Overview
- Dr. John Gartner, a veteran clinical psychologist and former Johns Hopkins assistant professor, told The Daily Beast he believes the president has entered a more dangerous “third act” after the midterm rebuke.
- Gartner warned Trump is likely to “act out” to show dominance and take pleasure in causing disruption, using an abusive-relationship metaphor to describe the risk of violent or destructive responses.
- He invoked a historical analogy to Hitler’s final scorched-earth order to illustrate a worst-case scenario of destructive refusal to accept defeat, though he framed this as interpretation rather than clinical proof.
- Gartner said those behaviors could let the president block or frustrate Democratic initiatives for the next two years, raising the chance of shutdowns, legal fights, and broader political chaos.
- The comments were reported by The Daily Beast and republished by left-leaning outlets, and the coverage notes these are expert opinions without new medical evidence and not formal diagnoses.