A Nobel Peace Prize winner warned that President Donald Trump’s mental health and access to nuclear weapons make him “more dangerous” now.
Henry David Abraham, a psychiatrist, was among 36 physicians who signed an April 30 open letter calling for Trump’s removal from office under the 25th Amendment. The letter, which was entered into the Congressional Record, cited a “marked deterioration in cognitive functioning” and “severely impaired judgment and impulse control” as serious concerns.
In an interview this week with SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah, Abraham was asked whether his assessment had changed in the three months since the letter was penned.
“Yeah, if anything it’s worse,” said Abraham, who shared in the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
“I mean, if an airline pilot had half of the symptoms that the president of the United States has, we would not let him on an airplane, we certainly wouldn’t want to fly with him,” he added. “It doesn’t make sense, and yet, we have a system which enfolds the president’s health in a shroud of secrecy.”
“Henry David Abraham is a Trump Deranged loser engaging in armchair diagnosis for political purposes. He is a disgrace to the medical profession,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told The Independent.
In the April letter, Abraham and the other physicians clarified they had not personally examined Trump, but said they had “closely followed his behavior and his statements.”
During the interview, he called for greater transparency about the president’s health, warning that the stakes are extraordinarily high when he commands an arsenal of thousands of nuclear warheads.
“When a person has sole access to the nuclear armamentaria, it’s crazy, and this is what we’re doing,” he said. “I think we’re in even more danger of Donald Trump using a nuclear weapon in a fit of pique or rage or confusion or poor impulse control than ever before. So yes, he’s more dangerous.”
He further claimed that Trump could wake up in the middle of the night and decide to end the ongoing Iran war in “10 seconds” by reaching for the nuclear football.
Trump, the oldest person ever inaugurated president, has long faced scrutiny over his physical and mental health. Questions have been raised about his apparent daytime drowsiness, frequent bruising on his hands and swelling in his ankles.
“The president has severe daytime somnolence,” CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner said in May. “He falls asleep very often. He’s fallen asleep in the Oval Office on multiple occasions with people talking to him… And chronic insomnia is a severe illness. It can result in an increase in risk of dementia, a decrease in cognitive effects in older people.”
The White House has forcefully rejected such claims, maintaining that the 80-year-old president is fully fit to serve. “President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history,” Ingle said.
The White House has attributed Trump’s bruising to frequent handshakes and said chronic venous insufficiency caused his ankle swelling.
Trump himself has insisted he is in excellent health, saying after a May physical that “everything” had “checked out PERFECTLY.”
Polling, meanwhile, suggests widespread public skepticism. In a June Quinnipiac survey, 59 percent of voters said the White House is not being transparent about the president’s health, while 34 percent said it has been honest.
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
