Dr. Henry Abraham, professor of psychiatry emeritus at Tufts University School of Medicine, said his alarm about President Donald Trump has only deepened since he put his name to an April letter demanding the president’s removal from office — and he told a radio audience that Trump could reach for a nuclear weapon during an emotional outburst. Abraham made the remarks Wednesday, September 2, 2026.
Radio host Dean Obeidallah, whose program airs on SiriusXM, put the question directly, asking whether anything had changed in the psychiatrist’s conclusion about the president. HuffPost, which reported the exchange on September 3, describes Abraham as having shared in the awarding of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize as a member of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the phrasing Abraham uses in his own biography. That prize was a single undivided award, and it went to IPPNW as an organization rather than to any individual member.
“Yeah, if anything, it’s worse,” Abraham told the program.
A Psychiatrist’s Deepening Alarm
The conversation returned to a step Abraham took earlier in the year. Dozens of other doctors joined him in April in a public demand that the president be removed from office, on the grounds — as those physicians contended — that he was not mentally fit for the job. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse entered their statement into the Congressional Record on April 30, on his own behalf and that of Senator Jack Reed, and it was released publicly the following week. Thirty-six medical professionals signed it. Resignation was not what the doctors asked for. “If we were called upon under the 25th Amendment to judge the President’s present ability to discharge the duties of his office, we would have to conclude that he lacks the capacity to do so,” the physicians wrote, adding that “steps to remove him from office must be undertaken with the greatest urgency.” Abraham’s name appears first on the list of signatories, as “Henry David Abraham, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, Tufts University School of Medicine.” His entry carries no Nobel notation, though two other signers are identified as prize recipients — Eric Chivian, a co-founder of the group, for 1985, and Ira Helfand for 2017.
Trump has not been diagnosed with any cognitive condition. Scrutiny of his mental acuity has nonetheless built steadily, driven by how often he has appeared to doze off in public, by the series of cognitive tests he has taken and by how frequently he has been seen by doctors. The test results have been normal. The White House physician, Navy Captain Sean Barbabella, reported a score of 30 out of 30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment after the president’s May 26 physical at Walter Reed; the same test returned the same score at his April 2025 physical. Chronic venous insufficiency, the condition the White House disclosed in July 2025, is vascular rather than cognitive.
“It’s subtle in terms of his mental status because a lot of it is more of the same,” Abraham said. “But when you get confirmatory evidence that points in the same direction again and again, after a while you sort of know what you’re dealing with and you kind of know what needs to be done.”
A Pilot and a Surgeon
To press his case about occupational fitness, the psychiatrist borrowed two comparisons from high-stakes professions. “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 said. A surgeon about to begin a procedure, he argued, would be judged by the same logic.
“We wouldn’t want a neurosurgeon to walk into the operating room and operate on — this doesn’t make sense — and yet, we have a system which enfolds the president’s health in a shroud of secrecy,” he said. The distance between how the country handles safety-critical jobs and how it handles the presidency ran through his argument.
Fears About Nuclear Command
The sheer scope of presidential power, command of the U.S. military included, compounds the danger, Abraham said. “When a person has sole access to the nuclear armamentaria, it’s crazy, and this is what we’re doing,” he said.
Then he stated the risk plainly. “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,” he said. “So yes, he’s more dangerous.”
Nuclear war is also the subject that first brought Abraham’s organization international recognition. The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave IPPNW the 1985 peace prize “for spreading authoritative information and by creating awareness of the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war.” Abraham says he co-wrote the group’s constitution, negotiating the final draft in The Hague with physician leaders from more than 40 countries. His curriculum vitae dates that meeting to 1982; the organization does not publish a date for the document.
Inside his own profession, claims of the sort Abraham is making remain contested terrain. Under the American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule, adopted in 1973 and reaffirmed in 2017, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion on a public figure without having conducted an examination and obtained authorization — a standard psychiatrists have argued over for years. Its signatories framed the April statement as an allegation about mental fitness rather than a clinical diagnosis, and it opens by saying it is “not a political statement” but “a medical one.” Abraham has cast the debate as a matter of public safety, comparing the presidency to jobs where fitness is routinely verified before anyone is handed the controls.
His comments arrive as the midterm election cycle heats up and as arguments about the president’s health, stamina and decision-making run through both parties’ messaging. The White House rejected them outright. “President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history,” spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement. “Henry David Abraham is a Trump Deranged loser engaging in armchair diagnosis for political purposes. He is a disgrace to the medical profession.” The show posted the full conversation to its YouTube channel.