By Danny R. Johnson – Political News Editor
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment ensures that the United States will always have a coherent and functioning President by providing for the prompt, orderly, and democratic transfer of executive power in the event the president is incapacitated, physically or mentally. The incident involving Trump’s tariffs, where he introduced them and then changed his stance two days later, raised concerns about his mental capacity.
The White House released the results of President Trump’s physical on Sunday, in which the White House physician detailed that the president “remains in excellent health.” The results of the annual physical, the first of Trump’s second term came after he underwent the exam at Walter Reed Hospital on Friday. The 78-year-old had his last known comprehensive examination in September 2023, when he released limited details from that visit. Trump’s last annual physical as president occurred in June 2020. At the time, the White House said he weighed 244 pounds, and his blood pressure was 121 over 79.
Trump’s physician said after his latest physical that the president weighed 224 pounds, and his blood pressure was 128 over 74. The physician said he also performed a comprehensive neurological examination, which revealed “no abnormalities in his mental status.”
Since Trump’s administration has refused to release his full and detailed medical records, especially after two assassination attempts, mental health professionals suggest he may be showing cognitive decline and signs of advanced dementia.
Psychotherapist Dr. John Gartner, formerly of Johns Hopkins University Medical School, circulated a petition among thousands of mental health professionals about Trump’s cognitive impairment. Gartner wrote that Trump exhibits “progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, language use, behavior, and motor skills,” and emphasized his ethical duty to alert the public and urge media coverage of this issue. Trump struggles to “even finish a sentence,” Gartner explained in an interview with MindSite News, elaborating that, “When we’re diagnosing dementia, what we need to see is a deterioration of someone’s own baseline of functioning. What we see that a lot of people don’t appreciate is that when Donald Trump was younger in the 1980s, he was quite articulate. His thoughts were logical and related: now they’re tangential. He goes off on these ramblings where he is confabulating things – weird things in which he’ll talk about Venezuelans and mental hospitals, and then he’ll talk about sharks and batteries or the late, great Hannibal Lector and Silence of the Lambs.”
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump
With the help of other psychiatrists and mental health professionals, Dr. Bandy Lee authored The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President near the end of Trump’s first term. The experts argued that their moral and civic “duty to warn” about Trump’s dementia outweighed their duty of professional neutrality.
Over 3000 credentialed mental health professionals have signed a petition suggesting that President Donald Trump likely has dementia. They cite his public behavior and reports of progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, language use, behavior, and motor skills. His vocabulary is limited, and he often struggles to complete thoughts or sentences, overuses superlatives and filler words—typical signs of dementia.
Trump’s tariff wars caused global issues, and he has the authority to launch nuclear weapons as Commander in Chief. Evidence of his cognitive decline is widespread, with mental health professionals warning about Trump’s dementia.
Congress must heed the experts. Republicans must act. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment allows the Vice President and Cabinet or a congressionally approved body to agree that the President cannot fulfill his duties. Democrats should use this clause, and Republicans should join in before Trump makes another dangerous and catastrophic mistake.
