Trump's 'diseased mind' goes much deeper than his obvious 'decline'

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President Donald Trump looks on as he exits Air Force One on his arrival at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, January 31, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

President Donald Trump's physical and cognitive "decline" is obvious for all to see, one veteran reporter told The Daily Beast, but the true cause of his "diseased mind" is something much worse than his health.

Terry Moran is a longtime cable news journalist, best known for his over two decades of experience in high-profile roles with ABC News. His time at the network came to an abrupt end in the summer of 2025, when he took to social media and said that Trump's controversial deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, is "richly endowed with the capacity for hatred.

Since then, he has become much more outspoken in his criticism of Trump and his administration, including in his guest appearance on the latest episode of The Daily Beast Podcast. During the interview, Moran shared a story about how he was "shut down very hard" whenever he suggested stories about the health status of former President Joe Biden while he was still in office, and insisted that such things were a "legitimate concern" for American voters.

Moran also said that "we all know what we know when we see people fading," and argued that Trump is making a similar decline very quickly.

"It is difficult to diagnose somebody at a distance if you're trying to do it in a journalistically sound fashion," Moran said. "But come on, you can see what you see. And with this guy, it's happening fast."

"Right, and also I think people have their own experience of elderly relatives. They know what decline looks like," Coles responded. "Donald Trump is clearly on a path to decline. The issue is, is he, you know, is he competent to lead this country?"

"He's certainly in decline. He's unwell, right?" Moran continued. "And he's in decline. They're telling us the truth. All those things should energize journalists to go after this story, and they aren't, in any meaningful way. And yet I would say that the insanity — fair work — not in the medical sense, but the craziness of his actions, launching this war, the manner in which he says, 'nobody can stop me.'"

Moran also suggested that Trump's threats in response to losing his Kennedy Center renaming battles could also be a sign of his "loss of inhibition control," as a result of some sort of "mental" or "intellectual" decline. However, he also suggested that the issues are the result of something deeper: his fundamental character, worsened by a plot to surround him with complete sycophants.

"But here's the other thing: This is a megalomaniac; a megalomaniac, and a diseased mind," Moran argued. "In that way, where clearly he could not get enough attention, he could not get enough power, he could not get enough glory... He was his giant hole in him that nothing will ever fill. And now, after a first term in which he was... restrained by traditional American patriots and officials,this lot that he came in with, and it was planned and plotted carefully, are patriots for him and him alone."

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