Was the impulsive flag hugger showing signs of early dementia in 2019? Dr. John Gartner thought so. Now that the dementia symptoms are worse, Gartner is sounding the alarm again. By Hal Brown, MSW

We need to know that dementia is progressive. It always gets worse. If Trump is president a years from now he could be in full-blown dementia.

Imaged modified by author - what was going on in Trump's brain when he did this?

Back in 2019 clincial psychologist Dr. John D. Gartner wrote the following in USA Today:

There's no way the it was an accident that USA Today used the flag hugging photo to illustrate this article

Now Dr. Gartner has a focused again on the issue of Trump showing signs of dementia:

Salon just published the fourth in a series of Chauncey DeVega interviews with clinical psychologsit Dr. John D. Gartner: “Experts are desperate to warn the public”: Hundreds sign Dr. John Gartner’s Trump dementia petition.

• Dr. John Gartner: The world is watching “a fundamental breakdown in Trump’s ability to use language”

• “Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug”: Dr. John Gartner on Trump’s “accelerating dementia”

• Dr. John Gartner on a tale of two brains: “Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing”

RawStory sumarized the article here: ‘It’s perverse’: Psychologist hits media for ‘normalizing’ Trump & ‘pathologizing’ Biden.

A good place to read what numerous mental health professionals have to say about Trump having dementia is on the Duty to Warn X page here.

This article in RawStory Opinion+ (subscription) by neuroscientist Bobby Azarian, A neuroscientist reveals how Trump and Biden’s cognitive impairments are different, references John Gartner’s agument.

Here are excerpts from Gartner's 2019 article:

If Donald Trump were your father, you would run, not walk, to a neurologist for an evaluation of his cognitive health. You don’t have to be a doctor to see something is very wrong. “He reminds me of Uncle Bruce in so many ways,” said my aunt, who nursed her brother through Alzheimer’s disease. Joe Scarborough, who has known Trump for years, said in 2017 that Trump's mental confusion reminded him of his mother, who had Alzheimer's for 10 years. “It's getting worse, and not a single person who works for him doesn’t know he has early signs of dementia,” he said of Trump last year on his MSNBC show.

To mental health professionals like me, the red flags are waving wildly. In January 2018, over 70 of us wrote a letter to the president’s physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson, urging him to administer a cognitive exam during the president’s physical because we had seen a marked deterioration in his verbal functioning, possibly due to cognitive decline.

Conclusion:

Americans have a right, indeed an urgent need, to know whether their president is suffering from dementia. We see clear signs that he is, but the only way to find out for sure is to give him a full neuropsychological evaluation and share the results with the American public. The need is more screamingly obvious now than it was a when we first called for it over a year ago.

In 2019 the indications that Trump was suffering were dementia were worse than they were the year before consider that:

• Denentia is always a progressive disease.

• It always gets worse.

• It never gets better.

• There no way to determine how bad Trump's demetnia will be a year from now.

• He could be president have full-blown dementia.

• As I wrote yesterday I could be up to his Vice President and Cabinet to invoke Section 3 of the 25th Amendment.

• The will all be loyalists.

• Would they do the right thing and invoke Section 3?

• Would 2/3rds of both the House and Senate vote to permanently remove him from office?

I addressed this in yesterday's blog here.