Donald Trump’s rambling speeches and the 25th Amendment have become linked in public debate as mental health professionals, House Democrats, and a handful of former Republican allies point to his meandering public statements, apparent daytime drowsiness, and volatile social media posts as grounds for a formal fitness review. Representative Jamie Raskin has introduced legislation to create a bipartisan commission to evaluate presidential capacity, and 36 physicians have signed a statement entered into the Congressional Record calling for his removal. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, however, has never been invoked in American history, and the procedural bar for using it against a sitting president who disputes the finding is close to insurmountable.
What the “Rambling” Refers To
The speeches drawing scrutiny share a recognizable pattern: long duration, wide topical drift, and factual claims that fact-checkers have flagged as false or unsupported.
During a July 2025 cabinet meeting scheduled to address flooding in Texas and the war in Ukraine, Trump spent roughly 13 minutes discussing paintings, lamps, and gold-leaf moldings he had chosen for the room. In a July 27, 2025 meeting with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, he pivoted from immigration to a two-minute account of windmills driving whales “loco.” At a Florida roundtable on July 1, 2025, he answered a question about campaign promises with an extended discussion of household faucet restrictors.1The Guardian. Donald Trump Mental Fitness
His September 23, 2025 address to the UN General Assembly ran about an hour, portions delivered without a teleprompter after it malfunctioned. He opened with complaints about a stopped escalator, spent several minutes on a $500 million bid he said he once made to renovate the UN complex, dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” and told the assembled leaders, “Your countries are going to hell.”2CNN. United Nations Trump Speech Annotated3The American Presidency Project. Remarks the United Nations General Assembly New York City
A September 30, 2025 speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico, to which hundreds of military commanders had been summoned from posts as far as Germany, Japan, and South Korea, lasted about 73 minutes. The New York Times described the first 43 minutes as grievances about Joe Biden, the media, tariffs, a restaurant dinner, and the Nobel Peace Prize. Only near the 44-minute mark did Trump introduce a proposal to use American cities as military “training grounds.”4The New York Times. Trump Military Brass Speech
His March 4, 2025 address to a joint session of Congress ran one hour and 39 minutes, longer than any prior State of the Union, according to the American Presidency Project. FactCheck.org and The Washington Post identified 26 claims that were untrue, misleading, or lacked context.5The Washington Post. Fact Check Trump Speech Address Congress6FactCheck.org. Factchecking Trumps Address to Congress
On January 20, 2026, marking a year back in office, Trump spoke to reporters for more than an hour and 20 minutes before taking questions. He claimed the U.S. had “no inflation,” that drug prices had been cut “up to 600 percent,” said God was “proud of the job I’ve done,” and asserted that “Somalia’s not even a country.”7Time. Trump Press Briefing Speech Greenland8The Guardian. Trump Press Conference NATO Greenland
Trump has defended his style as a deliberate rhetorical technique he calls “the weave,” telling Joe Rogan that “you have to be very smart to do weaves.”9NPR. Trump Rally Speech 2024 Election
What Clinicians Have Said
Every mental health professional quoted on the record has noted they have not personally examined the president, and their assessments differ.
Psychologist John Gartner said in June 2025 that Trump’s speech shows “the classic signs of dementia,” pointing to what he called a “gross deterioration from someone’s baseline.” Psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman of Weill Cornell Medical College wrote in The Atlantic that a patient with Trump’s “verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech” would warrant a “rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness.”1The Guardian. Donald Trump Mental Fitness
Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in psychology at Cornell and in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, identified what he described as “phonemic paraphasia” (starting a word and being unable to finish it), a “strange gait,” and declining complexity of Trump’s vocabulary and concepts. Segal also applied the clinical term “confabulation” to a claim Trump made that his late uncle taught Ted Kaczynski at MIT, which is factually impossible: John Trump died in 1985, before Kaczynski was publicly identified, and Kaczynski never attended MIT.10Cornell University. Trumps Abrupt Decision Play DJ Sign Accelerating Cognitive Decline1The Guardian. Donald Trump Mental Fitness
Aging researcher Carolyn Aldwin of Oregon State University said in 2026 that Trump “has really severe language problems,” “can’t complete sentences,” and “gets very confused.”11The Hill. Trump Decline 25th Amendment
Other specialists have pushed back on remote diagnosis. Boston University neurology professor Andrew Budson said he did not detect cognitive impairment in Trump or Biden from public appearances and that diagnosing a brain disorder from campaign behavior “is not possible and should not be trusted.” Dementia specialists Zaldy Tan of Cedars-Sinai and Sharon Sha of Stanford warned against “amateur speculation” from short video clips, noting proper diagnosis requires more than an hour of thorough testing.12Boston University. Trump Biden Signs of Cognitive Decline13OPB. Gaffes Biden Trump Aging
A separate cluster of reports concerns apparent drowsiness. CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner said Trump had “fallen asleep in the Oval Office on multiple occasions with people talking to him,” and characterized the pattern as “severe daytime somnolence.” Trump appeared to close his eyes at a May 11, 2026 White House event on maternal health and at a June 8, 2026 Knicks game, where owner James Dolan publicly insisted the president “was very much awake.” A Memorial Day 2026 clip circulated online was rated “unproven” by Snopes, which noted the low-quality footage did not confirm sleep.14Forbes. CNN Medical Analyst the President Appears To Struggle To Stay Awake During the Day15Yahoo News. Donald Trump Appears Fall Asleep16Snopes. Trump Asleep Memorial Day Claim17The New York Times. Trump Age Birthday 80
The Formal 25th Amendment Push
Calls to invoke the 25th Amendment gained momentum in April 2026 after an Easter Sunday Truth Social post in which Trump threatened Iran with language including, “Open the [F—in’] Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” signed off with “Praise be to Allah.” Senator Chris Murphy called the post “completely, utterly unhinged” and said that if he were in the cabinet, he “would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the message as a “deranged mocking of Islam.”18LiveNOW from FOX. 25th Amendment Trump Easter Message Allah Iran
Some critics came from Trump’s political flank. Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene told CNN that Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s civilization was “not tough rhetoric, it’s insanity.” Podcaster Candace Owens called the president “a genocidal lunatic,” and Infowars founder Alex Jones said “he does babble and sounds like the brain’s not doing too hot.”19The New York Times. Trump Mental Fitness 25th Amendment
On April 14, 2026, House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin introduced legislation to establish a 17-member bipartisan commission to evaluate presidential fitness under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. The proposed body would include four physicians and four psychiatrists among former high-ranking executive officials, empowered to work with the vice president to declare a president unfit. Raskin said the bill was prompted by “a series of increasingly volatile, incoherent, and alarming public statements by the President regarding the ongoing conflict with Iran,” and he wrote to White House physician Captain Sean Barbabella requesting a full cognitive and neurological evaluation.20LiveNOW from FOX. 25th Amendment Bill Raskin Trump Removal
On April 30, 2026, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed entered a statement into the Congressional Record signed by 36 physicians from institutions including Harvard Medical School, Tufts, Columbia, and George Washington University, declaring Trump “mentally unfit” and calling for his removal “with the greatest urgency.” The physicians, who acknowledged they had not examined him, described “a rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline,” and cited “grandiose and delusional beliefs,” “reckless threats of violence,” “compulsive, manic-like late-night communications,” and “fixation on perceived enemies.” They specifically raised the risk associated with the commander-in-chief’s sole authority to launch nuclear weapons.21U.S. Congress. Medical Concerns About President Donald J. Trump and His Fitness for Office
What the 25th Amendment Actually Requires
Section 4 of the 25th Amendment has never been invoked. It requires the vice president together with a majority of the cabinet, or a body established by Congress, to declare the president unable to discharge the duties of the office. If the president disputes the finding, Congress decides, and a two-thirds vote in both chambers is required to keep the vice president serving as acting president.22Congressional Research Service. Presidential Disability Under the 25th Amendment
Two features of that structure matter for the current debate. The initiating step is controlled by the vice president and cabinet, all of whom serve at the president’s pleasure, not by outside physicians or members of Congress. And the final step, if the president contests removal, needs a supermajority in both the House and Senate, a threshold that has not been met in any modern controversy involving a sitting president. Raskin’s bill would establish a congressional commission of the kind the amendment contemplates as an alternative to the cabinet, but the commission’s declaration would still be subject to presidential dispute and the same two-thirds congressional vote.
How the White House Has Responded
The White House has consistently rejected the fitness concerns. In April 2025, White House physician Dr. Sean Barbabella stated that Trump exhibits “excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the commander-in-chief.” Congressman Ronny Jackson, himself a former White House physician, described Trump as “mentally and physically sharper than ever before.” White House spokesperson Liz Huston called critics “deranged resistance leftists” and asserted that “President Trump’s mental sharpness is second to none.”1The Guardian. Donald Trump Mental Fitness
Trump said in November 2025 that he had undergone a “PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST” and disclosed that he had received an MRI in October 2025. After a May 2026 physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he posted that “Everything checked out PERFECTLY”; the White House described the visit as “routine annual dental and medical assessments.” No detailed results or cognitive test scores have been publicly released.23Politico. Donald Trump NYT Age Health24USA Today. Trump Health Questions Age Hand Bruising
Responding to the 25th Amendment calls specifically, the White House said the president is “sharp” and uses his rhetoric to keep opponents “on edge.”19The New York Times. Trump Mental Fitness 25th Amendment
Where Public Opinion Sits
A February 2026 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that nearly six in 10 Americans believe the president is “growing more erratic” with age, including 30 percent of Republicans.11The Hill. Trump Decline 25th Amendment A New York Times report in November 2025 noted that Trump’s public schedule had narrowed compared to his first term, with events typically concentrated between noon and 5 p.m.23Politico. Donald Trump NYT Age Health Trump turned 80 on June 14, 2026, making him the oldest person ever elected to the presidency.17The New York Times. Trump Age Birthday 80