Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker amped up his attacks on President Trump’s fitness for office, saying he reckons the president has genuine “mental health issues.”
“First thing I’ll say is that I think the president is experiencing some deficiency of his mental capacity. And I don’t mean that in a joking way, in any way,” Pritzker said during an interview on The Zerlina Maxwell Show on SiriusXM Wednesday. “I mean, I do think he has mental health issues, and I think there’s no one around him who is getting him help because they benefit from him having those diminished capacities.”
The governor’s remarks come days after Trump demanded on Truth Social that Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson be jailed, accusing them of failing to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Trump’s post followed efforts by Illinois officials to challenge his deployment of National Guard units to Chicago amid protests against recent ICE raids.
“I do not expect to be arrested, and the president of the United States says a lot of crazy things,” Pritzker said earlier this week on The Daily Blast, a podcast from The New Republic. He suggested Trump’s calls for his arrest stem from “declining mental fitness.”
“I genuinely think there is something wrong with him,” Pritzker said on the podcast. “I wish that his family would intervene, because I do think he needs mental health help, and I don’t think anybody around him that works for him is going to do that, because they’re benefiting from his failure of mental health, his dementia. I wish somebody would help out the president of the United States.”
The 79-year-old president has faced recurring questions about his cognitive state, including during a Sept. 29 White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he appeared to forget the start date of his first presidential term.
Pritzker, a frequent Trump critic, also dismissed the president’s threats of arrest as legally meaningless. “He doesn’t have authority to arrest elected officials or really anybody where you don’t have any, you know, example of a crime being committed,” he said. “And I find it ironic that this guy who’s a 34-time convicted felon is saying that I should be jailed. I’ve never been accused of or convicted of, or, you know, gone on trial for anything. He’s the guy who’s done that so many times and cheated, by the way, in civil court.”
The White House hit back swiftly. “Pritzker’s family should intervene to get him to a dietician,” spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Daily Beast when contacted for comment.
Pritzker, for his part, appeared unbothered. “Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power,” he wrote on X on Wednesday. “What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”
Jackson doubled down in a follow-up statement, saying Pritzker and Johnson “have blood on their hands.”
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