During an appearance on Monday, President Donald Trump displayed a series of red flags that suggest he may be struggling with “something neurological,” and it’s becoming more noticeable all the time. This is according to clinical and forensic psychologist John Paul Garrison, who later explained why he thinks Trump’s “involuntary” actions can’t be chalked up to old age alone.
The incident in question was an executive order signing in the Oval Office, during which Garrison says that the president appeared “to be exhibiting a wide variety of worsening neurological symptoms,” such as slurring words, getting confused, and falling asleep. As the event started, notes Garrison, Trump began addressing Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., and he noticeably “misses words. He thinks he's saying things correctly, and he doesn't even realize how badly he's messing up what he's trying to say.”
After that, as Kennedy speaks, Trump begins dozing off before snapping back to attention. According to Garrison, “There's some awareness that he is drifting. And he doesn't have the good judgment to realize that everybody's watching him right now. He really is having a hard time thinking through these situations.” Then the president falls fully asleep, before waking with “some confusion,” “nodding his head trying to go along with what's being said.”
“This is not normal behavior even if somebody is 80,” asserts Garrison. “I get that that's an advanced age, but that doesn't explain when you're sitting in front of lights around a lot of other people how you would fall asleep. What does explain it is either neurological problems, poststroke behavior or some sort of neurological impairment that is causing this. For example, if somebody has a stroke and it affects their hypothalamus or their thalamus or a number of other regions of the brain, it can cause excessive sleepiness. So it's very possible that there is damage in part of the brain that contributes to this behavior. His age truly does not explain this behavior.”
As the event progresses, Trump “just keeps falling asleep over and over again,” says Garrison. “This has been happening for months now, but this is a great example of a time where it's happening very clearly right in the middle of an important meeting… If you count every single time that President Trump drifts off over the course of this entire 40-minute Oval Office meeting, it's dozens of times.” What’s more, notes Garrison, “He's having a very hard time orienting when he wakes up again.”
Here Garrison points out a “neurological twitch” the president sometimes displays. According to Garrison, “He starts becoming incoherent,” and then his elbow twitches outward suddenly. “When he's standing, he's doing it constantly. They're really large motions, but it does seem to be there's an involuntary twitch, which once again, all signs point to something neurological and something serious neurological going on.”
"I really suggest that anybody that truly believes that this is entirely because of his age reconsider that position," Garrison concludes. "Because that absolutely does not adequately explain what we're seeing."
