One is Fying Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Bill Press, Tribune Content Agency on Jan 22, 2026

No more beating around the bush. It’s not enough anymore to say Donald Trump’s starting to show signs of mental decline. Say it out loud! Donald Trump is already totally bonkers!

That’s been more evident every day, but never more so than this week. How else to explain his obsession with taking over Greenland? Don’t take it from me. Take it from Trump himself. In a January 7 interview with the New York Times, Trump admitted his determination to seize Greenland is driven, not by facts on the ground, but by delusions in his own sick head.

"Why is ownership important here?" Times national security correspondent David E. Sanger asked."Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success," Trump, 79, replied. Quick-thinking White House correspondent Katie Rogers – whom Trump recently called “ugly, both inside and out” for writing a story about his age – chimed in with the obvious follow-up: "Psychologically important to you or to the United States?" Without hesitation, Trump fessed up: “Psychologically important for me.”

How and why it’s so psychologically important to him became even more clear this week. His feelings were hurt because the Nobel Peace Prize, which he did not deserve, but which he publicly campaigned, begged and groveled for, went to somebody else.

Now, it’s hard to believe that any sane man would decide that because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, he’d get even by invading and seizing territory that’s part of another NATO country, thereby single-handedly destroying NATO and alliances with our European allies that have kept the world safe, and allowed economies on both sides of the Atlantic to grow, for the last 80 years. But no sane man did. Donald Trump did.

Again, don’t take my word for it. Trump admits it. On January 18, after receiving a text from Norway Prime Minister Jonas Store offering to host a meeting to “de-escalate” the Greenland issue, Trump fired back on Truth Social: “Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”

What’s wrong with that statement? Everything! One, Trump has not ended eight wars, not even one. Two, Norway doesn’t have jurisdiction over Greenland, Denmark does. Three, the government of Norway doesn’t award the Nobel Peace Prize, the independent, five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee, appointed by Norway’s Parliament, does. Four, no leader of any government or business, large or small, should make any decision based on “hurt feelings.”

This week, after that bizarre text and his erratic appearance at a White House press briefing, people stopped whispering about Trump’s declining mental health and started shouting about it. Dr. Jonathan Reiner, cardiologist to the late Vice President Dick Cheney, called for a “bipartisan congressional inquiry into presidential fitness.” Ty Cobb, a White House attorney in Trump’s first term, said it was obvious Trump was experiencing a “significant decline” in his mental faculties. “I think the dementia and the cognitive decline are palpable,” he told MS-NOW. Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey charged members of the Trump Cabinet: “Invoke the 25th Amendment.” Fat chance!

Of course, this isn’t the first talk of Trump’s questionable mental health. In 2016, a group of 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts warned that “dangerous psychological patterns” made him unfit to handle the duties of president. In 2017, they published their findings as “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” Even more ominous warnings were raised by health professionals in 2024, among them leading psychologist Dr. John Gartner, former professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School, who said Trump was clearly showing signs of dementia.

On my podcast last month, Gartner told me things had gone south for Trump in 2025. “Dementia is a deteriorating illness,” he explained. “It doesn’t stay the same and it doesn’t get better. It only gets worse. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing.” He concluded: “If you just take out some graph paper and plot the rate of his deterioration … there’s simply no way he can make it till the end of his term, compos mentis.”

I wish I had better news, but that’s where we are. The president is seriously mentally ill. You wouldn’t trust him to walk your dog, let alone run the country. But Republicans won’t impeach him and his Cabinet will never invoke the 25th amendment. There’s no way to get rid of him until 2028. Let’s hope we still have a country left by then.

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(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)