Psychologist Dr. John Gartner, formerly of Johns Hopkins University Medical School, is publicly breaking his silence in the midst of Donald Trump’s ever-growing inability to formulate complete sentences or speak clearly, not only to warn that the former president is showing clear signs of growing dementia and possibly early stages of Alzheimer’s but also to chastise his fellow psychology colleagues for not speaking out on this matter enough.
Gartner’s remarks came in a new interview with Salon’s Chauncey DeVega, in which he did not mince his words when he bluntly stated that Donald J. Trump is “showing gross signs of dementia” and other experts in the field are not doing their duty in pointing this out as Donald centers himself as the 2024 Republican frontrunner.
Gartner has been one of a few psychology experts who have long been speaking out and trying to warn the public about Donald Trump’s mental state, beginning with his bombshell 2017 book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Now, he’s warning the public that Trump is getting more and more dangerous by the day and with each step closer to the White House next year.
“There is also this focus on [President Joe] Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging,” he told the publication. “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.”
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When pressed by the interviewer for evidence of these claims, Gartner cited Donald’s apparent spiral into “phonemic paraphasias” during his recent public speeches, “something he described as “the substitution of non-words for words that sound similar—are not normally seen until a patient enters the moderate to severe stages of Alzheimer’s.”
Gartner goes on to thoroughly explain:
Some examples of Trump’s non-words: Beneficiaries becomes ‘benefishes.’ Renovations become ‘renoversh.’ Pivotal became ‘pivobal.’ Obama became ‘obamna.’ Missiles became ‘mishiz.’ Christmas became ‘Crissus.’ Bipartisan became ‘bipars.’ This is a fundamental breakdown in the ability to use language. If you were talking to your father on the phone and he did this you would think he is having a stroke. There is no healthy older person who speaks that way.”
The psychology expert further points to Trump’s long-running tendency to go off on unhinged, unrelated tangents during his speeches and interviews.
“He just becomes incomprehensible when he engages in free association word salad speech that is all over the place,” he said. “Again, that’s a sign of real brain damage, not being old, not being slow, not losing a step not being, but of severe cognitive deterioration.”
“What I don’t understand is why those clips aren’t replayed over and over in the mainstream media. Isn’t Trump babbling incoherently the most newsworthy part of his rally? You can be sure it would be if it were Biden.”
Read the full piece with Salon here.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
