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The Daily Beast Podcast

Trump Mental Decline Is Accelerating: Psychologist

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

News & Politics

4.6 • 7.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Psychologist Dr. John Gartner joins Joanna Coles to dissect Donald Trump’s latest White House speech and explain why its manic pace, rigid teleprompter discipline, and sheer velocity alarm mental health professionals. Drawing on decades of clinical experience, Gartner argues that Trump’s hypomania, malignant narcissism, and advancing dementia are no longer abstract theories but visible patterns—accelerating, measurable, and increasingly unmanaged. They examine why repeated cognitive tests suggest monitoring decline rather than routine screening, and how sleepless nights, impulsive decisions, and compulsive posting point to a leader edging toward a cognitive cliff.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

You know, he kind of gave the game away again, as he often does. He said, you know, the mocha, that, that, over that screen, I've passed it now three times in front of a whole bunch of doctors. Well, you could maybe justify giving someone the mocha once just on their age, just as part of a physical. If you're giving it to him three times, that means you're not assessing dementia.

0:22.0

That means you're monitoring dementia.

0:24.6

Because if you keep feeling like, no, he's still got the symptoms.

0:27.8

We've got to see how bad he's doing now.

0:30.0

Oh, we've got to check again, see how bad he's doing now.

0:32.3

I think they're giving him cognitive tests and MRIs every six months to monitor the progress of his dementia

0:40.2

and or strokes.

0:43.8

I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast.

0:46.8

And today we're going to get into analyzing what is going on with Donald Trump's mental health.

0:54.9

Let's think about this.

0:56.4

We've got the angry Santa speech hastily called, even interrupting the finale of Survivor.

1:03.0

We've got the crazy alcoholics personality that Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, was describing.

1:10.4

We've got the manic truce socialing in the middle of the night.

1:15.1

Dozens of truth social posts, including the horrifying one on Rob Reiner.

1:20.4

We've got the renaming of the Trump Kennedy Center, the grandiosity of that gesture, his own Christmas

1:30.4

gift to himself, who better to analyze what this actually says about Donald Trump and how he's

1:37.9

getting on in the White House right now than Dr. John Gartner. Dr. Gartner, for those of you

1:43.9

who've watched the podcast before, will know he is a clinical

1:47.0

psychologist.

1:48.4

He was 28 years as an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins.

1:52.9

He's been in private practice for a long time.

1:56.1

And he has been watching the 40 years of Donald Trump performing in plain sight on all of our

...

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