During his speech at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas on Friday, President Donald Trump’s entire body twitched in a manner that one forensic psychologist argued was consistent with what’s known as a focal aware seizure or a partial seizure.
John Paul Garrison, a Georgia-based clinical and forensic psychologist, analyzed footage of Trump’s speech in a video published Saturday that he called “the most concerning footage” of the president he had analyzed yet.
“For the past few months, I have been showing various neurological concerns and some steep signs of decline from President Trump, but what we're going to start with today is extremely concerning,” Garrison said.
Captured during Trump’s remarks at a Congressional Space Medal of Honor presentation in Houston, Texas, the footage shows Trump boasting about the stock market's performance. While speaking, Trump briefly pauses mid-sentence as his body twitches.
“What you just observed was a distinct and concerning neurological event, and you got to watch it cross both hemispheres in his brain — I'll explain what I mean,” Garrison said, noting that his analysis was strictly his own opinion.
“You saw his right arm jerk, and then you saw him blink, you heard his voice hesitate, and then you saw his left arm jerk. You literally watched it travel across his brain. To be very clear, these were not simple muscle spasms; this is not something related to pain — you don't see any pain on his face. You actually watch it travel from one arm, to his eyes, to his voice, to his left arm.”
Garrison went on to allege that Trump may have suffered from a focal aware seizure, an epileptic event that tends to be “less severe than generalized seizures” and is usually brief.
“Now, what this is very consistent with is something that we see in people that have had strokes called a focal aware seizure or a focal motor seizure, and this can be focused in one part in the brain, and occasionally, it can spread to both parts of the brain,” Garrison said.
“I'm not insisting that's what's going on with him, but it is clearly something neurological, whether it's post-stroke or something else.”