Washington, D.C. 2025 April 2. President Donald Trump during a major "Make America Wealthy Again" event held in the White Rose Garden. Image via Shutterstock.
President Donald Trump will become more dangerous than ever as the "tragedy" of his presidency reaches its conclusion, one psychologist told The Daily Beast, as he will be looking for more and more ways to unleash "fury" and "destruction" on the country.
Dr. John Gartner is a veteran clinical psychologist and author who previously worked as an assistant professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University. He has also made frequent appearances on The Daily Beast Podcast over the years, often putting forward the argument that Trump's extensive media appearances over the years have made it easy to track his physical and mental decline.
During his latest appearance on the show this weekend, host Joanna Coles pressed Gartner about what he sees coming from the president after his historic rebuke from voters in the midterms, and while not eager to rain on the parade of anyone celebrating, he warned that the defeat is about to make him more dangerous than ever.
"Hell hath no fury like a malignant narcissist scorned," Gartner said. "I think we're now in the third act of the tragedy, and I think we're in more danger now than we've ever been. Look, he's going to act out in ways that are destructive to show his power and dominance, right? And to gain the sadistic sense of pleasure that he gets from destruction."
Gartner continued, offering a grim and vulgar analogy for the way he currently views Trump's dangerous psyche.
"You know, I have an analogy, and I really want to give a trigger warning. I'm not saying that in any kind of ironic way," he continued. "I mean, for anyone who's been a victim of domestic violence, you might want to turn off the sound for a few minutes. But I feel like we're at the stage where a woman who's been abused goes, 'Oh, thank God I kicked him out of the house. I have a restraining order. I'm finally safe. And that's often the time when the really destructive abusers say, 'Okay, now I'm going to kill the b——.' I think that he is that guy and we are the b——, and he doesn't care if he kills us all, you know?"
Gartner also brought up the final order that Adolph Hitler issued right before taking his own life, often referred to as his "Nero Decree," in which he demanded that all of Germany's ports, farms, factories and ships be destroyed. When told that such an order would mean the deaths of every German, Hitler said, "Good."
"He said, 'Good,' because all the good ones are dead already," Gartner said. "In other words, he literally wanted to kill every single German, take every single German life down with him. That's how a malignant narcissist thinks."
