touched a nerve. His explanation that he was yelling at somebody over tariffs or something to that effect, I think is nonsense. The reason I think it's nonsense is it's sort of like the argument that he has bruises on his hand because he was shaking so many hands. Wouldn't explain why he had bruises on his other hand. If he yelled and that's why he lost his voice, it wouldn't explain why we're seeing an overwhelming trend for his voice to become more raspy, but more sort of de. Energized, more kind of like he's slurring, slightly slurring his words. We're seeing a overall breakdown in his capacity to use language and words. He's having trouble spitting them out.
- [98:33]
B
Well, and I love your description of him as the mad queen in Alice in Wonderland. Because. Because yesterday you sawyou saw the six members of the military saying, please don't do anything that's illegal. And his reaction seems like the most overreaction of all time. Because he basically says, this is treasonous. It should be punished by death. And then the White House, poor, longstanding Caroline Leavitt has to then say, no, no, no, of course he doesn't really mean he's going to execute them.
- [99:02]
A
No. Off with their heads.
- [99:03]
B
Off with. Off with their heads. Off with their heads. It's literally the Mad Queen. He's turned into the Mad Queen from Alice in Wonderland. All right, so let's. There's a wonderful example that you found here of him being unable to keep his numbers straight. Do you want to read this paragraph? Because when you're so good at reading Trumpisms and we get lots of comments from people that particular. Particularly enjoy your iteration of Trump. I'm looking.
- [99:33]
A
We also got comments from people who didn't like it out of fairness. But.
- [99:37]
B
True, true. But why don't you read this line out and then analyze it for us or the paragraph?
- [99:44]
A
Well, and we're going to make America dream a word that two words that you didn't have. You didn't have those two words. Remember when Biden said, it's all about three words, the American dream. You don't want to ever get in that situation. Remember that? That was not good. It's all about three words, American dream. And we're going to make the American dream a word that two words that you didn't have. You didn't have those two words. Remember when Biden said, it's all about three words, the American dream. You don't want to ever get in that situation. Remember that? That was not good. It's all about three words, American dream. When I was in graduate, Graduate school, I remember they used to talk about, well, could people fake being a schizophrenic, for example, Right.
- [100:29]
B
Like Vinnie the Chin. Vinnie the Chin. When I arrived in New York, Vinnie the Chin was. Was. It would be spotted walking along a street very near. Near our apartment in a kind of bathrobe, and people would go, oh, he's. He's sad. It's sad. And obviously it was a defense for some hideous mob case that was going on. I can't remember what happened to him now. But anyway, you're right.
- [100:50]
C
Right.
- [100:51]
B
Please continue.
- [100:52]
A
They didn't fall for it. They didn't fall for it because everyone wears their pajamas now and all our kids are wearing pajamas outside. But no, but the thing is, the thought disorder is hard to simulate. In other words, it's hard to actually make up, even for a comedian to make up speech that is as disordered as the disordered Speech of someone with schizophrenia or dementia because it's so disjointed in a way we almost couldn't make up, if you know what I mean. It's hard to think that way. Obviously, you could say, oh, I have a hallucination, but to have your thoughts fragment in such a way. And I know there's some longer passages from that MacDonald speech that maybe we'll have a chance to get into, but you just see that one thought is not following another. It's just. He's just all over the place, veering from the topic. This kind of tangential thinking where he can't complete a thought, can't complete a sentence, stops in mid sentence, starts a new one, stops in the sentence, starts a new one, starts talking about something irrelevant, then has an association to that irrelevant thing, then starts making sounds. Boom, boom. You know, it's word salad. That's actually a technical term, believe it or not, word salad for thought disordered speech.
- [102:05]
B
We had on last week's podcast Mary Trust Trump, Donald Trump's niece. And she said when she looked at him, she could see the same symptoms that her grandfather, so his father, Fred Trump Sr. Exhibited when he was getting Alzheimer's. And part of it, she said, when you will remember the moment in the White House where someone collapses. Dr. Oz and RFK are talking about bringing down the price of our. Of GLP1s. A man collapses and is. Again, it's like an SNL skit. And of course, SNL did a skit on it, but there's a man in the background with his legs up in the air and people are sort of standing over him. And Donald Trump is standing facing forward behind the Resolute desk, just staring into space. And he looks utterly staring into space. And Mary Trump said she saw that look and thought, oh, it's my grandfather. Is that. Do people replicate their parents with illnesses and things?
- [103:09]
A
Well, of course, Alzheimer's is genetic, so he very much has it in his family. He may have Alzheimer's, he may have frontotemporal dementia. The symptoms. Actually, there's more than one kind of dementia, but his symptoms seem to point more towards frontotemporal dementia. But I'm glad you mentioned the look. You know, this may not sound like a very serious medical diagnostic criteria, but it really is. It's sort of like what Justice Brandeis said about pornography. I know it when I see it, right? You know, the average person knows that blank, disoriented deer in the headlights look when they see it. And if they've ever had a demented relative. They recognize it. We, you're right, we saw it in both of those situations. And frankly, we saw it from Joe Biden at the debate as well. That. That moment where the camera panned in on him and he had that blank, uncomprehending look. That was the moment we lost the republic.
- [104:09]
B
Well, and also he had it before that. I remember. Do you remember when he was standing in a line and I think it was a celebration for Juneteenth and Doug Emhoff, Kamala's husband, was standing next to him. And Biden looked utterly lost, utterly lost. It was as if he'd frozen and he was sort of moving to some music. Someone was singing. And you could see Doug Emhoff looking at him and thinking, what's going on? And you can see it in the reaction of other people around, too, can't you? Because people behave differently when. When someone is exhibiting the symptoms of something which even if they don't know what it is.
- [104:52]
A
And we saw that blank look again when he was wandering in Japan, that scene where he was with the prime minister and three times she had to physically guide him because he was just sort of staring and incomprehensible and like, not knowing what the next move was. And she had to. Directly over here. We're going to walk over here.
- [105:13]
B
Well, and you see her. And you see her look of shock. Right. Do you remember when she goes like this? Because he walks straight past the band.
- [105:21]
A
I was going to say, and then he walks straight past her about, about 20 soldiers down the line in the wrong direction. And then a soldier comes and guides him to where the other dignitaries are. So that blank look, again, I keep trying to point out, these are not new symptoms. They're recurring symptoms that keep getting worse and more frequent.
- [105:41]
B
So Donald Trump is very good, as we know, creating distractions. And he must know about his own word salad because obviously he's inside his head. And as you've pointed out, we've had 40 years of watching him in the public eye, so we know that he's gone from being a sophisticated speaker with perfect paragraphs playing for the camera. And he covers up this difficulty finishing a coherent thought by calling it the weave. Is that what. Is that what people, as they know things are beginning to become more difficult for them, do? Because you do hear of people going to great lengths to cover things up.
- [106:20]
A
Well, you know, of course, anyone who's going through this, first of all, they're often not aware of it and they're in some kind of Denial or just not comprehending. But when they do, they do sometimes cover it up or feel embarrassed. The thing about Trump, though, is because of his grandiosity, he thinks everything that he does, thinks, says is wonderful. The best ever. You know, you look at that stupid dance that he does, you know, he thinks it's such a cool dance. It's practically like watching Elaine dance on, you know, Seinfeld. It's a horrible dance. It's awkward, it's weird. You know, Bill Maher calls it the double jerk. But. But it's definitely weird.
- [106:59]
B
It's definitely weird. It's definitely weird. And nothing to do with the music that's playing either.
- [107:04]
A
No. And so. And also that's part of how his. You can see his psychomotor deterioration because he used to be able to actually dance, but now he can't dance, he can't walk, he has trouble with his balance. He's leaning over forward weirdly. He's got the wide base gait, so all kinds of psychomotor things. But he thinks anything he thinks, no matter how irrelevant or thought disordered, is brilliant. And so actually, when he's actually called out on these things, he double and triples down on them. So, like, for example, we went over the old example of, you know, Hannibal Lecter. You know, first he's saying that immigrants are coming from insane asylums. And then he goes, anyone seen Silence of the Lambs Complete. Oh, because that's a movie about insane asylums. That's a little loose association. He goes, oh, the late, great Hannibal Lecter. Nobody talks about him anymore. Well, first of all, he's not late. He never lived. Second of all, he's not great. He's a simple serial killer. But maybe to you, he seems great. Fair, actually.
- [107:56]
B
Fair.
- [107:56]
A
But the thing is, is that he then went on to talk about Hannibal Lecter like half a dozen more times, because what he does is he doubles and triples and quadruples down. So even though it was a completely thought disordered and crazy thing to talk about, then he'll just keep saying, oh, they don't want me to talk about Hannibal. Oh, they keep telling me not to talk about Hannibal Lecter, but I'm not gonna. So it's actually a very smart strategy. He takes the crazy thing he said and acts like he meant to say it and says it over and over again. Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal Schmector. I guess it's okay.
- [108:24]
B
So let's also talk about the moment where he is caught snoozing in the White House. Yes, Is that also a symptom? I mean, because, because he, I keep saying he does have a remarkable schedule. I mean, a lot of people wouldn't be able to keep up with that. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that he comes back from an Asia trip and he falls asleep.
- [108:44]
A
Look, a lot of people do that. I'm old, I fall asleep sometimes in the living room when people are around me talking. Bill Clinton was famous for falling asleep in public situations because he got so little sleep, you know, but ironically he could be asleep and then people thought he's passed out and he would start talking and it would be relevant to everything that had been said in the conversation. No one knew how he did that trick. But the thing is that there's falling asleep and there's falling asleep. If this were the only symptom, we would sort of maybe let it go. But it's consistent with this whole pattern that we're talking about. He is falling asleep involuntarily in public situations where it's not only inappropriate but essentially unheard of. We started talking about this on our show when he was in his trial, right? He fell asleep most days at his criminal trial. Now I've spoken about a dozen lawyers and I said to them, in your entire career, have you ever heard of any defendant in any case falling asleep at their trial? And they all said, I can't think of a single example. Okay? And he was falling asleep because, you know, you're at the, you're in the dock, you know what I mean? Everyone's staring at you, your life's all over.
- [109:49]
B
It's your future, right? You might end up going to jail. You would think that you would be sitting on the edge of your seat, right?
- [109:57]
A
And he fell asleep most days. He fell asleep at the 911 memorial and then he fell asleep in this Oval Office 20 minute press event. He was falling off and on asleep for about 20 minutes. And there's lots of pictures of it. So there's a pattern of this kind of inappropriate, random, involuntary sleeping. And again, it's. If you've ever had a parent or a relative that was demented, it's familiar to you. It's part of the overall pattern because the entire brain is deteriorating. So your command over all your functions is deteriorating.
- [110:28]
B
I'm very curious about this idea of the tangential thinking and the kind of random things that come out of his head. And in October on the USS Washington, he suddenly said, I never liked good looking people. I've never admitted that before, but you see, I'M allowed to. We won in the Supreme Court based on merit. You know about that right now everything in this country is based on merit. That is also one of those. Just like, what is he saying here? And what does he mean he doesn't like good looking people? His wives have all been very good looking.
- [111:03]
A
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. You and I could sit here all day and we wouldn't be able to figure out what he was trying to say. And first of all, you're right. Just saying I don't like good looking people is a little bizarre. Let's face it.
- [111:16]
B
It's crazy. And also the, the other thing that he's done, and I'm just remembering this, is heshe compared himself to both, I think Zoran Mamdani and definitely Kamala Harris and said, I'm better looking than they are. Which again, is a strange thing to say about another candidate, especially a female candidate.
- [111:38]
A
Well, he's a total narcissist. He's always been very preoccupied with appearances. And as you say, at some level he knows he's, you know, kind of a fat, ugly guy. So he, at some level he knows that. So he's envious of people who look better than him. Okay, but because he's disinhibited now, okay, with his dementia, right, he's saying the quiet part out loud. You know what I mean? So it's a crazy thing. It's not a crazy thing to think maybe, you know, I feel envious of people who look better than me because I'm a narcissist. But it's a crazy thing to say. But be that as it may, okay, so he said the crazy thing. But what's really crazy is that the next sentence has absolutely nothing to do with the first sentence. But I'm allowed to say that because I won in the Supreme Court. Wait, so you're allowed to say you don't like attractive people because what was it you won in the Supreme Court with the right to say I don't like attractive? I think that's in the First Amendment. I don't think you won that. In the Supreme Court we're all allowed to say whatever we want. And then you went, I won that. And in the Supreme Court based on merit. Wait, so it was based on merit, you won your case where in the Supreme Court you're allowed to talk about people who are attractive? Or you mean you won the case? The case was about merit. And he goes, because you know about that now. Everything in this country is based on merit. Wait, what case was based on merit? And now we can do what on merit based on the in other words, it's like a triple non sequitur. A does not equal B does not equal C. There's no connection between these three sentences.
- [113:02]
B
Dr. Gartner, we're going to take take a quick break for some sponsors.
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A
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C
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C
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B
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- [115:08]
B
And Dr. John Gartner and I are back talking about Donald Trump's mental health. Well, it's a little. I mean, can you imagine if one of your students had handed this in and this was part of an essay where they were writing like this? You'd be like, this makes no sense. Sense. Or you've done it on AI it almost feels as if he's giving mis instructions to AI that's going on in that. But you're right. I found the piece that you were talking about, I think, in the McDonald's summit, which was last week. Do you want to read some of it? It's the bit that begins like heroes. I want people to close their eyes unless they're driving and listen to this, because it is the most remarkable example of what you call word salad. But it's. He calls it the weave, and other people might just call it nonsense.
- [115:59]
A
Right. So I would challenge anyone to listen to this verbatim rendition and tell me what the heck I'm talking about.
- [116:06]
B
I know. We should have set this up as a quiz and asked people to answer questions after it, because it's like one of those unseen documents you get in a history exam where you have, you know, 45 minutes to read something and then ask questions. Yeah, I used to like this. I used to like this. Okay, okay, take it away, doctor. Dr. J.
- [116:27]
A
Like. Like heroes. They're American heroes. Who the heck wants to sit? You know, those ships are very big, but they're very small. When you ray up high very fast. When you're way up high, going very fast. And he said it was the greatest day of his life. And they told me something I didn't know, sir. We waited 22 years for this. Our predecessors and us would practice this run for 22 years. I didn't know that for 22 years we would have a practice. We do it three times a year because. Because they cancel when they heard we were coming. We were devastated. I see. I say, if I were a flyer and they cancel, I'd be extraordinarily happy. Well, we're canceled, so let's forget it. But we were devastated. So I said, this is something you really love. Yes, sir. We're so honored. It was the greatest day of our lives. I mean, it was really great. We just have incredible people in the sky. It's an amazing story. And they hit and they skedaddle. The word skedaddle. And the plane went like this. You know, when it drops bomb, it goes down very Steeply, because they get a better angle and, you know, more speed for the bomb, a very, very heavy bomb, and they go boom. As soon as those things, the one pilot, it. The first was it skedaddle and the thing turned on its side. I mean, it's unbelievable.
- [118:04]
B
So this is triggering a memory for me that as a young reporter at the Guardian newspaper in the uk, I was sent to hear Ronald Reagan give a speech. Now, this was after he'd been. After he'd stepped down from his second term. I was sitting in the audience. I was about 24, 25, and. And feeling very sort of out of place in the room because it was full of much older sort of men and lots of heavy political correspondents. And I'd been sent, I'm sure, because our political correspondent was away or off sick or something. So I get in the room, Ronald Reagan starts talking, and literally, I cannot understand what he is saying. It doesn't make sense what he is saying, but I don't think, oh, the former American president has. Has got Alzheimer's. I think I'm so stupid. I can't understand what he's saying. And I'm, you know, I'm dealing with my own insecurity in the room with a former American president under deadline to write something, and I'm like, I don't know what to write because I just can't understand it. And at the end of the speech, you know, we get a few moments to speak to him, and he just. He literally doesn't make sense. And again, I'm thinking, oh, my God, I'll never be. Be a proper political correspondent. I can't understand anything a politician says. They're so intelligent. And then they give us a copy of the speech. And I look at the copy of the speech, which makes total sense. And it's utterly different to everything he said and the headline writers on the paper. I write up the piece saying, you know, here's. Here's the speech. But this is not what he said. And we put on the headline, has the Gipper gone Gaga? Gaga being a term in the UK for someone who's lost their marbles. And two weeks later, he announced and made that amazing speech about going off into the good night. And, you know, it was just one of those moments where you can see a lot of people are probably. And now I'm sounding like Trump himself. I've diagnosed myself with malignant narcissism and dementia. Just listening to you on this podcast.
- [120:10]
A
Not at all.
- [120:10]
B
But you can see the impact it has. And this is my only point on other people around who are making enormous excuses for him and saying, well, it must be me that I don't understand him. So it must be very odd for the people around him trying to manage him. And anybody, as you say, who has a relative who's got dementia knows it's extremely complex, especially if they get angry, which sometimes they do. And certainly we've seen more outbursts from Donald Trump recently. We mentioned the piggy one when the ABC reporter asks him a question. When mbs, the crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is in the room, Trump just attacks her in a really inappropriate way. That only makes the situation worse.
- [120:51]
A
Well, you know, Ronald Reagan, as you say, he was the former president at that point. And that's really the important thing is that he was no longer in power. We have a situation here where he's still in his first year of his four year term and he's already gotten to that Ronald Reagan point. And that's what's so scary. I will trade with you one Ronald Reagan dementia story, as long as we're on the topic. The author, Edmund Morris, one of my favorite historical writers who wrote really a Pulitzer Prize winning book about Theodore Roosevelt, got a chance to write an authorized biography of Ronald Reagan. He gave, he told us this in a lecture when I was getting my math master's in creative nonfiction at Goucher. He said, so I show up and I have these interviews with Ronald Reagan. He goes, after three days, I realized I don't have anything, that I've been interviewing him for hours. There's no information here because he was so scattered. And so eventually what he did was he actually published a fictional book about Ronald Reagan called the Dutch. And people criticized him because he was a nonfiction writer. He said, I did that because I had nothing. I couldn't get any material from him. And one example he gave was when he showed up, he thought, well, maybe if I show up with him and a bunch of his advisors, you know, we can kind of get a conversation going, right? And so Ronald Reagan kept going, you know, these cookies, have you tried these cookies? These are the best chocolate chip cookies. I brought this guy from the White House to be my personal chef because these cookies are so amazing. And so they start passing around the cookies, right? And Ronald Reagan takes a cookie and everyone gets a cookie. And then you can see after everyone's had a cookie, there's like three cookies left, you know, and you can see Ronald Reagan is not really paying attention to the conversation. He's just watching that plate of Cookies, hoping it's going to come around again, right? And you can see people are just passing it. They don't want another cookie. They don't want, you know, there's like one cookie left at some point, and you can see he's just looking at that cookie. And then one very junior staffer who's not really paying attention, the thing comes by, he's like two people before him. He just grabs a cookie and shoves it in his mouth. And Ronald Reagan suddenly looks crestfallen, and he goes, I think that's it for today.
- [122:43]
B
It is remarkable how, because clearly he was showing symptoms in office, too, that it is remarkable how this happens. Do you think there should be an age restriction on the presidency?
- [122:55]
A
You know, I actually had a niece of mine ask me that recently at a family occasion, and I hadn't actually really given it much thought, but after talking to her about it, I do, I do. I think it would make, you know, people said we should have a cognitive exam or some kind of psychiatric exam. I don't think we're ever really going to do that. But a simple age restriction, yes, we would rule out some people who are very qualified, but we have a lot of qualified people. What we would do is rule out people who are potentially unfit simply because of age related cognitive and physical decline. So I think it would be reasonable. You know what, they do that in hospitals. You know, my grandfather was an ophthalmological surgeon, and at 65, they said to him, well, you know, Sam, you're gonna have to hang up your scalpel now. He refused. This is before there was such a thing as ageism. But he said, what's my success rate? And they said, well, your success rate is 90%. He goes, what's the average success rate in the hospital? 70%. When I fall below the average, then you can take away my scalpel. Well, five years later, they still took away his scalpel, but he bought himself another five years because he proved his competence. But the point is, even with medicine, at a certain point, it doesn't matter how good you are, we're just not going to let you cut people open anymore.
- [124:08]
B
Right. And would you trust Donald Trump to drive your children to kindergarten?
- [124:14]
A
I wouldn't. For a whole variety of reasons of what might happen to them.
- [124:19]
B
All right, well, Dr. Gardner, it's wonderful to have you on. I love the way that you are able to analyze for us and point out the various symptoms. I'm looking back on it. Psychomotor deterioration, language skills, and just the, the in disinhibited. Behavior, calling people names and just getting angry. And we can all see it. We can all see it. No matter if you're a supporter of him or not, it's hard not to feel worried for him with the droop in the mouth, as you say, the gait on his. With his leg, and the fact that he's now had these extra tests that he says he's passed with flying colors. Nobody could pass them better than he passed them.
- [125:04]
A
Nobody's had a great. As great an MRI as he's had.
- [125:08]
B
Well, Dr. Gartner, please come back soon. And we're relying on you to be our diagnostic eyes and ears as the President continues to be as flamboyant as he is.
- [125:23]
A
Thank you. I'm very grateful to be here and to be able to share that with the American people.
- [125:27]
B
Yep. Thank you very much. What should people do if they have relatives who are displaying similar. Similar symptoms? Where do people go, actually, to get help on something like this if you're actually dealing with this?
- [125:41]
A
Well, I don't. I don't have a lot to offer in terms of resources and websites, but I would say that if you saw your father or your grandfather or your uncle showing the kind of symptoms and behavior that Trump is showing, almost without doubt, you would be bringing him to a doctor. You would be bringing him to a doctor. That doctor would refer him to a neurologist and to a neuropsychologist. They would do cognitive tests. They would do PET scan imaging, MRI imaging, like they're doing with Trump.
- [126:10]
B
And I wonder, too, if it's part of the. The reason why Melania is so absent from the role of First Lady. And also Ivanka, his daughter, who was very present during the first Trump administration, has stepped back. I know. She says it's because politics is not for me, it's too cruel. But also dealing with an elderly father or an elderly husband who's displaying, you know, symptoms of dementia as you've describe them. It's very hard to live with someone like that.
- [126:41]
A
It is. Well, you know, my, my. We actually delayed this for a week because my uncle, who had dementia, passed away last week. My aunt took care of him for a whole year, and it was like, superhuman, a superhuman effort. So you're right. Now, who would want to be part of the nursing home at the White House?
- [126:57]
B
Well, probably they have work. Yeah, it's a lot of work. And the future of the free world is at stake. The future of the whole world is at stake. Well, I'm sorry to hear about your uncle. But thank you. Thank you for joining us today.
- [127:08]
A
Yes, thanks for having me.
- [127:14]
B
Across these conversations, one thing becomes painfully clear. Trump's behavior isn't just erratic, it's a warning cognitive decline layered on malignant narcissism doesn't just affect him, it affects all of us, our country and the world. From from psychomotor slips to paranoia fueled decisions, his fragility has profound implications for America's leadership and stability. Listening to these doctors, the question isn't only how far Trumpism will go, but how prepared are we to confront the reality of a leader whose mind may be failing while his influence endures. So big thank you to Sandra Clark ME thinks Travels with Carl Andrew Beaver Capinator Harry Clark Dawn McCarthy Daniel dog lover M. Griner Fulvia Orlando Herbie Andrew Mellor or Melor as Michael always says. Las Conde Bonz o' Val Love Francisco Andrea Hodel Bocock DC Sharon Shipley, Connie Rutherford, Karen White and Heidi Riley. Thank you to our production production team. Devon Rogerino, Anna Vaughn Erson and Jesse Millwood.
- [128:30]
A
Hannah Berner Are those the cozy Tommy John pajamas you're buying?
- [128:34]
C
Paige desorbo they are Tommy John and yes, I'm stocking up because they make the best holiday gifts.
- [128:42]
B
So generous.
- [128:43]
C
Well, I'm a generous girly, especially when it comes to me. So I'm grabbing the softest sleepwear, comfiest underwear and best fitting loungewear.
- [128:51]
A
So nothing for your bestie?
- [128:53]
C
Of course I'm getting my dad Tommy John. Oh, and you, of course.
- [128:57]
B
It's giving holiday gifting made easy.
- [128:59]
C
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- [129:12]
A
Hi, this is Joe from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly and earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure with the most advanced AI, automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether you're a startup going for your first SoC2 or ISO 27001 or a growing enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta makes it quick, easy and scalable. And I'm not just saying that because I work here. Get started@vanta.com despite wintry conditions and heavy traffic, the holidays have to go on. That's why Mercedes Benz SUVs come equipped with the latest safety technology to keep your festive plans on track. Discover the incredible offers for yourself at the Mercedes Benz Holiday Love Celebration. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast the Last Laugh and our Star Studded the Daily Beast podcast@thedailybeast.com podcasts if you enjoyed this.
- [130:08]
B
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