When Donald Trump began boasting about his 'perfect' scores on cognitive tests aboard Air Force One, he likely intended to project an image of unparalleled mental vigour. Instead, according to at least one prominent mental health expert, the president may have inadvertently 'given the game away.'
The debate surrounding the 79-year-old's mental fitness has taken a sharp turn from speculative to clinical. While the White House recently declared Trump to be in 'excellent health' following an annual physical in April 2025, Dr. John Gartner, a clinical psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University, argues that the frequency of these assessments suggests a far more troubling reality: the monitoring of a progressive decline. These concerns come at a time when the president is serving the first year of his second term, having been inaugurated in January 2025 as the oldest person ever to hold the office.
