The word psychosis is not an insult. It is a clinical term with a specific definition, and a former Johns Hopkins University professor is now applying it to the sitting president of the United States.
Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and psychotherapist who spent nearly three decades at Johns Hopkins, has been raising concerns about Trump’s mental fitness since 2017. What changed in 2026 was the language itself.
In April, Gartner told The Daily Beast Podcast that Trump had been “showing signs of frontotemporal dementia since 2019” and that his “rate of deterioration is accelerating” with “disturbing” consequences for the world. By May, the assessment had grown even sharper.
The psychosis argument centers on what Gartner describes as magical thinking. He pointed directly to Trump’s reported belief that Diet Coke kills cancer cells, a claim first revealed by Dr. Mehmet Oz on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast in April. “It’s something that we associate with psychosis,” Gartner said. “Anything that occurs to him — any stray, crazy thought — is true.”
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Gartner also pointed to a series of Truth Social posts, including an AI-generated image of Trump depicted as Jesus Christ, arguing that the grandiosity had crossed into delusional territory.
“First of all, he’s up at all hours of the night, all night… posting all of these lies and crazy stuff,” Gartner said on the podcast. “The pace of it — that someone would be up all night tweeting — in and of itself is a clinical indicator of some kind of either mania or sundowning, and I think in his case it’s actually a combination of both.”
Gartner has also tried to separate what he sees from ordinary aging. He argued that “his clinical condition matters more than his age,” explaining that normal aging involves standard cognitive decline while Trump’s behavior reflects “signs of dementia,” which he described as “very, very different.”
On the question of whether medical credentials are even necessary to notice the behavior, Gartner argued that ordinary people can already see the signs themselves. “Anybody who has eyes, ears, and a brain… and hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid or been bitten by a MAGA zombie, can see for themselves that this person is transparently mentally ill and cognitively deteriorating,” he said.
Gartner is not alone in making public warnings. In April 2026, thirty-six physicians, including neurologists, forensic psychiatrists, and clinicians from Harvard, Columbia, and Tufts, submitted a formal statement to the U.S. Senate calling for Trump’s removal under the 25th Amendment on medical grounds. Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed entered the statement into the Congressional Record.
The counterargument, however, remains substantial. Trump scored 30 out of 30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment in both 2018 and April 2025, and his physician has repeatedly declared him in excellent health following Walter Reed visits.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
