We Can See Trump Is In Gross Decline: Psychologist | The Daily Beast Podcast

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. And this kind of saying quiet piggy, it's so disinhibited and crude.

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 U.S. And it turns out that Dr. Gartner thinks the snoozing is actually a symptom 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.

I left it back at the university.

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, 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.

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. 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 saw when he was walking towards to meet Putin, right, in Alaska.

That's right. Especially if you slow it down, if you slow the tape down, you can really see very prominently this wide-based gait where he's swinging his right leg like it's kind of a dead weight and sort of a semi-circle. This kind of psychomotor deterioration is one of the things that we see in dementia.

That feels like a very significant symptom, is it?

No, it's definitely a significant symptom and actually it's something that could be a symptom of either this 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 over-learned, 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 over-learned 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.

Right. Okay. So, he also had an event at a 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.

I like the fish. makes controversial statement, but now its president makes weird noise, but again, I want to point out this is part of a pattern, right? That 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. And then for 40 minutes, they played a playlist and he just…

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, on 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? Well no, it's actually not possible. Okay. 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 paraphagias, 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 mispronunciations or malpropisms, 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, Joanne, I'm actually been itching to get back on, because every time he does something

demented, I say, I can't wait to tell Joanna about this one. Well, the weird noise he made was he goes at the McDonald's. He says, I like the fish. I like it.

Right.

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, exactly. This isn't something people do when they're tired. We don't lose our ability to use language altogether when we're tired. We don't lose our ability to follow a thought. So it would be really euphemizing 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 I think 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 it 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.

Oh dear, 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, to a reporter. 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.

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 think he has hypomanic temperament. That's all his energy and why he's up all night, etc.

Hypermanic energy. What is that exactly? Because, I mean,

So, yeah, yeah, no, it's, I wrote a book about, 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, I'll 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, and he also has hypersexuality,

but he drove his energy through those venues. Trump is essentially, has always been, a malignant, malevolent person. 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. 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, it's, 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.

Yeah, it was an ad campaign.

Right, it was an ad campaign. Yeah, and Donald Trump, and he was against tariffs. Yeah, it was an ad campaign. Right, it was an ad campaign. Yeah, and Donald Trump, and he was against tariffs, so it's fair to play to him. He put a video out that had Ronald Reagan talking about it. 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 cornflakes 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, off with her head, 200% tariffs. I saw something on social media that annoyed me.

It's so interesting. And when you say that this is, 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, that there was an incidence 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 Bounder, 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 – Sure, 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?

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 mortal threat, mobilizing 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.

Dr. Gardner, 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.

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 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.

Well, and I love your description of him as the mad queen in Alice in Wonderland, because yesterday you 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.

No, off with their heads.

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 into 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 at-

Well, we also got comments from people

who didn't like it, out of fairness, but.

True, true. But why don't you read this line out and then analyze it for us, all the paragraph.

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 gonna make the American dream a word that, two words that you didn't have. You didn't have those two words. You 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 school, I remember they used to talk about, well, could people fake being a schizophrenic, for example.

Right, right. 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 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. They didn't fall for it.

They didn't fall for it, that's right.

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. It's like, 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 McDonald's 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 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 tactical term, believe it or not, word salad for thought disordered speech.

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 GLP-1s. A man collapses and 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. Do people replicate their parents with illnesses and things?

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. 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 moment where the camera panned in on him and he had that blank, uncomprehending look, that was the moment we lost the republic.

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 someone is exhibiting the symptoms of something,

which even if they don't know what it is.

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 direct, over here, we're gonna walk over here.

Well, and you see her look of shock, right? Do you remember when she goes like this because he walks straight past the band?

I was gonna say, and because he walks straight past the band? 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.

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 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.

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 it. 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 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.

It's definitely weird, It's definitely weird. It's definitely weird and nothing to do with the music that's playing either.

No, and so and also that's part of how 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 Hannibal Lecter. 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 his 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 serial killer, but maybe to you he seems great. Fair, actually fair. 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 going to. 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 find a Hannibal Lecter Hannibal Schmechter. I guess it's okay

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.

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. I start, we start 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 to 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. And he was falling asleep because you're in the dock.

You know what I mean? Everyone's staring at you, your lights are on.

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. And he fell asleep most days. He fell asleep at the 9-11 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, 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.

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.

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.

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 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. Well, he's a total narcissist. He's always been

very preoccupied with appearances. And as you say, at some level, he, he's a total narcissist. He's always been very preoccupied with appearances. And as you say, at some level he knows, he's kind of a fat, ugly guy. So at some level he knows that. So he's envious of people who look better than him. 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. 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? What, 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. 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, sequitur. A does not equal B does not equal C. There's no connection between these three sentences. Well it's a little bit, 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 misinstructions 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 weave, and other people might just call it nonsense.

Right, so I would challenge anyone to listen to this verbatim rendition and tell me what the heck I'm talking about.

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.

I used to hate those.

Yeah.

I used to like those. I used to like those. Okay. Okay. Take it away, Dr. J.

Okay. 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'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 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'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.

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 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've 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 got Alzheimer's. I think I'm so stupid, I can't understand what he's saying.

And 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,

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. 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.

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 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,

it called The Dutch, and people criticized him because he was a non-fiction 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, we can kind of get a conversation going. 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 gonna come around again, right?

And you can see people are just passing it, they don't want another cookie, they don't want another, 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 to the thing comes by. He's like two people before 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.

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?

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 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 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 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, is even with medicine, at a certain point, it doesn't matter how good you are, Trump to drive your children to kindergarten?

I wouldn't for a whole variety of reasons of what might happen to them.

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 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. Nobody's had a great as great an MRI as he's had.

Well Dr. Gartner please come back. And we're relying on you to be our diagnostic eyes and ears as the president continues to be as flamboyant as he is.

Thank you. I'm very grateful to be here and to be able to share that with the American people.

Yeah. Thank you very much. What should people do if they have relatives who are displaying similar symptoms? Where do people go actually to get help on something like this, if you're actually dealing with this?

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, 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.

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. It is well, you know my

We actually delayed this for a week as my uncle who had dementia passed away last week My aunt took care of him for a whole year and it was like super human a superhuman effort So you're right now who would want to be part of the nursing home at the White House?

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.

Yes, thanks for having me.

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.

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