Nobel laureate warns Trump’s mental health could jeopardize nuclear command

Donald Trump publicised a fourth perfect score on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a screening tool whose perfect result occurs in about ten percent of healthy adults and is far rarer when repeated. Henry David Abraham, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning psychiatrist emeritus at Tufts University School of Medicine, interprets the repeated testing as evidence of a cognitive decline that could endanger global security. He co-authored a letter with 36 leading psychiatrists that was entered into the congressional record, alleging the president exhibits disorganized, tangential speech, factual confusion, grandiose delusions and severely impaired impulse control, all while holding unchecked authority over more than 5,000 nuclear warheads.

Abraham contrasts Trump’s situation with earlier presidents such as Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy, who had advisory teams to temper nuclear decisions. He acknowledges controversy over diagnosing a public figure without a personal exam but cites the duty to warn as justification. Abraham urges whistleblowers to release any undisclosed medical information and encourages Congress to consider the 25th amendment or new checks on presidential nuclear launch authority.