President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks to the media on the day of a NATO leaders' summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
President Donald Trump's mental and cognitive faculties have been "rapidly declining" already, and as one author and long-time Trump enemy told The Daily Beast, he is about to get much worse very soon, once the GOP takes its predicted beating in the midterms.
Kurt Andersen is a writer best known for co-founding the satirical Spy magazine, a publication that took aim at numerous celebrities, but none more so than Trump, going so far as to start repeatedly calling him a "short-fingered vulgarian" in 1988. On Sunday, Andersen appeared as a guest for the latest edition of The Daily Beast Podcast, telling host Joanna Coles that "the president is going to become increasingly angry and erratic as his mental health declines," and that a severe loss for Republicans in the midterms will be sure to accelerate that decline.
"He’s obviously beyond whatever cognitive decline he had and has, and more manifest craziness, I think the kind of elderly kind of, as they call it in dementia, sundownerism, where people who are with dementia... late in the day, like, just get angry,” Andersen said. "In his case and in old people’s case, like a kind of the sun, the sunset itself is a daily foreshadowing of 'you’re gonna die soon.'"
Andersen added: "He will be more angry, you know, more himself, and God knows what forms that will take in terms of anger and depression."
Andersen further described the president as "a guy who has gotten everything he ever wanted," most notably things like "fear, respect and... attention."
"He's got it all," Andersen said. "And yet he is so manifestly miserable."
Andersen suggested that the cracks and drama starting to form within the Republican Party in relation to the midterms — including candidates getting caught blaming him for their woes — are likely to make Trump even more deranged. He also predicted that Trump will retreat to his typical means of deflecting damage to his ego.
"He’ll say it’s rigged, and he’ll do all that stuff that we know and thank goodness, you know, we’ve had some years to build a legal apparatus that’s prepared for that," Andersen said. "But, he will be blamed, and... we already have Ken Paxton on his hot mic [saying], 'Trump's bringing me down here.' You know, the most unlikable, unpopular Republican candidate in America... and this is Mr. MAGA, who only... has the nomination for Senate in Texas because of, you know, Trump's petty, petulant dislike of John Cornyn, who no doubt would be, you know, sailing to reelection today."