The top Democrat on a key congressional oversight committee is calling on the White House physician to immediately perform a comprehensive cognitive assessment of Donald Trump following the president’s threats to destroy Iranian civilization.
In his letter, Rep. Jamie Raskin urged White House Physician Captain Sean Barbabella to share the results with members of Congress, citing what the congressman called warning signs that the president “has been exhibiting signs consistent with dementia and cognitive decline” with outbursts and statements that have turned “increasingly incoherent, volatile, profane, deranged, and threatening.”
“His apparently deteriorating condition has caused tremendous alarm across the nation (and political spectrum) about the president’s cognitive function and continuing mental fitness for the office of president, and prompted concerns about the president’s wellbeing,” Raskin wrote.
The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee pointed to the president’s profane Easter threats to Iran, in which he demanded the country “open the f*****’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.” The following day, the president said “a whole civilization will die tonight” if the regime did not agree to a conditional ceasefire in the U.S. war.
The congressman also pointed to the president’s remarks at an Easter event at the White House, where he “delivered a disjointed and graphic account of military operations — including bombing missions and hostage rescues — to an audience of young children.”
Raskin’s letter on Friday follows a week of bipartisan scrutiny into Trump’s mental state, including from prominent right-wing figures who supported the president’s campaign, with demands from Democratic lawmakers and some former Trump allies for the administration to invoke the 25th Amendment and declare him unfit for office.
The White House, which routinely alleges former President Joe Biden experienced significant mental decline, does not appear to be moved by Raskin’s letter.
A spokesman hailed the 79-year-old president’s “sharpness” and “unmatched energy.”
“Lightweight Jamie Raskin is a stupid person’s idea of a smart person,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told The Independent.
“President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the past four years when Democrats like Raskin covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people,” he said.
Democrats have similarly accused the White House of hiding Trump’s alleged decline after the president, the oldest American to be sworn into the executive office, faced a series of health conditions that raised questions about his overall health.
Trump frequently praises his performance on a cognitive health exam designed to detect mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer’s.
“I’m the only president that ever took a cognitive test. I took it three times. It’s actually a very hard test for a lot of people. It wasn’t hard for me. But it’s a cognitive test,” he brought up in the middle of a Cabinet meeting last month.
“It starts off with an easy question. And by the time you get to the middle, it gets tougher,” he said. “By the time you get to the end, very few people can answer those questions. They get very tough mathematical equations and things.”
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment consists of 30 questions such as identifying pictures of animals and drawing a clock.
The president has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a fairly common condition among older adults that can cause swelling in the legs, and has also routinely sported a bruised hand, typically covered in unblended concealer makeup.
Barbabella said in a memo last year that the president is in “excellent health.”
The 25th Amendment, which provides for the line of presidential succession, allows for the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare the president unfit to serve. More than 80 Democratic members of Congress this week publicly urged Trump’s Cabinet to consider invoking it.
In a letter to Vice President JD Vance this week, Rep. Jasmine Crocket claimed the president is “deranged, likely suffering from dementia, and has now brought the United States to the precipice of committing one of the largest war crimes in modern history.”
“The United States now stands isolated as the world awaits whether America will brazenly commit genocide or whether the Vice President, the Cabinet, and the Congress will put an end to the chaos caused by a frail and likely demented American president,” she wrote.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, formerly one of the president’s biggest champions in Congress, said, more bluntly, that Trump has “gone insane.”
“That is a medical judgment that I am not qualified to make, but I understand what Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene is talking about,” Raskin wrote.
Andrew Feinberg contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
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