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  "path": "/post/211790/donald-trump-renovation-obsession-cognitive-decline",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-12T17:46:23.000Z",
  "site": "https://newrepublic.com",
  "tags": [
    "Breaking News",
    "Politics",
    "Republican Party",
    "Donald Trump",
    "Health",
    "old age",
    "Cognitive Decline",
    "Construction",
    "Reflecting Pool",
    "Ballroom",
    "Arc de Trump",
    "Mark Rutte",
    "The Daily Beast",
    "The Washington Post"
  ],
  "textContent": "Like a tongue on a sore tooth, Donald Trump keeps coming back to his renovation projects.\n\nThe intrusive topic has won his mind in all sorts of inappropriate settings: He has deflected from the Iran war and inflation concerns by fixating on the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, pivoted to renderings of his construction projects during an Oval Office meeting with Mark Rutte that was intended to focus on global alliances and security issues, and interrupted a January meeting with oil executives about Venezuela’s future to mention his $400 million ballroom, an idea so inspiring that he stopped the conversation and walked to a window to muse about its construction.\n\nA prominent clinical psychologist has signaled that the tireless obsession could be a warning sign of cognitive decline.\n\nDr. John Gartner, a former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, told The Daily Beast Thursday that the president’s repetitive verbal ramblings are symptomatic of something much graver.\n\n“Tangential speech is one of the diagnostic criteria for dementia,” Gartner told the Beast.\n\n“What he’s obsessed with is a function of malignant narcissism. He’s obsessed with things that reflect glory on him,” Gartner continued. “He’s changing Washington, D.C., to Trump D.C.”\n\nThat could include any number of projects: Trump has also (impermanently) plastered his name on the Kennedy Center and proposed a 250-foot “Arc de Trump” in the nation’s capital.\n\nAn analysis by The Washington Post in April found that, by that time, Trump had invoked his ballroom in roughly a third of his public remarks, far outpacing any mentions of his supposed policy priorities.\n\nBut Gartner mentioned that Trump’s rants would only “go downhill from here.”\n\nThe White House, in response, insisted that Trump is in immaculate condition.\n\n“If it quacks like a duck, it may actually just be a Democrat hack doctor,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Beast in response to Gartner’s assessment.\n\nYet something must be unusual about the president’s condition. Last month, Trump’s examination at Walter Reed Medical Center involved 22 specialists, breaking the previous record held by George W. Bush, who once saw 10 specialists in one go.\n\nThe White House has not elaborated on exactly why Trump needed so many doctors. Trump officials told the _Post_ that the unconventionally large medical team allowed for a “complete and preventive evaluation” of the president. White House physician Sean Barbabella commented that the assessment found Trump in “excellent health.”",
  "title": "What Trump’s Vanity Projects Reveal About His Mental Health"
}