Why Ailing Trump Is Paranoid About Mental Decline

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

News & Politics

4.6 • 7.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2026

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. John Gartner joins Joanna Coles to explain why Donald Trump’s worsening paranoia, erratic behavior, and visible health problems point to a dangerous mix of malignant narcissism and possible frontotemporal dementia. Drawing on clinical practice and the shift toward observable diagnostic criteria, Gartner argues that Trump’s public performances reveal more than enough: the “25th time” fixation, the aspirin theories, the right-side weakness, and the drifting, rambling speeches. The conversation ends with a stark question: What happens when a country is governed by a man whose greatest vulnerability is his own deteriorating mind?

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0:00.0	Donald Trump was paranoid before he developed dementia.
0:21.6	Okay, that's the nature of malignant narcissism. Paranoia is one of the core component. That's why when you hear him speaking in these very articulate talks in the 1980s, he's like, ah, you know, China, they're just trying to screw us. They want to manipulate, blah, blah, blah. So it's still we're being screwed, right? It's still the paranoia, but at least the sentences were comprehensible.
0:27.5	Now, as he's starting to deteriorate, one of the signs of dementia is people becoming more paranoid.
0:32.9	The paranoia is becoming more grotesque, more primitive.
0:36.2	I'm Joanna Coles.
0:43.1	This is the Daily Beast podcast. Happy new year. And what a year 2026 is going to be.
0:48.9	We've got the midterms looming and everything we're thinking about we're going to, well, everybody we're talking about,
0:53.1	we're going to be looking at it through the lens of the midterms, I think, as we go ahead. But who better to talk to as we kick off January 2026 than Dr. John Gartner,
1:00.5	who spent a lot of time observing Donald Trump and has all sorts of important thoughts,
1:07.2	bringing his 40 years as a clinical psychologist to bear on what is going on with the president's
1:14.0	mental health and how is it impacting the rest of us? And for those of you who haven't seen it,
1:19.7	the Wall Street Journal did a long piece about Donald Trump's health this week. And when they
1:25.3	rang up the White House for fact-checking questions,
1:28.2	the president himself came on the line. And Dr. John will analyze for us the president's response.
1:35.9	So no time to waste. Let's get into it.
1:41.0	What better way to start the New Year than with Dr. John Gartner. Dr. John, you are one of our
1:47.3	favourite guests. Our comments are full of excitement for what you have to say. I've even got my
1:56.9	sole tweed jacket on as a note to your academic credentials. I know you are super swanky
2:04.3	at Johns Hopkins University. I appreciate you're making me feel comfortable. Well, I'm trying. I don't
2:09.0	have elbow patches, but I do bring questions. And one of the questions, of course, that lots of
2:16.5	people have that I would like you to
2:18.5	address is can Dr John Gartner actually form a genuine diagnosis about what's going on with
	...

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