Psychologist details 'glitches' that point to Trump 'nervous system damage'

US President Donald Trump claps during a rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center in Grand Island, Nebraska, US, October 5, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. John Paul Garrison, known as "Dr. G.," who frequently analyzes nonverbal communication, analyzed President Donald Trump's speeches over the past several days, including several "glitches" that point to the president's physical and mental decline.

Trump was in Nebraska on Monday, in Duncan, Oklahoma, and then in Ohio and Alabama prior to that. It's all part of Trump's MAGA blitz ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, where he hopes to encourage what's left of his coalition of supporters to support Republicans on Nov. 3.

The analysis details more of Trump's "speech, body language, facial movements, motor behavior and apparent difficulty producing certain words clearly" the video describes. It asks, "Are these simply ordinary verbal mistakes during long campaign speeches, or is there a broader pattern developing across Trump's recent public appearances?"

The first thing he noticed was the twitch of Trump's arm and he grimaced as if it was painful or unexpected.

"Now, if you're paying close attention, you may have seen his right arm spasm-ed and then his teeth clenched," said Garrison. "We're going to go back and watch this again, but we're seeing struggles with controlling his motor functioning. And this can be due to a variety of neurological conditions. It can be due to different kinds of neurological damage. We're actually going to get more into the specifics of that as we go, but I want to go back and I want to show you this again first."

During that same incident, Garrison said that it's clear that at the same time Trump is struggling to maintain his train of thought.

"I think he really felt that. I think he really recognized that something just happened and he's having a very hard time maintaining concentration and maintaining focus," said Garrison.

Trump's slurring words at the start of the Alabama where he appeared to say "thank yo" and struggled to pronounce "a place called Mobile." Garrison noted that the term for this is dysarthria, where muscles used for speech simply fail. The Mayo Clinic claims that a frequent cause can be "Nervous system and brain damage from conditions like strokes, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), traumatic brain injury or cerebral palsy."

"He's having a hard time controlling his mouth. Maybe a hard time controlling his lips and his jaw," Garrison explained. "And that's going to, at times, make words sound strange because these issues seem to be intermittent. In other words, they don't happen constantly. They only happen at times. Just like his right arm, which we've seen spasm over and over again. And incidentally, there are motor pathways that are related. So there could be a lesion in the brain that both affects the lower jaw, the mouth, and language production as well as motor functioning of the limbs because those are related."

That section of the speech continued with slurs and jumbled speech, and his arm seemed to twitch again.

Garrison said that brain lesions are most commonly caused by damage to the brain, such as a small stroke. That can leave a lesion.

"There could be damage and impairment in the pathways that deal with both the limbs and the mouth. So we might actually see clusters where we see both problems with language production as well as controlling the limbs. So it does make sense that we're seeing this at the same time," he said.

At one point, Trump corrected himself when he couldn't pronounce "pivotal." Garrison said that his body was spasm-ing as he was trying to speak, which made the word "pivotal come out completely wrong. And so he actually noticed it so much that he felt the need to correct it. He typically does not."

Garrison goes on to show more of Trump's twitching, this time in his full body. Even Trump seems to notice, with his eyebrows rising and his eyes widening.

In the next segment, the speech wasn't affected by the muscles in his mouth; it was about planning the words he would say next on the fly. When he doesn't know these words, Garrison said, Trump generally moves past it and fumbles through, covering by going off on another tangent.

At the Ohio rally, Trump appears to be more agitated and impulsive. Garrison said that he assumes Trump is like that all the time in private, but in public he's now struggling to keep a tighter grip on himself. As he continues to age, Garrison expects this will grow worse with the president lashing out in anger.

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