Donald Trump’s Mind ‘Faltering,’ Top Psychologist Warns

Donald Trump’s mental capabilities appear to be “faltering in a very dangerous way,” a leading psychologist said.

Speaking on the David Pakman Show on Monday, Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in psychology at Cornell University who has been critical of the former president’s mental health since he was first elected, said Trump was showing signs of onset dementia.

“I think of this cognitive decline as being another layer of danger on top of an already erratic, mentally challenged person who shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House,” Segal said.

His comments come after a number of mental health professionals, who have also been critical of Trump, wrote statements claiming he was suffering from symptoms of dementia, while President Joe Biden—who has faced intense scrutiny about his age and mental acuity—was showing normal signs of aging.

They said Trump displayed behavior that typified a “confusion about reality,” and argued that he would have to be removed from office as he would become “dangerously unable to fulfill the responsibilities” of president.

At the time, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign told Newsweek that the former president had “aced” a cognitive test twice and was “willing to take a third test if Joe Biden sits in the same room and takes it at the same time.”

They said Biden was “clearly suffering from cognitive decline,” a claim the president has repeatedly rebuffed.

Critics of Trump point to occasions such as him confusing Barack Obama with Biden and garbling words.

In the interview on Monday, Segal said the examples were “intermittent,” usually occurring during rallies at night rather than during interviews in the daytime.

“This is something that’s been observed in many people suffering from early stages of dementia—and that’s called sundowning,” he said.

He added that because the “slippages” were occasional, Trump often spoke normally, but Segal claimed: “The complexity of his language has changed.

“So when he’s speaking—what appears to be—coherently, it’s almost like he’s gumming together phrases that he repeats over and over again. Now, he’s always had a tendency to do this, but if you go back, as I have, to looking at interviews in 2016, he was clearly more crisp [and] he was more complex than he is now.”

Segal went on to argue that these two behavioral shifts were something “I’m really afraid of because they always lead to more. So we may not be seeing it every time he speaks, but if he were to be elected, a year from now, how would he be functioning?”

Newsweek approached the Trump campaign via email for comment on Tuesday.

The psychologist stressed that while he may have my own political views, he was basing his claims on the observation of behavior.

In a November letter, Dr. Bruce Aronwald, Trump’s personal physician, said the former president’s “overall health is excellent” and “his cognitive exams were exceptional.”

Meanwhile, Biden has also suffered a number of public gaffes, which Republicans have used to imply Biden is unfit to continue for another term.

Already the oldest U.S. president in history, Biden would turn 82 weeks after election day; and if elected, he would be 86 by the end of his second term. But the president has brushed off queries about his physical and mental health, telling a news conference in February that his “memory is fine” and “I know what the hell I’m doing.”

“If I were concerned about Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities, I would be saying it with as much alarm as I am about Trump,” Segal said.

He added that he was “impressed” by Biden’s performance at the State of the Union address at the beginning of March, noting that the president had spoken for around an hour in the evening, and had called out heckles from GOP members of Congress.

“You can’t do that if you’re suffering from major cognitive impairments,” Segal said.

The psychologist admitted that Biden “does seem a bit frail” and appears “not as crisp as he was, physically or even in his pronunciation of words,” but attributed this to his age and long battle with a stammer.

“To Americans, Biden looks much older than Trump,” Segal said. “But to me, Trump looks like he’s faltering in a very dangerous way.”