Dementia Don

One of the dementia experts that I've consulted with is convinced he has frontotemporal dementia because of this symptom alone, which is it's called a wide based gait.

But if you look at his right leg, sometimes he just swings it in like a dead weight in a semicircle.

I'm Joanna Coles, this is the Daily Beast podcast, and thank you for all your thousands of comments over the last couple of weeks.

They really mean a lot to me and they mean a lot to Michael Wolff, my partner on Inside Trump's Ahead.

So today we have a fascinating conversation with Doctor John Gartner, who says Trump is clearly showing

signs of dementia, not least because we've been able to track this man

for the last 40 years, both on television and on digital media. So we have a very accurate portrayal of his demise in Plain Sight.

I found this conversation absolutely enlightening. I very much hope you do too. And also I strongly recommend his podcast Shrinking Trump

that he does with his partner, or actually his best friend. He was telling us from school, doctor Harry Siegel.

The two of them are trained psychotherapists. Doctor Gartner got his first degree from Princeton

and then his PhD from Amherst, and was for 28 years a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

So I thought I might not be able to understand all his medical terms. But in fact, I sort of got my head around most of it.

And do feel free to send us questions because I'm convinced we'll be having him back.

I found his point of view on Donald Trump completely riveting. Let's get into it.

Trump's Symptoms Of Dementia

Doctor Gartner is in the House. We are extremely excited to have you here.

You are a man who has diagnosed President Trump as having dementia.

John, what are the symptoms of dementia that you can see in our president?

So the first most important thing to realize about a diagnosis like dementia is we're really evaluating someone against their own baseline.

So we have to see a major deterioration in functioning, in language and thinking and psychomotor

performance and impulse control and a whole variety of areas. So what a lot of people don't realize is that Donald

Trump used to be a very articulate person. He used to speak, with a high level of vocabulary in very polished paragraphs.

Now, what we see is not only has his vocabulary gone down, but his ability to actually put together sometimes and sometimes he's very articulate, right.

Because with dementia, people go in and out of, functioning. But there are times when he's really unable to complete a thought,

actually, sometimes is unable to complete a word. It's called a phonemic paraphernalia. There's dozens of examples there.

Online has sort of humorous bits, you know, where he mispronounces words, but really, says words that are not actually English words

that have a fragment of an English word and like saying Mrs. instead of missiles or Christmas instead of Christmas.

This is something that only people who have a organic brain disease do.

It's not something people just do when they're tired or when they get old. So one of the things that we see is this great deterioration

in his language, in his ability to put together sentences and words, but also he's starting to show what we call,

this kind of random sort of thought where he really free associates and tangential speech,

where he's talking about one thing, and then he starts talking about another thing, and then another thing. For example, the Hannibal Lecter example is one I like to use.

You know, he was saying he was lying and saying that they're sending all these immigrants from insane asylums. Right?

And then he goes, silence of the lambs. Anyone seen silence of the lambs? While silence of the lambs is a movie about insane asylum. So.

All right, so now we've moved from immigrants to has anyone seen this movie? And then he goes, the late, great Hannibal Lecter.

Nobody likes to talk about him anymore. Well, first of all, he's not dead, so we can't he's a fictional character, so it can't be the late Hannibal Lecter.

Someone who's a psychodynamic Lee oriented. The fact that he would choose Hannibal Lecter as some kind of great figure, tells us something about his psychology.

Right? Right. That that would be his ego ideal. Someone who is a serial killer. Who who eats people.

That that sort of tracks. But in other words, it really doesn't make sense. Or another example would be

when he was asked about the Harvard situation and he said, well, aren't you challenging academic freedom? And he said, oh, in Harlem, you know,

all the black people voted for me because Harlem sounds like Harvard. And he didn't just mishear it because then he goes on to say,

you know, the people in Harlem agree with what I'm doing at Harvard. So, I mean, this is really gross, right?

It doesn't make any sense. And he does this meandering kind of speech. Yeah. Right. Well, well,

and of course, what's interesting is we have digital breadcrumbs and we have, you know, 14 seasons of The Apprentice to study him and then look at him. Now,

give us the phrase again that you called it. Was it phenol something that you.

Make paraphrases. Phonemic. Sounds that aren't really words?

There's also a semantic paraphrase. We use a real word, but in the wrong context, like saying the oranges of the investigation

when he meant the origins of the investigation. Right? Although I promise you I do that too, and I'm hoping I don't have dementia.

What is it in the brain that is sort of, disintegrating, if you like?

Trump's Breakdown In All Mental Functions

Is this just a symptom of old age, or is it actually something in the brain no longer working as it used to?

Yeah. It's not just a symptom of old age. This is really a breakdown in.

It's actually a breakdown in all the mental functions in, in thinking, in psychomotor performance and impulse control.

So we're seeing this in all areas of his life now, of course, with him, sometimes it's hard to tell because he has a severe personality disorder.

He is a malignant narcissist. So is the personality disorder. Did that come before the dementia?

Trump's Malignant Narcissism

Absolutely. Absolutely no. He's been a malignant narcissist his whole life. There's a personality disorder is a lifetime disorder.

So, you know, when he was ten years old, he was throwing rocks at babies,

in the neighborhood. I mean, he's always been this malicious, malignant person.

So that's core to who he is. And that's what makes him so dangerous and untreatable. Now, on top of that, this really is the worst case scenario.

Well, hold on, hold on. You're throwing so many things out there. He's untreatable. He was throwing rocks as babies.

I'm assuming you meant that metaphorically. No. No, literally. He was throwing rocks at babies. What is that, a story about him?

That he was literally throwing rocks at babies? Yes. Yes, when he was a child. And then there was a babies and neighbors.

Well, it was, a neighbor baby. He was throwing rocks at them. Okay, that I didn't know that story.

And that certainly does seem like a symptom of some sort of personality disorder. Please continue.

And then let's come back to how one treats something like this. Malignant narcissism is untreatable.

That's the official position. We can't cure people who are this sick in this way.

But also, it makes him incredibly dangerous. Every one of the great dictators is more or less been a malignant narcissist.

The term was invented by Erich Fromm, who himself escaped the Nazis to explain the psychology of Hitler and other dictators.

Like Hitler. He understood Hitler to be one of a type, maybe the most extreme, but one of a type.

So that's what we started out as a baseline. But now what we have is this chronic organic deterioration

from his own baseline. So we have, in a sense, the worst of both worlds because his judgment was always bad.

He was always impulsive, he's always a liar. But now he really is losing his ability to think clearly, to plan

to understand things, and to inhibit his speech and his behavior.

So, you know, one minute it's it's 400% tariffs on this country. The next minute he's forgets all about it.

It's much more, chaotic and impulsive. And because the people around him are exercising

no restraint, he's now got a cabinet of enablers. Right. There's nobody to kind of rein him in,

either in terms of his worst authoritarian impulses. But even in terms of his confusion, if you've saw that the, recent

cabinet meeting where the cabinet was falling all over each other to praise the Dear Leader and talk about how he's changed American history and he should win the Nobel Prize.

The ironic thing is that as he's increasing his grip on power, he's actually losing his faculties.

As you say, we've seen him in plain sight for the last 40 years, so we can definitely see his change.

How Trump's Narcissism Compares To King Charles

I think even in the presidency this time around, you can see physical changes. He's slowing down, which is not unexpected in a man of 79.

And he still seems to have an astonishing schedule. I mean, he's traveling. I mean, you know, I was watching him with King

Charles as they gave their speeches side by side.

It is King Charles, also a narcissist. I mean, here was someone who was born to power.

Donald Trump has as been elected to power. King Charles hasn't been.

What is the difference between them? And in Donald Trump's defense, no

three words I often say, but he appeared to deliver his his speech

at Windsor Castle, you know, playing to the crowd. He could obviously feel the energy in the room.

He had a couple of asides which made people laugh, so it didn't feel like he was detached,

from the reality around him as he sat with Tim Cook and Satya Nadella and Marc Benioff, and of course, King

Charles and Queen Camilla and, the unusual sighting of Melania by his side.

So can you just talk to. You mentioned

that people with dementia go in and out, as it were. And then what? What's the difference between his narcissism

and someone like King Charles, who was born to to take over a throne?

There's a big difference between narcissism and malignant narcissism. A malignant narcissist, in addition to being a narcissist,

which, as you point out, maybe or maybe most or even all politicians are to a certain extent, or this they wouldn't run.

It has three other components psychopathy, which means that that he has no conscience, that he, breaks laws

and norms and lies and has no regrets, has no anxiety, has no remorse,

has no empathy for other human beings paranoia. Which is why he feels like such a victim.

And he feels persecuted, even though he's the one who's doing the persecuting, and demonizes minorities, demonizes people who oppose him.

And the fourth component is sadism, that he takes enormous pleasure. He relishes in harming and degrading,

and debasing, other and frightening other people. So the from called it the essence of evil.

So not all narcissists are evil. I assure you, I wrote a book about, Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton is very narcissistic, but I happen to think Bill Clinton is a very benign character. He has a great deal of love and concern for people.

He radiates a lot of love. And, Donald Trump does have some charm and some charisma.

But he exercises it in this very destructive way. You know, Bill Clinton saved hundreds of millions of lives

in Africa after his presidency, you know, just because he wanted to. So we're talking about very different types of characters

who have some traits in common. I also think they also have some hypomania in common. Just to make things more complicated.

So Trump has a lot of energy, as you pointed out, I think, and I wrote my book about Bill Clinton saying that he also had

hypomania, hypomania being Greek, hypo is for less than. So it's less than full blown mania.

It's more of a personality temperament to have hypomania. But for Donald Trump he's up, you know, in the middle of the night, hate tweeting.

You know, 20 tweets a night, you know, so all of his energy is going into his evil.

But we are talking about someone who is truly evil, and therefore, that's one of the reasons that he's untreatable.

So, can we just include King Charles in this? Because looking at the two of them, they're two old white men,

one who's been elected to power, one who's, been born to power.

Did you see any? I'm not asking you to to be critical of King Charles. I was just interested in the juxtaposition of the two leaders together.

Yeah, well, I mean, to put it simply, I don't see any evidence that he's the relentlessly evil.

Well, that's really if I'm sure that's really the fit for the monarchy. They have all the problems. They have other problems. But.

But he seems a benign king. I mean, he certainly seems to want to unite the country.

Yeah. Okay. So this going

Trump's Frontotemporal Dementia Symptoms

in and out of dementia, what is that about? And is it connected to what we've been told

is his chronic venous interruption? The sort of the physical symptoms that we're seeing now.

There's a number of physical symptoms that we're seeing. One of them, I point out, is his chronic falling asleep.

You know, I'm I'm a senior citizen. I fall asleep sometimes at home and after a beer or in the evening.

But he fell asleep most of the days during his criminal trial, which is literally unheard of.

It never happens that people fall asleep while they're in the dark, during their own trial.

It certainly doesn't happen every day of their trial. He fell asleep at the at the finals of the U.S.

open, where he was being cheered and jeered by thousands of people. He fell asleep,

there at Windsor Castle. Apparently. So this inappropriate falling asleep?

It's a small thing, but it is a real meaningful sign. The other thing is his psychomotor performance has gotten worse,

but in a very specific way. That's we're focusing on this is actually a sign of a specific type of dementia, frontotemporal dementia.

And one of the dementia experts that I've consulted with is convinced he has frontotemporal dementia because of this symptom alone,

which is it's called a wide based gait. But if you look at his right leg, sometimes he just swings it in like a dead weight in a semicircle.

And if you saw that, footage where he met Putin, at the airport

and they came down the red carpet and some people sort of sped it up like a kind of Benny Hill, sort of,

you know, takedown. Right? You see him weaving across the carpet like a drunk driver.

If you actually take that same footage and slow it down, what you see is the reason he's weaving to the left

is because his right leg is swinging this wide swing to the left, which is causing his whole gait to move in that direction.

We have a lot of different pieces of tape where we see that wide based gait, and the expert that I consulted with said, this is what we call path and mnemonic.

You don't see this in anyone unless they have frontotemporal dementia. So it's a very specific symptom that really an expert would understand

the significance of. And of course, now we're seeing a more general jury. And he seems to have clearly serious circulatory problems.

The we don't know if the venous deficiency is really the chronic venous deficiency is really the story.

It might be, actually heart failure, with the swollen ankles. And we don't know why he's got, you know, black marks on his,

on the back of his hand. It's probably getting some kind of intravenous fluid. But the other thing is, he just looks like he's sort of falling apart.

And the other thing is, you know, he's a lot of people are predicting that he's having a series of mini strokes because,

if you saw him at the 9/11 memorial, half of his face was drooping like this, you know,

and that's not something that comes with age or fatigue. Like, not I can't even do it right.

I'm trying to make half of my face droop. I have to, like, pull it down. It's not something you can just do or something just happens.

It really suggest is suggestive of some kind of potential mini stroke. So all these things could be related, right?

The circulatory problems could be related to the deterioration in his brain that could even be causal.

Or he could just have both, dementia and some chronic medical problems.

We don't know. This is really an area where we're really not sure, but he's clearly deteriorating mentally and physically.

I have to say, it's completely terrifying talking to you because first of all, these medical terms, which I like and I'm sort of snapping

at guessing what they mean, but I've already diagnosed myself with severe dementia personality disorder?

Hypomania. It's very, very nerve racking talking to you. So assuming you're right,

People Around Trump Managing His Ill Behavior

and and we can certainly see, because of his television and his digital media trail, that he has definitely changed.

Yes. How does one manage the change?

I mean, you always hear about dictators, or malignant narcissists

that they are very unpredictable and they're very, frightening, even

for their closest colleagues to be around because of the unpredictability.

You see Trump's cabinet looking extremely anxious, having to sit near him.

And in fact, what Michael Wolff, who's frequently on our podcast says is that within the white House, it's better not to be in the room usually is.

Certainly in corporate America, people long to be in the room where it happens. Obviously, the famous song from Hamilton, in the room where it happens.

But actually people want to be out of the room because if you're in the room, Donald Trump's gaze may suddenly settle on you,

and it will trigger him to either go off on you. It will remind him of something. How do you, how should people handle

someone who's going through this? Well, this is what's really frightening, because.

Right, so many people have had relatives who have been through this, and we get notification from so many viewers who are saying, you know,

I went through this with my mother, I went through this, my father, I recognize all these signs that you're talking about.

But this was someone that, you know, they were able to. And it's not easy to manage someone with dementia, actually.

Right. I mean, anybody watching this. Yeah. Anybody watching this who's got someone with dementia in their family

will know it's it can be very unpredictable. And people can also get very bad tempered.

Exactly. I know some people in my family are dealing with this, but then imagine that that person has sort of omnipotent power, right?

And is paranoid about anyone trying to control them and will attack anyone who contradicts them.

It's really kind of like a worst case scenario, right? That the person holding the nuclear codes is incompetent, but nobody can rein him in.

He won't listen to anybody, and no one dares to oppose him. So one of the things that I think we're going to start to see as his,

as he deteriorates, the lackeys around him are going to be more and more kind of,

if we thought the last cabinet meeting was crazy, you know, he says crazy stuff. And it's not just the people in this government.

It's even the press, right? He says crazy stuff and nobody follows up on it. Nobody comments on it.

It really is like the Emperor's New clothes. But nope. Without the punchline, without the person saying he's naked.

And then everyone going, oh my gosh, he's naked! I thought it was only me that saw it. But, but and so. But, but isn't the complexity that people have actually called it out?

I mean, you called it out, with 45,000. I think, professional doctors, psychotherapists

who are pointing this out during Trump one, and the press have relentlessly called it out as Donald Trump himself would say.

I mean, look at his reaction to Jimmy Kimmel this week. So, so isn't isn't the problem that people have called it out,

but people also don't seem to care or they might even like it. I mean, in some ways it's seen as a sign of strength.

Well, I don't think it's seen as a sign of strength to be demented. I think he, however, is very. Well, okay.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying it's seen as a sign of strength to have dementia, but his leadership or his bombast is

is misinterpreted as a sign of leadership. No, no.

Malignant narcissists, you know, have a certain appeal. First of all, we talked about his charisma, but also,

the psychopathic part of them makes them, have a will to dominate

and a will to control that is very, very, powerful. And people identify with that.

So, you know, a lot of people are thrilled by the fact that he's taking this kind of strong man control and beating up on their shared enemies.

So there is a kind of psychological appeal that, Hitler like character has. And actually, there was a psychologist named D'Onofrio, right, who wrote

about the authoritarian personality in the late 40s, trying to really try to understand what kind of a person is attracted

to a malignant, narcissistic leaders, an authoritarian leader, someone who feels disempowered and who feels re empowered

by someone who in a, punitive way, is attacking the and their shared enemies

and making them feel powerful and making them feel entitled to dominate. So there is this way he appeals to,

a certain group of white Americans, right, who really want to reassert the dominance of whites in America, and who might be feel disempowered

because they're not that educated or they're not that powerful, that wealthy. And so they identify

with this powerful, wealthy white man who's saying what they think, but is on a socially unacceptable that they're superior to minorities.

And we need to keep them out of this country and they don't have brains. How significant is it that the first lady seems to have moved away

Trump Is Incapable Of Love?

significantly from Donald Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, who was very present during Trump one with her husband Jared Kushner,

now seems nowhere to be seen. In fact, she said that politics wasn't for her, that it was such a brutal game.

So he doesn't have, as far as we know, any close women around him.

I mean, he certainly has Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, and he's got people in his office, but he doesn't have any female family members

who appear to be in his close circle, and he seems increasingly isolated.

Yeah, well, one of the things about malignant narcissists is they are literally incapable of love.

They're incapable of love. And so nobody really loves Donald Trump.

He doesn't really have any figures that really love him. He's got, you know, followers who worship him.

But to know him is really to hate him. And I believe basically his family has decided it's intolerable to be around him.

Like you said, you don't want to be in the room with him. And so they're trying to distance themselves. I mean, the sons are certainly making lots of billions in crypto in his name,

but nobody really wants to be around him because he is unpredictable, aggressive.

And, you have to just submit to it. You know, the other thing about his thinking is I just want to point out

Trump's Confabulations Sign Of Mental Decline

a few other symptoms. One of them is something we call confabulation. I would actually argue,

it's very hard to distinguish a lie from confabulation, but confabulation. And that, again, these people who are listening,

who have relatives, who have dementia will recognize this trait. There's so many gaps in their memory that they actually remember things

that didn't happen by weaving together different sort of little pieces of memory. So, for example, he told this long, elaborate story

about how his uncle, taught the Unabomber at MIT. And he said he said, I talked to him.

What kind of student was he said, well, he was a no at all, and nobody really liked him. And, well, we'll look.

The Unabomber never went to MIT. Ted Kozinski didn't go to MIT, so he couldn't have been in his uncle's class.

And by the time they discovered his Unabomber, his uncle was dead. Now, this isn't like saying I have the highest poll numbers when he has the lowest poll numbers.

Or we've added jobs when we've lost jobs. That's lying. For where we know he has a purpose.

It's going to make him look better. Okay, but telling this long, rambling story about his uncle

and the Unabomber doesn't really serve any purpose when he's telling it. I believe he actually thinks he's remembering something.

This is another sign of dementia. The other sign of dementia that we see is people with dementia. Then they really can't come up with any thoughts.

Just use a lot of superlatives. So like, for example, when he was at Gettysburg, he said, Gettysburg. Wow.

It was like amazing. And it was horrible. And but it was like beautiful and in a way.

So just all these superlatives, I'm think he's standing there and he really doesn't know what Gettysburg is.

And then he's like looking at a hill. And he said, you know, and Robert Lee said, never fight uphill and boys. And he says, if for some reason in an Irish accent,

never fight it to me, boys, which he never said, but he was looking at a hill, so he just kind of made that up.

I think he was just in a confused state. And so he was just using all these superlatives and then making up this story, and I guess

where I would maybe push back a little bit, but I don't think people are commenting on it. You know, you'd have to show me the receipts, I guess.

Show me where in the press they're talking about his mental deterioration. I don't think you're going to find it.

And when you do, unfortunately, it'll be it'll be them quoting me and my co-host, Harry Siegel.

Which is actually uncomfortable for us, because then if you put in ChatGPT, is there evidence for Donald Trump to have having dementia?

You say, yes, because Doctor John Gardner, doctor Harry Siegel said so on shrinking Trump of the Dalai Lama afraid to comment.

On it I do think, well, certainly late night comedians. I mean, Jimmy Kimmel's just lost his job over it, right? I mean, certainly. Not comedians somehow.

I mean, there are definite and I definitely think there are. I mean, certainly the daily Beast, we've relentlessly followed his cankles,

as they've been spilling over his oxfords.

Biden Admin Did Better Job At Hiding Him

Let me ask you something else. Joe Biden appeared to be failing in plain sight, too.

I mean, I mean, your point about Donald Trump is we can see this happening in front of us. Joe Biden also seemed to be failing.

You saw him freezing. You heard the voice. I mean, he seemed to have every symptom of Parkinson's ism

that that there was without anybody acknowledging it. Did you see that in him, too?

Well, I think that what's interesting about what happened in the Biden situation is, I think they did a better job of hiding him, when he was deteriorating.

It seems like they're like about six months before the election is when he really took a bad turn.

And yet, by keeping him out of the public eye, we weren't able to really see the same of the signs and symptoms.

Although the press was a lot harder on him, I think in terms of his mental competence than they were on Trump.

And that's what really, upset us is the double standard, right, that they were commenting on his gaffes,

but they weren't really saying much about Trump's. And, you know, a lot of the things with Biden,

you know, the, the, the, the slow voice, the, you know, the the slow movements, the Parkinson's could be normal aging.

I think what was really a shock was the debate was that's when the public really saw,

oh my God, these rumors about his having some kind of deterioration are true, because he literally looked blank right when he was staring at the camera.

And that's really the moment when I think the election turned, so that he shouldn't have run again.

The people around him shouldn't have urged him to run again. They knew that he had these deficits, and they were hiding the deficits

from the public. Okay. So, you know, they're serious enough to hide them from the public and don't urge the man to run for president.

So, so but that's a good example of where Donald Trump would still have had dementia.

And as you're saying, you know, malignant narcissism and a personality disorder.

But he appeared to win the debate. But one of the ways that, that he won the debate, well, first of all,

I think Biden was very you know, I think Biden lost the debate. Right. Well, he had a challenged opponent.

Yeah. Yeah, to challenge him. But one of his techniques, it's been called Gish galloping

after a certain, congressman, going back in, like, the 1800s. Where or to put it the way Steve Bannon

called it, flood the zone with shit. Which is to spew out so many outrageous lies, but like, Gatling gun, right?

Boom, boom, boom boom, one after the other so that your opponent doesn't even know.

You say five outrageous lies, you know, where do I even begin to rebut that person?

You know, when they're not even related to each other? Like off topic, you know? And so that technique is actually pretty effective

that he just keeps spewing out lies in this pressured speech that then people really don't have a capacity to respond.

Now, of course, he's just intimidating people. So they're afraid to respond. But, it actually turned out to be a fairly effective technique in the debate.

If the person can't respond effectively. So Donald Trump is supposed to be extremely good

Trump's Narcissism Brings Paranoia

at sniffing out his enemies weaknesses. What are his weaknesses?

I mean, we know that he appears to be, haunted by his old friend

Jeffrey Epstein, who followed him, to London for his amazing visit to Windsor Castle.

And we saw the projection of the film on the side of Windsor Castle,

thus hijacking the trip and making sure that all the headlines included Epstein.

It is Donald Trump. Do you think, actually sort of haunted by by Jeffrey Epstein? What are the things that that make Trump truly paranoid?

Yeah. I mean, one of the things about the psychopathy is they have no remorse

for anything that they've done and no fear about being, exposed.

So, but when you have someone who's a narcissist at every moment, there's a feeling that their grandiosity could collapse.

So they're fighting to win each moment, right? To keep inflating themselves.

So, in a sense, in his paranoia, he's threatened by everything and everyone, right. Who could potentially in any way pierce his,

veil of invulnerability and grandiosity. So that's one of the reasons he attacks everyone, every reporter

that asked him a question, you know, with any kind of a challenge, you know, you're you're disgusting and you know, you're not you're no good,

and your publications are failing and you should go to jail. That's hate speech. You know, recently told that Jonathan Karl that he was committing hate speech

by asking him a question. What Pam Bondi said about hate speech. But the thing is, is that that is the fear is that that his grandiosity

will will collapse or that he'll be exposed as something less than, you know, omnipotent. So in a sense, he's in an existential battle every second.

That makes sense in terms of him just lurching moment to moment, pushing the narrative forward and not really answering

specific questions, but constantly changing direction. So, as you say, it's very hard to sort of follow him or understand her to pin things down.

Do you think he is, genuinely scared of the Epstein story?

Well, I think that he, you know, he's been able to duck everything,

and he now has a criminal justice system which is colluding in covering up the Epstein story.

I mean, think about this. You know, when, in the history, have you ever heard of,

an assistant attorney general going to meet with, someone in jail?

Right. When clearly a sex trafficker has been sentenced to 20 years.

Exactly. And we know that she could implicate Trump. Now, usually when someone from the Justice Department meets with a criminal

in jail, it's to implicate right, another wrongdoer. Right? And lo and behold, of course, she gave him what they wanted.

She said she'd never seen anything cause for concern, which we thought was funny on the show. Because what would cause her concern?

She's a she's a child molester herself. But they never saw anything that caused concern. And lo and behold, then quid pro quo right in front of the everyone's

eyes, she's transferred to this, sort of a spa camp prison. You know, as a reward, it was obvious.

And, you know, we said Kash Patel said that he had thousands of FBI agents working around the clock to find any reference

to Trump in the Epstein files. Well, we know there's hundreds of references to him. And lo and behold, he's now claiming there's no references to him. Yeah.

So in other words, he actually said thousands FBI agents with some wite-out, that it goes through all the files to basically hide

all the references to abortion. So he thinks he's going to get away with it because he's gotten away with everything.

And that's part of the psych psychopath. Psychology. They always think they're going to get away with it. They're not worried about being exposed.

And he probably will get away with it. And is that, is the copycat behavior from the people around him?

Trump's Cabinet Copies His Sick Behavior

I mean, I was watching the Cash Patel hearings this week and his determination

to shout down, certainly Adam Schiff and some of the other senators talking to him, it felt very reminiscent of Trump

and Michael Wolff, who's my partner on the Inside Trump's Head podcast. And I know you have your partner, doctor Harry Siegel, on your,

podcast, Shrinking Trump, which I, highly recommend for anybody listening and watching to this.

It's delightfully entertaining. And you invite guest doctors on to analyze,

people in particular, Donald Trump. Where am I going with this? I'm going with copycat behavior.

Is there a sort of knock on effect from this kind of grandiosity? Is that why everybody else is suddenly getting much more aggressive?

It's a great question, and I think the answer is yes. You know, I sometimes think of Trump, you know, as being a malignant narcissist

as being similar to a malignant tumor in the body politic. And we had a chance to remove the tumor and save the patient.

We failed there, obviously. But what happens with the tumor is it spreads its DNA

around the body, and cells reproduce with that DNA. I think Trump's sort of psychological

DNA has now seeped into the people in his administrations. There also, you know, as you say, shouting people down and devaluing people.

And but also what we see, too, is that there's been a process this always happens with all of these dictators of purging and purging

and purging till you get down to the worst of the worst. You know what's called a ocracy, you know, government by the worst.

So in the first administration, you got people who might have been colluding with him to some degree, but they had some moral limits right there.

Had some point with him. Oh, wait a minute, Mr. President. We we can't do that. Okay. You know, those people are gone.

Even Bill Barr. Right. Who covered up the whole Mueller report. You know, he had a limit. He wasn't going to invalidate the whole election.

You know, that was where he got off the bus. And so then he became an enemy. Right now Bill Barr is is reviled.

So what he did, what happens is there's a systematic process of purging people. And it's happened within the Republican Party generally. Right?

There used to be some Republican representatives and senators, like Jeff Flake, for example, who had a conscience, who believed in the Constitution.

But those people have been systematically purged. And so now what you have left, it's sort of like a reduction source.

You know, you have the true believers, the true psychopaths, the true wingnuts,

the people who are all in with no inhibitions, no no conscience, no soul.

And so, of course, they're going to imitate the behavior of their dear leader.

How do you diagnose or what is your diagnosis of someone like Elon Musk?

Elon Musk Exhibits Bipolar And Psychopath Traits

Well, Elon Musk is actually a complex character. I mean, he appears to be on the spectrum. I think he also has but bipolar traits.

You know, when he was manically pursuing this whole Doge thing, you know, he

brought his bed into the famously into their offices and said, we work 24 hours a day and on weekends, and that's how we're going

to defeat these bureaucrats, because they only work 9 to 5. But that seems that seems like some sort of mania.

Exactly, exactly. And even his behavior with the chainsaw, you know, waving the chainsaw around wildly, it was it was it was also irresponsible

and erratic and extreme and hyped up, you know, and and there may even been drug involvement, too. We know that he's got

that allegedly has a whole case of drugs and he's on ketamine. He's on this he's on that so that he could be hyping

or firing up his hypomania, perhaps with drugs. But so, I think he's a complex case.

There's a lot of things going on in his case. But what you have in common among all of these Trump people

now is they do have a kind of psychopathic core. Right?

That they're like in that Levitt, his press secretary, said he has got the highest poll numbers in history.

Actually, he's got the lowest poll numbers in history. I mean, you know, it's what I call Apple speak.

I think what you're hearing from people as opposed speak meaning it's literally the opposite, the polar opposite of what they say.

I'm going to listen to this and jot down all the medical terms that you've given us. Because I find it.

I find it absolutely fascinating, John, you're describing what feels like a very extreme personality.

Trump Meets Strict Criteria For Psychopathy

How common is this among people? That's actually an excellent question.

So the guest that we had on this week, Doctor Vince Greenwood, is a scholar of psychopathy.

And he has said that the Donald Trump really meets the very strict criteria for a severe psychopath.

And what we know is that only one in about 150 people meet these strict criteria for psychopathy.

So just as a start, this is a baseline. It's already a very rare disorder.

1 in 150 people. 150 people would meet criteria for being a psychopath.

Now, in his case, psychopathy is really only part of his disorder, as we've said, because it's a bit like a narcissist.

There's four components psychopathy, narcissism, paranoia, and sadism.

But actually, the guest we had on argued that those other components could be included in the psychopathy, diagnosis.

If you're really being, strict about your, diagnostic criteria. But in any case, it is very rare.

And I think that's one of the reasons why it's hard for normal people to understand. But 1 in 150 doesn't seem right.

I mean, you know, I can't remember who it is that says that most people have all the, the, the peak number of friends you can have is 150,

which means that we all have, a psychopath in our friend group. That seems alarming.

I think 1 in 150 is is actually, there's a hell of a lot of psychopaths wandering around them.

I mean, this is a country of 330 million people. Our expert also said he felt that Donald Trump

was the most extreme example that he'd seen in his entire career. So, in that group, in that small group, he would be in like 99th percentile.

Well, I'm very excited to see what comments we get from listeners and from viewers on, on YouTube.

I think there will be many, many, many questions and, well, we'd love to come.

We'd love to have you back and to have you address them. John Gardner, thank you very much for your time. Thank you for having me.

Well, I found that absolutely fascinating. One of the most interesting things about Donald Trump is that he has been a colossus across the media for the last 40 years. He has SEG and changed as the media has sagged and changed.

And so we've been able to see him in plain sight as he's gotten older

and more powerful, and now is exercising that power in some truly alarming ways.

Thank you for joining us. If you have been, please leave a comment on YouTube.

Feel free to subscribe and join the Daily Beast community. We love hearing from you and share this podcast with a friend,

with an enemy, with a colleague out there online. Share away. It's all free and we are independent media and we love growing our audience.

So thank you to our production team. And as our first lady who was briefly out of hiding, for her

trip to Windsor Castle this week would have us be beast. And thank you to our production team, Devin, Roger Reno,

Anna Von Ersan, and our editor, Jesse Millwood. And shout out to our beast lair of membership,

Karen White, Heidi Riley, and Connie Rutherford. Thank you.