President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Britain's King Charles III and Queen Camilla during an arrival ceremony at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 28, 2026. HENRY NICHOLLS/Pool via REUTERS
President Donald Trump's handshaking gaffe during the recent visit from U.K. royals was written off by many as yet another example of his rude, self-absorbed behavior, but according to one medical expert monitoring his mental decline, it seemed more like a warning sign for his rumored decline into dementia.
Earlier this week, Trump welcomed King Charles III and Queen Camilla from the U.K. for a high-profile state visit. Alongside Charles' backhanded shade during an address to Congress, the visit also made headlines for an incident in which Trump seemed to cut ahead of the queen consort while she was shaking hands with and being introduced to members of his cabinet, and then awkwardly shaking hands with his own officials.
"Hilary M.A. CCC-SLP" is a certified Speech-Language Pathologist with a focus on cognitive decline issues and has shared numerous videos offering insights into the signs of Trump's cognitive and physical decline in recent months. In response to the incident with Trump and Camilla, she argued that it was not merely an example of his rude tendencies, but rather a sign of his mental state as he appears to slip further into dementia.
Examining the video, she noted that Trump was positioned well behind Camilla before cutting ahead of her, meaning that it was not a case of the two shaking hands near each other and Trump moving ahead to continue. Instead, the situation indicated that the president had to have "an action plan within the brain" when he decided to cut ahead of the queen. She also suspected that the king and queen were briefed on the plan for meeting the cabinet ahead of time, which Trump potentially forgot about.
"So I think there was likely instruction, and he either forgot the instruction or had zero impulse control once the whole thing started," she explained.
She further suggested that she believed all parties involved had been briefed on the greeting event, given that Charles and Camilla seemed perplexed by what Trump did, with the king attempting to move along and shake more hands, while the queen seemed to withdraw in confusion.
She then suggested that Trump's behavior indicated a specific symptom seen in patients experiencing dementia: echopraxia. This, she argued, was also evident during his interaction with the "DoorDash lady," where he seemed to mimic her swaying back and forth.
"It comes back to the disinhibition that can happen with cognitive decline and dementia, and echopraxia," she continued. "That is something that is done within dementia, within cognitive decline. The brain is basically going, 'monkey see, monkey do.' So, monkey see Camilla shaking people's hands, monkey do go shake people's hands, and it happened to be that he just got in front of them and then started shaking hands, and then just couldn't stop until the line was done."
"As always," she concluded. "Donald Trump, he's gotta go."