Drs. Gartner and Segal talk to Dr. Eric Jackson, Director of the Stuttering and Variability Lab at NYU who argues that a lot of what looked like cognitive decline in Biden’s debate performance was actually stuttering: a message America needs to hear. 

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We cautioned our listeners over the last week to take a deep breath and allow us to analyze more data points on Biden’s language, mannerisms, and overall cognitive health. In this episode, Dr. Gartner and Dr. Segal will use significant data to help put Biden’s debate performance in perspective by presenting a model of who Biden really is with a true expert in the field of communication. Our hosts also break down some of Trump’s most absurd statements from this week.

Our guest today is Dr. Eric Jackson, a speech-language pathologist and Associate Professor in the Communicative Sciences and Disorders department at NYU. Eric's research focuses on the variability of stuttering and the inconsistencies of how stuttering events manifest themselves.

Eric joins the show to decipher how much of Biden’s poor debate performance can be attributed to stuttering vs cognitive decline. “Stuttering is an articulation problem,” Dr. Gartner said. “It's not a brain problem. It's not a thinking problem. It's not a cognitive problem.”

Dr. Jackson helps our listeners better understand the challenges stutterer’s face, including the anticipation of stuttering and what mechanisms they develop to disguise the stutter. “Biden uses a lot of these,” Eric said. “When he was younger and quicker, he was more able to implement them. But now that he's aging and slower, it's more difficult for him, and that seems to be contributing to what people are characterizing as the mumbling or the stumbling or even the losing his train of thought.”

John and Harry also give us a clear contrast of Biden’s mental acuity vs Trump’s constant brain failures. 

“Biden’s a flawed candidate, Dr. Segal said. “But compared to Donald Trump he's perfect. And really compared to any candidate, he's quite strong.”

You’ll also hear our hosts call out the media for failing to cover Trump’s psychopathology while spending the last two week’s obsessing over Biden’s “cognitive decline.” 

“Someone tweeted today that in the New York Times there are eight articles about Biden's cognitive decline, and no articles about Trump's psychopathology,” Dr. Gartner said. This is a trend now that we're going to have to deal with.”

“John and I began the show because we were alarmed by the ways in which the media and even the political elites seem to be ignoring the ways in which Donald Trump was expressing early signs of dementia,” Dr. Segal said. “A few weeks ago, when Joe Biden showed up to the debate,  the country was really caught off guard. It left me and many other people in the country wondering, how is Biden really doing? Who is he really? How is his functioning?”

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Hosts Dr. John Gartner and Dr. Harry Segal are joined by geriatrician and dementia expert Dr. Elizabeth Landsverk to analyze Biden’s debate performance and determine what signs of dementia, if any, he actually displayed. Dr. Vince Greenwood is also back on the show to help us evaluate the signs of aging and cognitive decline shown from both candidates.

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Welcome to another edition of Shrinking Trump, where we normally talk about how Donald Trump’s behavior shows signs of dementia, and to point out how the media improperly covers it. Since the debate, however, many Americans, including us, have been left wondering if Biden's performance was simply a bad episode or if it's a sign of a worsening cognitive condition.

Dr. Gartner is optimistic, and based on available data is concluding that Biden is showing normal signs of aging and not suffering from a cognitive condition. Dr. Segal, however, is not so sure.   

“What accounts for what happened last Thursday,” Dr. Segal asked. “Was it simply exhaustion? Or was it a cognitive decline that we're now being allowed to see? I think it’s very important for us to ask these questions.” 

In this episode, our hosts analyze Biden’s appearance and behavior in the week that followed the poor debate performance, including a rally in North Carolina and a strong speech about the Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling.

We’ll talk about how Biden’s aging should not necessarily be confused with incompetence. “It looked so terrible,” Dr. Gartner said “And it had such a terrible impact that the truth might not even matter. But if we're looking at the truth, we have to understand how someone can show signs of aging but also be competent.”

We’ll highlight some of Trump’s cognitive failures from the week to demonstrate the clear difference from Biden’s normal signs of aging and Trump’s clear decline. “The symptoms we're seeing in Trump are worse and more constant,” John said. “Biden may have not been able to complete his sentence properly, but at no point during the debate did he think Obama was President. He's not making up quotes from Ulysses S. Grant. He's not talking nonsense about sharks and batteries.”

You’ll also get our take on why Biden’s debate performance was such a flop and hear who John thinks is primarily to blame for the whole debacle. Trust us, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. 

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Co-hosts Drs. John Gartner and Harry Segal discuss the presidential debate with famed psychologist David Dunning, co-author of the “Dunning-Krueger Effect. The nation must deal with the shock, panic, and trauma created by Biden’s poor performance. But what caused it? Age, stuttering, illness, cognitive decline, poor debate preparation and strategy, or some combination? How concerned should we be?

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We started this show to call out the media for failing to recognize Trump’s early signs of dementia and to contrast that with Biden’s normal aging. “It’s what John referred to as, ‘the aging brain versus the dementing brain’,” Dr. Segal said. “And our goal is really to raise clinical awareness and sophistication on the part of you, our viewers, but also of the media.”

Week after week we have offered a series of progressive hypotheses to explain Trump’s behavior, his language, and even his physical bearing. And now, after the debate sent shockwaves through the media and the public, we thought it important to look at what actually happened that night.

“As far as a performance and as far as the political impact, I would say it couldn't have been worse,” Dr. Gartner said. “In terms of understanding what happened, however, I think we are actually going to have a very interesting discussion today because it's actually quite complex.

You’ll hear our hosts share their very relatable personal reactions to the debate and help us all understand the trauma Americans suffered that evening. “I felt like the walls were closing in,” John said. “I felt the floor actually fall beneath me like I was falling into the void.”

“I felt that I had just experienced a trauma - like my whole world had changed,” Dr. Segal said. “This was not normal functioning. This was terrifying and traumatizing.”

We’ll run through some of the clips to analyze how the candidates’ body language made Trump’s answers sound better than they were - and Biden’s WAY worse than they actually were. 

While Trump had a more commanding performance, our hosts argue that he had a clever way of hiding his cognitive decline. “Trump is stringing together his slogans - he gums them together,” Harry said. “We've been watching him do this in rallies. But through the forcefulness of his tone and his ability to create rhythm in his speech, it seems to make sense in a cohesive, coherent way. This is a way that Trump is managing his own decline, which is not being expressed through a weakness in his voice, but in other ways.”

We’ll also analyze the physical signs of advanced aging Biden displayed, and discuss what role the debate prep likely played in his delivery. And we weigh the impact of Biden’s traditional stutter on his performance and how that can often be confused with actual signs of aging.

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Top Psychologists John Gartner and Harry Segal are joined by Professor of Neuropsychology and Neurology at UCFF Dr. Joel Kramer, as they parse significant differences between Biden's chronic stutter and Trump's glaring dementia.

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Dr. Joel Kramer is the director of the neuropsychology program at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. He studies the effects of neurodegenerative disease on intellectual abilities and behavior. 

Dr. Kramer was quoted in the Washington Post last week saying that the risk for both Biden and Trump are “about the same for demonstrating some degree of cognitive decline over the next four to five years.” Our host John Gartner brought him on the show to challenge this conclusion.

The Post failed to mention that in their interview Dr. Kramer also said, “Biden has an established history of a developmental language disorder - stuttering, while Trump's gaffes are more likely driven by disordered thinking.”

Welcome to another addition of Shrinking Trump, our weekly show where we review the ways in which Trump’s behavior over the past week demonstrates signs of early onset of dementia, and express his malignant personality disorder.

“And each week,” Dr. Segal says, “we've been trying to help you, our listeners, as well as the media, to think about Trump in a more clinically sophisticated and accurate way.”

We’ll analyze Trump’s wildest episodes from the past week and point out the different variables that likely influence his shifting behaviors and cognitive ability. 

From forgetting the name of Joe Biden and the Doctor who administered his cognitive test, to calling Milwaukee a “horrible” city, to suggesting that Nancy Pelosi would want to date him, Trump “really writes his own Saturday Night Live cold open,” as Dr. Gartner puts it. 

“Why are we talking about this? Because there's a deterioration in his frontal lobes that are causing him to become disinhibited and lose his executive functioning.”

Clips on social media can be distorted and misleading. At times Trump can be articulate and forceful. But as our hosts show you each week, there is likely enough video evidence to diagnose actual signs of a progressive dementia and cognitive decline. 

“As I predicted when we started this show two months ago, he will continue to get worse, Dr. Gartner said. “He will continue to show these symptoms more and more.” 

Dr. Kramer answers Dr. Gartner’s challenge, defend his statements, and will walk us through the major differences between Trump and Biden, as both a concerned citizen and as a practicing neuropsychologist. 

“You and I are taking a big risk by coming on this show every week and talking, not definitively, but arguing strongly for a diagnosis of Trump,” Dr. Segal said. 

“Not just what seems to me to be an onset of cognitive decline, but also his severe personality disorder. But the mainstream press doesn't want to come out and label Trump. And so they're just putting it out there that they're both old. I think it's cowardly. I don't think it helps the public.”

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Top Psychologists John Gartner and Harry Segal are joined by Clinical Psychologist John Skrovan, as they address Trump's malignant narcissism, and his inability to process shame, and how that shapes his rapid cognitive decline.

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Welcome to another addition of Shrinking Trump, where we meet each week to present the mounting evidence of Trump’s mental decline and early onset dementia. “Our goal is really to educate the public, to help them to think clinically in a more sophisticated way,” Dr. Segal said.

In this episode, our hosts will be sharing the latest audio and video examples of Trump’s disorientation, confusion, and some peculiar but very specific physical telltale signs of brain damage and deterioration.

Joining the show this week is leading clinical psychologist  Dr. John Skrovan who gives us his take on how difficult Trump’s malignant narcissism was born out of shame from a horrible emotional environment. 

“When you have a repeated kind of a shame, it can become a mortifying shame,” he said. “Some people will even call it a soul murder.” He’ll walk us through how that shame is manifested in his behavior

You’ll hear Dr. Segal’s take on Dr. Phil’s (who is no longer a licensed psychologist) recent softball interview in which the severity of Trump’s narcissistic personality was put on full display. 

“It's getting to the point where I never hear anything true,” said Dr. Segal. “And I've heard the lies being recycled because he gums them together.”

We’ll also walk through some of the terrifying details of Trump’s Project 2025 and talk about the convicted felon’s recent open embrace of the role of America’s Hitler. 

“One of the pieces of his plan that I find most dangerous and offensive, as a Jew is their attack on immigrants,“ says Dr. Gartner. “They are demonizing them. They're dehumanizing them, and they're setting people up for the idea that we can send them to concentration camps.”

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Top Psychologists John Gartner and Harry Segal are joined by Dr. John Talmadge, one of the first to have written about Trump's dementia, as they address Trump's fixation on vengeance and peel back the layers of his rapid cognitive decline.

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Welcome to another addition of Shrinking Trump, where we meet each week to present the mounting evidence of Trump’s mental decline and early onset dementia. This week was particularly telling for Trump, as he attempts to deal with the reality of his conviction on 34 felony counts.

Our guest Dr. Talmadge is a Dartmouth University grad and former clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas. His article from 2015, described Trump as demented, and suffering from malignant narcissism. “Trump's dementia is generally overlooked because of the florid, colorful, and newsworthy nature of his malignant narcissism,” Talmadge wrote.

In this episode, Dr. Talmadge explains how Trump’s mental deficits and his attempts to conceal them are laid bare in the way he communicates. “With my background, I was struck very quickly by his language, his inability to handle complex ideas, and his difficulty adapting to novel situations,” Dr. Talmadge said. “The fact that he doesn't talk with people, he talks at people, which is called compensating for your deficits.”

You are not going to want to miss Dr. Talmadge’s diagnosis, in detail, of four of the most significant psychological symptoms that serve as evidence of Trump’s mental decline.

On today’s show, our hosts give us their diagnosis of a pandering, lie-filled, interview the Fox and Friends “B Team” gave to Trump over the weekend. They’ll break down Trump’s wildest statements from the interview and explain why that kind of unchecked, biased presentation of his lies is so dangerous. “He told lies about the conviction,” Harry said. “They asked him not one question about the charges. Not one question about the substance. They accepted his story that it's all made up.”

Our hosts will also examine how Trump’s paranoia and malignant narcissism allows him to energize his supporters by creating false threats based on generalities. “He said that there was someone with a machete in a McDonald's,” Dr. Segal said. “It turns out there was once someone with a machete outside of McDonald's. So Trump reads this one little clip, and now suddenly it's an invasion of criminals who are going to chop you to pieces with their machete.”

And finally - I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s segment of Good News, Bad News, where our hosts absolutely rip apart WSJ journal coverage of Biden’s mental health, based on statements made by, as Dr. Segal said, “Kevin McCarthy, a pathological liar and psychopath.”

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Top Psychologists John Gartner and Harry Segal discuss with Dr. Lance Dodes the psychological fallout America will have to brace itself for, following the first conviction of an unhinged former President in history on Really American's SMASH HIT podcast, Shrinking Trump.

This special episode is an "emergency session” of the iTunes chart-topping podcast to discuss fallout from the unstable Republican presidential candidate that could have dire consequences.

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Returning to the show for this special is our friend Dr. Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In this episode, Lance will be helping our hosts psychoanalyze Trump’s unhinged press conference from the morning after he was convicted of 34 felonies. 

“Right now, Donald Trump is a wounded animal, " John said. “There's nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. And there's really nothing more dangerous than a wounded malignant narcissist.”

Using video and direct quotes, our hosts provide you with an in-depth analysis of how Trump’s projection, narcissism, sociopathy, and dementia were on full display in his sham of a press conference. “Remember, this is a press conference to explain why he's been convicted of 34 felonies,” said Dr. Gartner. “But from the way he presents it, you'd think he was there to accept an award.”

Dr. Dodes walks us through his own diagnosis of Trump’s performance, and helps us understand the dangerous psychology of how a now-wounded malignant narcissist like Trump would respond if he were to regain power. He also gives us a rundown of the deranged cult mentality that empowers charismatic leaders like Trump, and the interpersonal effects his distorted beliefs have on his followers.

Trump’s ability to manipulate the truth rests in his ability to repeat his lies over and over. But he’s also helped by an army of surrogates who parrot his false reality. In this episode, we’ll be taking a hard look at how the conviction and these competing realities might affect the psychology of voters. 

There’s also a chilling conversation comparing Trump’s malignant narcissism to Hitler’s that you are not going to want to miss. “I've been saying now for six years that Donald Trump is the American Hitler,” John explained. “And immigrants are the new Jews.”

Dr. Segal said it best when sounding the alarm. “We're not saying this as political activists,” he said. “We're talking about a very disturbed person with tremendous power and influence saying psychotic things that are organized around evoking rage and fear in his supporters.”

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In the latest episode of this TOP-RANKED podcast, psychologists John Gartner and Harry Segal are joined by Dr. Justin Frank, an expert in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, to pinpoint the root cause of Donald Trump’s psychopathy.

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Dr. Justin Frank is a former clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center who practices and teaches psychoanalysis in Washington, DC. He’s also the author of Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, a psychological biography of Trump.

Justin provides our listeners with his theory as to why Trump behaves the way he does, and it might just leave you stunned. You absolutely will not want to miss his insight into how and why the now-convicted felon became a prolific liar in the first place. “One of the biggest psychological sources of lying is when a person is lied to and they understand it,” he said. “So they start lying to other people.” 

Dr. Frank also pinpoints where the psychological void in Donald Trump’s life likely originated. In this interview you’ll find out exactly how that emptiness manifests itself in all of Trump’s actions, and get a stark view of what happens when that level of psychopathy meets dementia. 

We’ll kick off the show with another great segment of “Dementia Roundup,” where John and Harry share video of Trump’s most bizarre statements and behaviors from the week to highlight the mounting evidence of his cognitive decline. 

You’ll also get to hear another segment of “Good News, Bad News,” where we pick apart the best and worst of the mainstream media’s coverage of Biden and Trump’s cognitive health. This week we’re looking at coverage of some wildly false and highly unqualified claims made by some Congressional Republicans. 

“It's worse than irresponsible,” John said. “I want to be clear. I'm not using this term lightly. These people are psychopaths.”

We hope you’ll join us each week where, like a session, we’ll be analyzing Trump’s disturbing psychopathy, personality disorder, and signs of dementia.

“Tell your friends we’re here. We are trying to help educate the public about what we see as a dangerous decline of Trump's cognitive functioning,” said Harry, “which is happening in addition to a severe personality disorder known as malignant narcissism. The cognitive decline is intermittent. The psychopathology is constant.”

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Top Psychologists John Gartner and Harry Segal are joined by Emily and Mitchell Clionsky, experts in dementia, to outline the specific symptoms of Trump's mental decline on Really American's SMASH HIT podcast, Shrinking Trump.

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Mitchell Clionsky is a PhD, board-certified in clinical neuropsychology. Emily is an Internal Medicine doctor and psychiatrist as well as a diplomate in the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. They are both specialists in dementia and are co-authors of the book Dementia Prevention: Using Your Head to Save Your Brain.

You will not want to miss what they have to share from their observations and analysis of Trump. 

Emily presents our listeners with informal medical observations of Donald Trump to guide our future diagnostic questions and testing. Some of the insights she shares about his physical and mental well-being are shocking.

Mitchell takes us on a unique, deep-dive into an evaluation of Trump’s deteriorating executive functions from the viewpoint of a hiring officer at a major corporation. “We evaluated him eight years ago,” Mitchell said. “And again four years ago because he was ousted by the Board of Directors representing the shareholders for this corporation.”

This week, we’re also introducing a new feature called Bad News Good News, where we bring you the best and worst of the week’s media coverage of Trump and Biden’s cognitive health. “In addition to our mission of analyzing Trump, we have another mission - and that is to monitor how the mainstream press covers this issue,” John told us. “I think it's time to name and shame. And I think it's time to organize our voices and speak back, speak up. We've listened to enough of their bullshit. I think it's time for them to hear from us.”

Listen in as John and Harry dissect a major dishonest headline from the Washington Post this week regarding Biden’s mental health and call out the editors for refusing to issue a correction or retraction of the article. 

Harry says, “Even if we laugh sometimes, we are judicious in trying to think about what we're hearing, and analyzing the language and how it becomes distorted, which we recognize is from patients we've worked with early onset dementia.”

Tune in and be sure to let us know what you think about this fantastic episode in the comments.

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Join hosts Dr. John Gartner and Dr. Harry Segal for Shrinking Trump, a hit new weekly show dedicated to analyzing Donald Trump from a psychological point of view. As John puts it, “This is a place you'll be able to come and hear frank, honest, intelligent, educated discussions among professionals about Trump's mental health.”

In this episode, our guest is psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. Lance Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Lance was also one of the original contributors to the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a collection of essays from psychiatrists and psychologists describing Trump’s mental health as a clear and present danger to the nation and individual well-being.

As a psychoanalyst, Dr. Dodes is focused primarily on the personality disorder component of Trump’s mental health. He explains to our listeners how dementia interacts with personality disorder, particularly when compounded with narcissism. As the dementia worsens, Dr. Dodes says, Trump “knows less and less because he can't add to knowledge or correct the things that he doesn't know, because that would be a narcissistic blow.”

Lance also warns our listeners that some of the greatest character defects Trump exhibits, like the lack of empathy, are made exponentially more dangerous by his worsening dementia. “And then, of course, if there was ever a chance to correct it, he can't,” Dodes said. “Because that would mean acknowledging that he had done something wrong.”

Why is Trump falling asleep in court? Will he actually attend the debates? What would a second term for Trump look like once he’s lost all impulse control? You won’t want to miss the team's psychological approach to answering these questions and more in this fantastic interview.

You’ll also want to buckle up for another wild segment of “Dementia Roundup,” where John and Harry analyze video clips of Trump’s most bizarre statements and behaviors from the week. Their conclusions, although often terrifying, help listeners better understand the nature of Trump’s rapid mental decline and why he says, and acts, the way he does. 

Harry said it best to close out the show. “To understand someone, It takes a while to build a model of who they are. So I'm hoping that over time with each of our podcasts, everyone will start to have a more complex and integrated sense of who Trump is and how this process of mild cognitive impairment is affecting him.”

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