President Donald Trump attends a maternal health event in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., May 11, 2026. REUTERS Evelyn Hockstein
President Donald Trump has been exhibiting a "very, very strange" new behavior, according to one body language expert, amid numerous others that indicate his physical and cognitive health continues to decline.
Dr. John Paul Garrison is a clinical and forensic psychologist, as well as an expert in body language, who produces numerous videos offering professional insights into the behaviors of major public figures. Over the last several months, he has frequently examined Trump during speeches and appearances, noting many signs that point to significant neurological decline, even suggesting that he may have suffered a stroke sometime last year.
In his latest video, Garrison examined several clips of Trump from the past week, including an Oval Office event in which he was being questioned about his new press ban. As the president spoke, Garrison noted the signs of a "very, very strange" emerging trend in which Trump appears to struggle with eye contact.
"Now, something I've been observing for months now is that President Trump's eye contact has gotten very, very strange," Garrsion said. "When he's talking to people, he looks away. He struggles to maintain appropriate levels of eye contact. Obviously, people look away sometimes, but what I'm talking about are changes in his behavior because this is not what he used to do. We see issues in social cognition, gaze control [and] attention deficits after people have had strokes, when they have dementia, when they have frontal lobe dysfunction, when they have various neurocognitive issues. So, to see him struggling so much with eye contact now to me suggests this is more evidence of that continued decline."
Garrison also argued that the press ban itself was a sign of Trump's recent mental decline, noting his explanation about getting "sick of" negative press coverage indicates that the president's "resilience" is weakening.
"It used to be that he would try to use the fake news and make that something that would get his base excited," Garrison explained. "But at this point, he seems to have abandoned that because it's too upsetting for him. He doesn't have the ability to think through all of this the way that he once did. So at this point, that's why he's trying to get rid of it because it's not useful to him. At this point, it just confuses him. It upsets him and he doesn't know what to do with it. And this is because he is not able to think as clearly as he once was."
