The warning about what President Donald Trump may do next reaches all the way back to one of Adolf Hitler’s final orders before his suicide.
Dr. John Gartner, a veteran clinical psychologist, author and former assistant professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University, said the 80-year-old president is more dangerous now than at any point of his presidency. His remarks to host Joanna Coles on “The Daily Beast Podcast” were published Nov. 8, 2026, after Democrats took back both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections.
“Hell hath no fury like a malignant narcissist scorned,” Gartner told Coles. “I think we’re now in the third act of the tragedy, and I think we’re in more danger now than we’ve ever been.”
“He’s going to act out in the ways that are destructive—to show his power and dominance, and to gain the sadistic sense of pleasure that he gets from destruction,” the psychologist said.
Gartner said the president likely took the Republican defeat personally. The sweep was widely viewed as a referendum on Trump’s second term, and it has not softened him. He has doubled down on political threats despite the landmark losses.
A regular guest on the show, Gartner has argued for years that Trump’s constant presence in front of cameras makes his physical and mental decline easy to track. Coles asked what he expects from the president now that voters have rebuked him.
The Abuser Who Doubles Down
His answer began with a comparison to a domestic abuser — the kind who escalates when challenged instead of backing off. Before he got to it, Gartner stopped for a trigger warning, telling anyone who has survived domestic violence that they might want to turn the sound off for a few minutes. He said he did not mean the warning ironically.
The dangerous moment, he said, arrives when the abused woman believes she is finally safe — the man is out of the house, the restraining order is in hand. That, Gartner said, is often the point at which the most destructive abusers decide to kill her.
In the analogy, Trump is the man and the rest of the country is the woman. “And he doesn’t care if he kills us all,” Gartner said.
The Order Hitler Gave Before the End
Then came the history. Forty-two days before he killed himself during the Battle of Berlin, Adolf Hitler issued the Nero Decree, an order to destroy everything Germany had left — bridges, railways, canals, communication networks, factories, power plants, ports, farms, ships and food storage — rather than let any of it fall to advancing Allied forces.
Told the order would mean the death of every German, Hitler approved, Gartner said, on the reasoning that Germany’s good people were already dead. Hitler meant to drag the entire population into death with him, the psychologist said, calling that the logic of a malignant narcissist.
Why the Celebration May Be Short
Gartner’s bleakest forecast was aimed at the winners. Democrats are elated at having taken both houses, he said, and he expects that feeling to be brief. Over the next two years, by his account, the president will succeed at stymying virtually every effort they make.
The problem, as Gartner framed it, is that Democrats have nothing to trade. Trump has no agenda he needs from Congress, the psychologist said, so a bill that would help the country is one the president wants dead. A shutdown would not deter him either. Trump never adjusted his behavior when it was damaging his own party, Gartner said.
Asked how to counter any of it, he offered little. Gartner said he does not believe anyone can contain Trump and that no strategy will work, and he expects the president to generate as much chaos, destruction and confusion as he can.
The House and Senate have six weeks of a lame-duck session to finish the Republican agenda before the majorities end with the change of power Jan. 3, 2027. Congress must fund the government by mid-December or risk another federal shutdown. The annual defense bill — which sets Pentagon policy, delivers troop pay raises and has been approved essentially every year since World War II — is tangled over progressive pressure to cut money for the Iran war and military aid to Israel over the war in Gaza.
“He doesn’t care about his party or his country or anyone else,” Gartner said.