Why Trump’s Delusions Are So Dangerous: Therapist

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

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4.6 • 8.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/BEAST to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. #ad Joanna Coles welcomes back psychologist Dr. John Gartner as the conversation takes a chilling turn, with Dr. Gartner arguing that Donald Trump has crossed from grandiosity into full-blown psychosis, pointing to a barrage of erratic late-night posts—including AI images portraying himself as Jesus—as evidence of a manic, delusional spiral unfolding in real time. Dr. Gartner lays out a stark clinical case, connecting sleep disruption, cognitive decline, and escalating “messianic” fantasies to dangerous decision-making on the global stage, from impulsive foreign policy moves to a growing appetite for conflict. What emerges is a portrait of a leader increasingly detached from reality, alienating his own base while doubling down on grandiose claims, as insiders scramble, critics demand cognitive testing, and the stakes climb toward something far more consequential than political controversy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	His grandiosity is so extreme, right, that not only does he want to be the Pope and Jesus and the President of Venezuela and the Mullah of Iran.
0:10.0	And, you know, he wants to be all of these things and he wants to and he wants the world to worship him and he wants to erect massive monuments to praise himself.
0:19.0	So this obscene arc to Trump, this obscene ballroom, the ways in
0:24.3	which he's been pressuring various states to rename their airports and their train stations
0:29.2	and their tunnels after him, okay, that he's put his face on a coin, that he wants to put
0:34.7	his name on the money. He wants the world to worship him as a God.
0:42.7	I'm Joanna Coles. This is The Daily Beast podcast.
0:45.7	And, well, I think we saw a new level this week of Trump's sense of self.
0:52.1	And that sense of self includes him being a deity.
0:56.1	Well, who better to understand what this level of, well, seeing himself as a deity,
1:02.6	actually means in terms of his mental health, especially during a week when Congressman
1:08.9	Jamie Raskin from Maryland has demanded that the president
1:13.3	sit for a series of cognitive tests to pressure test the 25th Amendment. Who better to diagnose
1:22.2	the president's sense of self as a deity than one of our favorite guests, Dr. John Gartner. He's a psychologist
1:31.1	and he, well, he understands mental illness. He understands grandiosity. He's argued on this
1:39.8	podcast before that Donald Trump is showing the same stages of dementia that his father did when he was around the same age.
1:49.0	And earlier this week we heard Mary Trump argued the same.
1:53.0	But just before we go to Dr. John, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast.
1:58.0	We're trying to get to 700,000 by the end of maybe the month with your help.
2:04.9	And the reason that we can bring you fearless conversations like this, where we really do ask
2:09.9	questions that lots of other people are not asking is because we are independent media and
2:15.2	we really appreciate your support. Dr. John, let's get into it.
	...

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