Ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, psychologists have sounded the alarm about Donald Trump ‘s apparently worsening mental state. Dr. Harry Segal, a clinical psychologist and senior lecturer at Cornell University, and Dr. John Gartner, a former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, have launched a podcast called Shrinking Trump . Their aim? To publicly analyze what they view as Trump’s ‘rapid mental deterioration.’ In their pilot episode on 10 May, the duo didn’t mince words. “We are going to be documenting his cognitive deterioration,” Gartner stated bluntly.
1/9 Join Dr. John Gartner and co-host Dr. Harry Segal for the first episode of “Shrinking Trump,” a weekly show dedicated to analyzing Trump from a psychological point of view. We discuss Trump’s recent signs of dementia from his Gettysburg Address to his falling asleep in court.… pic.twitter.com/ZEvSF11jfL
— Duty To Warn 🔉 (@duty2warn) May 12, 2024
Gartner continued, “I always say to people— Look at Donald Trump right now because that’s the best Donald Trump you’re ever going to see because dementia is a deteriorating illness and his rate of deterioration is accelerating.” He argued that mainstream media has largely avoided scrutinizing Trump’s mental soundness and wondered aloud, “I don’t know what it will take for the mainstream press to ask the question, ‘Is there something wrong with Trump’s brain?'” He opined, “I think, even if he was caught wandering down Fifth Avenue in his pajamas, they wouldn’t ask the question,” as per Raw Story .
Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, tells Salon’s Chauncey DeVega that he thinks former President Donald Trump’s mental state is declining to the point where he’s experiencing a “fundamental breakdown” in his…
— 𓂀 𝕋𝔼𝔸ℍ 𓂀 (@TeahCartel) May 5, 2024
As the segment progressed, Segal asserted that the former President had long exhibited traits of narcissistic personality disorder. “It’s a disorder that doesn’t get better,” Segal added. “It gets worse when there’s less structure.” He ominously predicted that if Trump returns to office, “We’re going to see… an interaction between the cognitive decline and the personality disorder, both of which are severe diagnoses for anybody, and this is for somebody who never should have been in power in the first place.”
Harry Segal, clinical psychologist and senior lecturer in the Psychology Department at Cornell University, and John Gartner, a psychologist and former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, hosted a podcast on Saturday where they discussed the urgent need…
— Rich Meyer (@richmeyer) May 12, 2024
Gartner and Segal’s concerns, however, seem to contradict recent polls, which suggest that more Americans currently question President Joe Biden ‘s mental acuity than Trump’s. A February NBC News survey found that 62% of voters had ‘major concerns’ about Biden’s ‘mental and physical health,’ while only 34% held the same notions about Trump.
With Trump already 77 and Biden 81, neurological evaluations may become an unavoidable issue for either man seeking a second White House term. Trump has made several significant verbal stumbles, which prompted Segal to deem the linguistic errors as potentially concerning signs of ‘phonemic paraphasia,’ i.e., the swapping of similar-sounding words in a manner that can preface dementia.
Watch the clip and laugh if you must. In reality, it’s terrifying. As my colleague, Dr. John Gartner, renowned psychologist and former Johns Hopkins Medical School Professor put it, “Gettysburg wasn’t a rambling speech, it was demented.”
— Duty To Warn 🔉 (@duty2warn) May 7, 2024
By contrast, he characterized Biden’s gaffes as typical senior moments of forgetting names or mixing up details, Daily Mail reported. Speaking to Salon , Gartner also explained, “Biden’s gaffes…are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.”