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- [00:00]
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- [01:33]
Dr. John Gartner
When people develop dementia, they become the worst versions of themselves. Whatever personality issues or problems they have begin to deteriorate and they become even more crude, disorganized, aggressive, confused versions of that personality disorder. And this kind of saying, quiet, piggy. It's so disinhibited and crude.
- [01:58]
Joanna Coles
Joanna.
- [01:59]
I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Bees podcast. And today we have a treat in store for you because we are back with Dr. John Gartner. You will remember, he's the clinical psychologist. He's a former professor for 28 years at Johns Hopkins University. He's an author. And it's almost impossible, I think, to find anybody who breaks down Trump's behavior and explains it from the point of view of a psychologist explaining what he thinks is going on inside Donald Trump's brain. So no time to waste. It's been a spectacularly busy last month for the President. I sometimes wonder if we don't give him enough credit Given his extraordinary travel schedule and his energy and I mean, you see him snoozing in the White House in his chair behind the desk, and you wonder, well, could I keep up with that schedule? But then again, we're not elected as president of the US and it turns out that Dr. Gartner thinks the snoozing is actually a of something quite grave. So no time to waste. Let's get into it. Okay. So, 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 just turned up in a shirt.
- [03:21]
Dr. John Gartner
I left it back at the university.
- [03:22]
Joanna Coles
Typical. I'm playing a pseudo academic and the real academic has rolled up in his shirt sleeves. So, Dr. John, since we last spoke to you, 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.
- [03:57]
Dr. John Gartner
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.
- [04:14]
Joanna Coles
Right.
- [04:14]
Dr. John Gartner
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.
- [04:21]
Joanna Coles
Saw when he was walking towards to meet Putin. Right. In Alaska.
- [04:27]
Dr. John Gartner
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. 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.
- [04:46]
Joanna Coles
Dementia that feels like a very significant symptom. Is it?
- [04:50]
Dr. John Gartner
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 over learned 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 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.
- [06:03]
Joanna Coles
Right. Okay. So he also had an event at McDonald's where he made a weird noise. And I don't. 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.
- [06:36]
I like the fish.
- [06:40]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, you know. Yeah, he made that weird noise. And I think actually there was a Daily Beast headline, president makes weird noise.
- [06:48]
Joanna Coles
That sounds like us.
- [06:49]
Jerry Insurance Ad Voice
Yeah.
- [06:49]
Dr. John Gartner
And I thought about, boy, how things have fallen. You know, you would normally see headline, a President makes controversial statement, but now it's President makes weird noise. But again, I want to point out this is part of. A. Part of a pattern, right? That, 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 they just.
- [07:29]
Joanna Coles
Okay, so Dr. Gartner, a lot of people, myself included, are probably thinking, oh, Lord, I lose words from time to time. Especially. 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?
- [08:03]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, no, that it's actually not possible. No matter how tired you or I might be, no matter how drunk we might be, no matter how stressed we might be, no matter how 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 super cuts of people making fun of him for his mispronunciation or malpropism, as it were. But these are actually medical signs of a serious cognitive decline and most likely of dementia. This 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, Joanna, 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.
- [08:57]
Joanna Coles
Well, the weird noise he made was, he goes at the McDonald's, he says, I like the fish. I like it.
- [09:06]
Dr. John Gartner
Right?
- [09:07]
Joanna Coles
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?
- [09:21]
Dr. John Gartner
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. 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 advanced imaging. Okay, well, Trump said not once, not twice, but three times that he had 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 was 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.
- [11:09]
Joanna Coles
Oh, dear. This isthis iswell. 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 Torscher. 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.
- [11:41]
Dr. John Gartner
Quiet, quiet.
- [11:42]
Jerry Insurance Ad Voice
Begin.
- [11:44]
Dr. John Gartner
You know, he's so crude and so offensive that it's easy to kind of miss the fact that he's deteriorating. 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.
- [12:03]
Joanna Coles
Hypomanic energy. What is that exactly? Because, I mean, so.
- [12:08]
Dr. John Gartner
Yeah, yeah, no, it's. 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, hypo being 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 it as having hypomania. That temperament combines with your character. Now, 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. And he 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.
- [13:55]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, it was an ad campaign.
- [13:57]
Dr. John Gartner
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 up 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.
- [14:30]
Joanna Coles
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 book. I think the book is called Confidence man, 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. 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?
- [15:44]
Dr. John Gartner
Absolutely. Well, first of all, that kind of stress would grind anyone down. But if you're vulnerable the way he 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. A mortal threat mobilizing, you know, an atomic reaction. So the fact that he's perpetually being bombarded by waves and waves of these threats, it is going to take a toll, and it is going to be disorganizing for him.
- [16:20]
Joanna Coles
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.
- [16:37]
I was shouting at people because they were stupid.
- [16:41]
Dr. John Gartner
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 overall 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.
- [17:30]
Joanna Coles
Well, and I love your description of him as the Mad Queen in Alice in Wonderland, 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.
- [17:58]
Dr. John Gartner
No. Off with their heads.
- [18:00]
Joanna Coles
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, he's turned to the mad queen. 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 particularly enjoy your iteration of Trump, I'm looking for people who.
- [18:32]
Dr. John Gartner
Didn'T like it out of fairness. But.
- [18:34]
Joanna Coles
True, true, but. But why don't you read this line out and then analyze it for us or the paragraph.
- [18:41]
Dr. John Gartner
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.
- [18:59]
Joanna Coles
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.
- [19:20]
Dr. John Gartner
When I was in graduate school, I remember they used to talk about, well, could people fake being a schizophrenic, for example, Right?
- [19:26]
Joanna Coles
Like Vinny the Chin. Vinny 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 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. Please continue.
- [19:48]
Dr. John Gartner
They didn't fall for it. They didn't fall for it because everyone wears their pajamas now. 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. Hallucination. But to have your thoughts fragment in such a way. And I know there's some longer passages from that McDonald 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 in this kind of tangential thinking where he can't complete a thought, can't complete a sentence, stops in the sentence, starts a new one, stops an incentive, 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.
- [21:02]
Joanna Coles
We had on last week's podcast Mary 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 GLP1s. A man collapses and is. 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 lost staring into space. And Mary Trump said she saw that look and thought, oh, it's my grandfather. Is that. Do people replicate their power with illnesses and things?
- [22:06]
Dr. John Gartner
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.
- [22:34]
Joanna Coles
Right.
- [22:35]
Dr. John Gartner
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. 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.
- [23:05]
Joanna Coles
Well, 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 someone is exhibiting the symptoms of something which even if they don't know what it is.
- [23:49]
Dr. John Gartner
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.
- [24:10]
Joanna Coles
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.
- [24:18]
Dr. John Gartner
I was going to say. And then he walks straight past her, 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.
- [24:38]
Joanna Coles
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- [27:17]
Joanna Coles
And I'm back with Dr. John Gartner. 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, he covers up this difficulty finishing a coherent thought by calling it the weave. 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.
- [27:58]
Dr. John Gartner
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 it's definitely weird.
- [28:37]
Joanna Coles
It's definitely weird. It's definitely weird. And nothing to do with the music that's playing either.
- [28:42]
Dr. John Gartner
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. It's a little loose association. They go, 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 serial killer. But maybe to you, he seems great. Fair, actually.
- [29:33]
Joanna Coles
Fair.
- [29:34]
Dr. John Gartner
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 to Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal Schmector. I guess it's okay.
- [30:02]
Joanna Coles
So let's also talk about the moment where he is caught snoozing in the White House.
- [30:09]
Dr. John Gartner
Yes.
- [30:09]
Joanna Coles
Is that also a symptom? I mean, because 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.
- [30:22]
Dr. John Gartner
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 that, you're in the dock, you know what I mean? Everyone's staring at you, your lights are you.
- [31:27]
Joanna Coles
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?
- [31:35]
Dr. John Gartner
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. Eventually 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.
- [32:06]
Joanna Coles
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 does. He doesn't like good looking people. His wives have all been very good looking.
- [32:41]
Dr. John Gartner
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.
- [32:54]
Joanna Coles
It's crazy. And also the other thing that he's done, and I'm just remembering this, is he's. He compared himself to. 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.
- [33:16]
Dr. John Gartner
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.
- [33:31]
Joanna Coles
Him.
- [33:31]
Dr. John Gartner
Okay, but because he's disinhibited now 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 wanted? The Supreme Court with the right to say, I don't like attractive people? 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 want to say, I won that 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.
- [34:40]
Joanna Coles
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. Or you've done it on AI. It almost feels as if he's giving mis instructions to AI that's going on in there. 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 he calls it the weed, and other people might just call it nonsense.
- [35:25]
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- [35:26]
Dr. John Gartner
So I would challenge anyone to listen to this verbatim rendition and tell me what the heck I'm talking about.
- [35:32]
Joanna Coles
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.
- [35:54]
Dr. John Gartner
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. And when you. When you're way up high, going very fast. And he said it was the greatest day of his life.
- [36:15]
Joanna Coles
Life.
- [36:16]
Dr. John Gartner
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 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 the 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, the first was it skedaddle and the thing turned on its side. I mean, it's unbelievable.
- [37:31]
Joanna Coles
And let's take a quick message from our spot sponsors.
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- [39:38]
Joanna Coles
And I'm back with Dr. John Gartner who is diagnosing President Trump with various symptoms of dementia. So this is triggering a memory for me that as a young reporter at the Guardian newspaper in the uk, I was 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 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 correspondence. 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. 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 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 will never 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 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, not at all. 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. 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 attack, attacks her in a really inappropriate way. That only makes the situation worse.
- [42:33]
Dr. John Gartner
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 told us this in a lecture when I was getting my 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 realize I don't have anything, that I've been interviewing him for hours. There's no information here because he was so scattered, shattered. 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's 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 to, you know, and there's like one cookie left at some point, and you can see he's just looking at that cookie. And then once 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.
- [44:25]
Joanna Coles
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.
- [44:38]
Dr. John Gartner
You know, I actually had a niece of mine asked 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 things simpler. 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 out people who are potentially unfit simply because of age related cognitive and physical decline. So I think it would be reasonable. You know, 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 going to 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, you. 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.
- [45:50]
Joanna Coles
Right. And would you trust Donald Trump to drive your children to kindergarten?
- [45:56]
Dr. John Gartner
I wouldn't for a whole variety of reasons of what might happen to them.
- [46:02]
Joanna Coles
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 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. He says he's passed with flying colors. Nobody could pass them better than he passed them.
- [46:47]
Dr. John Gartner
Nobody's had a great. As great an MRI as he's had.
- [46:50]
Joanna Coles
Well, Dr. Gartner, please come back, 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.
- [47:05]
Dr. John Gartner
Thank you. I'm very grateful to be here and to be able to share that with the American people.
- [47:10]
Joanna Coles
Yeah. Thank you very much. What should people do if they have relatives who are displaying similar, similar. Where do people go actually, to get help on something like this if you're actually dealing with this?
- [47:24]
Dr. John Gartner
Well, 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.
- [47:52]
Joanna Coles
And I wonder, too, if it's part of 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 described them. It's very hard to live with someone like that.
- [48:24]
Dr. John Gartner
It is. Well, you know, 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 super, a superhuman effort. So you're right. Now, who would want to be part of the nursing home at the White House?
- [48:39]
Joanna Coles
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 for joining us today.
- [48:50]
Dr. John Gartner
Yes, thanks for having me.
- [48:56]
Joanna Coles
I love talking to Dr. John Gartner because I think he just hones in on specific examples and gives specific explanations for why the president is like he is. If you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to leave us a comment on YouTube. Please subscribe to the podcast and to the Daily Beast. We're independent media, so we appreciate and we need your support. I know you will. We all must be beast. And a special shout out to our Beast tier members of the Daily Beast community, which is very easy to join. Join you just click the link below. So Herbie, Andrew Mellor, Fulvia, Orlando Laz, Conde, Sandra Clark, Karen White Bocock, D.C. val Love, Francisco Bonzo, M. Griner, Andrea Hodel, Sharon Shipley, Connie Rutherford and Heidi Riley. Thank you very much and thank you to our team, Devon Rogerino, Anna Von Erson and our editor, Jesse Millwood.
- [49:58]
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- [51:48]
Dr. John Gartner
Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast the Last Laugh and our Star Studded the Daily Beast podcast@thedailybeast.com podcasts if you enjoyed this.
- [51:57]
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