A clinical and forensic psychologist is raising eyebrows about an apparent tic the president has been recently displaying that he seemingly cannot control.
Dr. John Paul Garrison, who specializes in body language and is an online political commentator, has already concluded that President Donald Trump has seen an accelerated cognitive and physical decline in the last year, which has likely been worsened by his old age.
But a new revelation from Garrison found that Trump has more recently been exhibiting “what appear to be concerning neurological symptoms.”
While examining two recent events featuring the president, he explained that at times when Trump was not speaking, he appeared to suffer a minor spasm in his right arm, which Garrison said shows signs of increasing discomfort as the attention is not all on him.
“As you can see, President Trump seems to have a distinct spasm on one side,” he explained while showing the video of the spasm, adding, “What this could mean is this could be neurodegenerative disease. We could be talking Alzheimer’s, we could be talking Lewy body dementia, you could be talking something like Parkinson’s disease.”
Lewy body dementia is a brain disorder that can impact movement and cause people to have trouble focusing.
Garrison also theorized that the new spasms “could also come with post-stroke behavior. There can be damage to certain areas of the brain that can cause this, but we are seeing something distinct, and it appears to be involuntary.”
The doctor explained that Trump has “consistently” appeared “quite impatient when other people are speaking,” which he said only worsens the spasm.
“He feels agitated, and that’s going to add to the likelihood we’re going to see more of these spasms,” Garrison elaborated. “Standing there, feeling irritated. Those types of feelings can increase the likelihood these will occur. If you were paying attention just now, you saw his right hand twitching a little bit. I do think that there’s some awareness that this is going to happen again.”
When examining the second press conference in question, in which Trump was boasting about his new helipad on the South Lawn, Garrison zeroed in on the president’s right hand as he explained that it seemed to suffer a spasm.
“Now, it did appear that there was a distinct right-side spasm. It happened repeatedly over the course of the first meeting as well as the press conference outside,” he said.
“So whether this is related to damage to the brain that is post-stroke or it is related to something more like dementia,” he added. “We’re going to continue to explore this as more behaviors become apparent because there has been no shortage of them recently.”
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s inquiry about the president’s apparent arm spasms.
In addition to the new spasms, Trump has displayed many health ailments in his second presidency.
The Daily Beast has extensively covered Trump’s many health ailments, including his severely bruised hands, his perpetually swollen ankles, a neck rash, his slurred speech, his repeated confusion, as well as his habit of falling asleep in public, combined with his sleepless nights spent rage-posting online.
