Donald Trump is claimed to be suffering ‘cognitive decline’ and losing his impulse control, according to the US President’s psychologist niece Mary Trump
Donald Trump’s cognitive abilities are in sharp decline as he loses the ability to “read the room”, his estranged niece has claimed. Dr Mary Trump, a 61-year-old psychologist and outspoken family critic, joined host Molly Jong-Fast on the Fast Politics podcast to unpack what she sees as an alarming pattern of the 80-year-old US president blurting out whatever pops into his head.
The commentators highlighted a bizarre moment on Tuesday when Trump derailed his own eulogy at Lindsey Graham’s funeral, going entirely off-script to point out that “not everybody” liked the South Carolina senator.
Jong-Fast probed her guest on whether the ageing president has lost his filter and his capability to “not say the quiet part out loud.”
Mary said: “I think that Donald did have the ability to read the room better. He was good at pushing the envelope in ways that, and then recalibrate in real time.”
She pointed to an instance where her uncle championed the Covid-19 vaccine at a rally, only to be met with loud boos from his own MAGA fanbase. In response, “we never heard him say that again,” she said.
“Now we’re seeing that he does not have the ability to do that. What that means is he’s losing impulse control, and that’s a part of his overall cognitive decline,” Mary added.
Jong-Fast also brought up Trump’s disastrous appearance at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner on July 24, where his performance plummeted after a series of awkward jokes fell flat.
Among the misfires was a nasty jab aimed at CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, whom Trump likened to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney – a frequent target of right-wing backlash following her 2023 Bud Light campaign.
Jong-Fast said: “He didn’t recalibrate. He just criticised the speech and kept going. And people were pretty shocked.”
Mary said: “When you’ve got this very old man who’s clearly not doing well in every category of being human…we shouldn’t be shocked when he stands up in front of a room full of people [he is hostile to] to read a speech he’s never read before…indulge his grievances, and not be able to process the fact that it’s not working anymore.”
She further argued that his total lack of self-awareness was obvious when the octogenarian repeated a “deeply unfunny” gag three separate times about mounting a 2028 presidential bid – despite being legally blocked from doing so by the US Constitution.
Firing back at the scathing critique, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle issued a fiery statement to the Daily Beast. He said: “Mary Trump is a stone-old [sic] loser who doesn’t have a clue about anything.
“President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the last administration when Democrats and the legacy media intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people.”