Is it time to question Trump’s mental health as we did Joe Biden?

What’s the story?

"Dig me wust is the Trump policy," the US president told reporters at a press conference this week, held at the renamed Kennedy Centre.

The assumption is Donald Trump meant "drill, baby, drill", but forgot his own catchphrase in front of the cameras.

It came on the same day he claimed California governor Gavin Newsom has "learning disabilities", and publicly shared confidential details of a Republican representative's terminal diagnosis – amid ongoing attacks on NATO countries who refused to send military support to his war in Iran.

A war Trump says he began “out of habit” and, he has claimed the US has already won – but is looking increasingly "desperate" as he demands help.

“It would be hard to imagine a series of more jumbled, confused, contradictory, or angry messages,” says Jon Sopel.

“As Trump railed against his allies, he said the war was won – no, it isn't won, we need extra help, but no, we don't need help.”

Emily Maitlis says he sounds like an “angry man with no friends”.

But is he just angry, or is there a bigger question here about Trump’s mental state, and capabilities.

Does Trump now sound like a ‘dying monarch’?

Hearing the US president criticise allies and NATO members is nothing new – particularly in 2026 as the invasion of Iran becomes increasingly complex – but Emily describes the reception of his insults now being met with a “shrug”.

She says Trump’s “weave” – how he bounces from topic to topic during speeches – now sounds like a “soliloquy of a dying monarch.”

“As we know, it is not really what Trump says that matters, it is how others respond to him,” Emily says.

“A year ago, people would have been flustered – trying to meet him, trying to do what was right, trying to work out what they had to gain.

“Now, it's best described as a slightly pitying mutual shrug.”

Lewis says it may be time for everyone in the West to end the “collective delusion” which sees us treat Trump as a rational ruler.

“This was the week where all those delusions fell away,” he says.

In the Kennedy Centre press conference, Trump also claimed that he had ‘predicted’ not only the Iran war and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, but also the 9/11 attacks on New York’s Twin Towers.

He did no such thing, and Emily says all you have to do is “take a peek at history” to plan for Iran’s retaliation to invasion from the US and Israel.

Iranian rulers have spoken openly, since the 1970s, of how aware the country is about the global power it wields by controlling such vital oil exports.

Trump derangement syndrome, or a deranged Trump?

During his time in power, the president has used the term ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ to describe people who are critical of him.

Now, Lewis says, it’s finally time to ask whether the call is coming from inside the house.

“The question isn't about whether we've got Trump derangement syndrome, the simple question is whether Trump himself is deranged,” he says.

“This is a man who is not in command of events. This is a man who is being driven by impulse and whatever is in his head at any given moment – the press conference showed that.”

In June 2025, Trump ordered an investigation into Joe Biden’s mental decline in his final months in office.

Now may be time to start asking the same questions of Trump himself.

“When Joe Biden was failing towards the end of his presidency, we were all asking if things were right,” Jon says.

“Here we have Donald Trump inventing stories – The question we've got to ask is, whether he believes this.”

This visible sense of “derangement”, Lewis adds, is making it easier for Keir Starmer, and other world leaders, to refuse his requests for help in Iran.

Is this the end of Trump’s hold on American voters?

Lewis says that most of the time, Trump’s MAGA supporters will buy whatever “confected nonsense” the president is selling.

But in this instance, the made-up stories and outright lies simply do not work.

“There are times when confection and imagination doesn't win the day – the Straits of Hormuz is either open or it's not. The oil price is either rising or it's not,” he says, with Trump finally trying to bluff his way out of factual events which are affecting people’s everyday lives.

“These are inescapable realities.”

Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.