President Donald Trump's behavior and comments have long led political opponents to question his mental health, but now, the accusation that he is unhinged is coming from more than the usual liberal suspects in the past few weeks.

Prominent conservative pundits − from former Fox News hosts Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and podcaster Candace Owens − are suggesting the president is unwell.

"I really think that his mental capacity needs to be examined," Marjorie Taylor Greene said on an April 15 appearance on CNN International.

The former Republican congresswoman from Georgia said she's been "shocked and horrified" at the president's recent rhetoric, such as his warning that "a whole civilization will die" and Iranians will be "living in Hell" if his demands aren't met.

Jones, founder of Infowars and a longtime Trump supporter, said during a March 31 episode of his new program, "The Alex Jones Show," that GOP incumbents running for reelection need to "cut the bait" on the president before the 2026 midterm elections.

"And he does babble and, you know, sound like the brain’s not doing too hot," he said.

Owens, who has spent recent years pushing racist and antisemitic tropes, referred to Trump as a "genocidal lunatic" in an April 7 post on X, echoing Democrats when she called for using the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to remove him from office.

"Our Congress and military need to intervene," she said. "We are beyond madness."

The comments have exposed another raw nerve in the ongoing Make America Great Again civil war over Trump's widespread use of military strikes on foreign soil.

Some former White House officials from the first Trump administration are echoing the sentiment.

Ty Cobb, a former White House lawyer, said the president is "clearly insane" during a March 31 interview with former CNN reporter Jim Acosta.

"These screeds that come out nightly.... highlights the level of insanity and depravity," Cobb said. "I think he's gone."

Trump lashed out at those MAGA media figures and accused them of trying to get "cheap publicity."

"They’re not 'MAGA,' they’re losers, just trying to latch on to MAGA," he said in an April 9 social media post.

Most of Trump's allies on Capitol Hill are standing by the president. Others in the MAGA ecosystem online have dismissed concerns about his mental health being raised by their fellow conservatives.

During a recent episode of his podcast, former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who left the administration in January, slammed right-leaning critics as "people pretending to be one of us who grifted" off Trump. He suggested the president's behavior is more strategic than psychotic.

"No, it's not 25th Amendment territory, you losers," Bongino said. "It may be psychiatric, you know Baker Act time for you talking about it, but not for the president. I promise, he's in a really good spot."

Trump has always fueled his MAGA movement with fiery and exaggerated rhetoric, experts say.

Those long-winded, often meandering ‒ and by Trump's admission sometimes "dark" ‒ remarks were on display during the 2024 election, such as when he suggested the United States needed "one really violent day" to deal with property crimes.

"One rough hour," Trump said during a Sept. 29, 2024, rally in Erie, Pennsylvania. "And I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately."

That tendency is increasingly visible amidst the actual work of governing.

During a Cabinet meeting in March at the White House, for example, the president raised eyebrows for engaging in a five-minute tangent about his love for $5 "Sharpie" permanent markers. Earlier that month, when updating reporters on the war in Iran, he stopped mid-remark to admire the White House curtains.

"I picked those drapes in my first term," Trump said.

He has also long been known to make demonstrably false claims, from continuing to assert that he won the 2020 presidential election to saying during an April 15 Fox Business interview that no other president has ever ended a war.

"Nobody’s ever ended one war," Trump said. "Who’s ended one? Nobody."

Multiple historians have noted that U.S. presidents have played significant roles in ending various conflicts and negotiating peace agreements, such as President Theodore Roosevelt winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for ending a war between Russia and Japan.

At one point during the Fox interview, host Maria Bartiromo asked about Republican Sen. Thom Tillis' opposition to selecting Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve. Trump said the North Carolina lawmaker was no longer in Congress.

"You know Thom Tillis is no longer a senator, right," Trump asked. "He quit."

Bartiromo reminded the president that Tillis was still in the Senate and had only forgone seeking reelection in 2026. Trump replied: "Well, no, he quit, but he quit."

But criticism about his mental state on the political right has more to do with launching an unpopular war in Iran and using melodramatic language to issue threats, such as saying the United States would destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran − which would constitute a possible war crime.

President Donald Trump receives a DoorDash delivery of McDonald's from Sharon Simmons before he speaks to the press during an event outside the Oval Office of the White House on April 13, 2026 in Washington, DC. The president spoke about the No Tax on Tips, Pope Leo XIV and the ongoing negotiations with Iran.

RFK Jr. appeared on the “Katie Miller Podcast” on Jan. 13, 2026. When asked which member of the administration has the healthiest diet and fitness routine, he mentioned Shawn Duffy and Pete Hegseth. When asked who had the most "unhinged" diet, Kennedy answered, "The president,” citing Trump’s love of McDonald’s, candy, and constant Diet Coke. See Trump's love for fast food starting with tables of it for the the college football playoff champion Clemson Tigers in the State Dining Room of the White House on Jan. 14, 2019.

President Donald Trump receives a DoorDash delivery of McDonald's from Sharon Simmons before he speaks to the press during an event outside the Oval Office of the White House on April 13, 2026 in Washington, DC. The president spoke about the No Tax on Tips, Pope Leo XIV and the ongoing negotiations with Iran.

"Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT," Trump said in an April 4 post on Truth Social. "Time is running out ‒ 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!"

"The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night," Trump said in an April 6 press conference. That type of rhetoric has eroded relationships with conservative media figures who supported him in the past despite his smaller-scale deviations from the anti-interventionist "America First" foreign policy ethos he campaigned on, said Matthew Dallek, a presidential historian at George Washington University.

"There's something off if Alex Jones is calling you crazy," Dallek said.

Jones was ordered to pay $1.4 billion in 2022 to family members of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims for claiming for years that the killings were staged in a government plot to seize Americans' guns.

"Trump, I think, is essentially still Trump, but he is more aggrieved now," Dallek added. "He has become a more exaggerated version of himself and by that, I mean, he has become somewhat more erratic, more confrontational and belligerent and more extreme."

Trump has for years bragged about his mental sharpness, calling himself a "very stable genius" in 2019. He has brushed aside questions about his physical health, too, telling reporters aboard Air Force One last year that the results of an October 2025 MRI test were "perfect," adding that the doctor said it was one of the "best reports they've ever seen."

The doctor later confirmed it was a CT scan. The White House has yet to disclose what type was performed or any detailed results.

Although it shows up very differently from former President Joe Biden's frail and halting appearance − Trump always projects confidence − Trump is now facing questions about mental acuity as he approaches his 80th birthday on June 14.

And Biden, whose reelection bid was undone by similar concerns, represents a stark warning.

Trump has a long-established penchant for self-aggrandizement, but he has been far more indulgent of it in his second term, including adorning a banner with his image on the facade of the U.S. Justice Department headquarters in Washington, DC; having his signature added to U.S. paper currency starting with the $100 bill; and renaming the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington the "Trump-Kennedy Center."

Days after generating backlash for posting an artificial intelligence-generated image depicting himself as a Christ-like figure, the president again used his Truth Social platform to post a of picture of him being embraced by Jesus.

Democrats and their allies have already begun to pounce on these recent events.

During a House Education and Workforce committee hearing on April 17, Rep. Mark Takano, D-California, grilled Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the president's mental fitness.

Takano showed large posters of some of Trump's online messages, asking if Kennedy, as the top health official in the country, will "insist" that the president undergo an assessment of his mental fitness and emotional stability.

"Absolutely not," Kennedy said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, is moving to pass a long-shot measure establishing a panel assessing the president's fitness to remain in office under the 25th Amendment. He asked the White House physician in an April 10 letter for an evaluation of Trump's mental health.

"Experts have repeatedly warned that the President has been exhibiting signs consistent with dementia and cognitive decline," Raskin wrote in the letter. "And, in recent days, the country has watched President Trump's public statements and outbursts turn increasingly incoherent, volatile, profane, deranged and threatening."

White House spokesman Davis Ingle, asked about the MAGA rift and Democratic pressure, bypassed commenting on how the administration is handling former allies. But he laid into the Maryland lawmaker, saying Raskin is a "stupid person's idea of a smart person."

"President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the last administration when Democrats like Raskin intentionally covered up Joe Biden's serious mental and physical decline from the American people," Ingle told USA TODAY in a statement.

Polling shows the American public is noticing the president's conduct, as well.

Roughly 61% say Trump has become more erratic with age, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in February. That includes 64% of independents and 30% of Republicans who agreed with that description of Trump, which progressive groups describe as "alarming" and "dangerous," given the immense power the executive branch holds.

"This president is unfit, unwell and unhinged," Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in an April 7 statement. "The rhetoric and behavior we are witnessing from Trump isn't just alarming, it’s dangerous."

For the first time in its 117-year history, the civil rights group is calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked.

The administration and its allies rebuff those criticisms by spotlighting how Trump's energy is in contrast to Biden's fitness issues, which were often attributed to the former president's slurred speech and sluggish movement. Earlier this year, Trump delivered the longest State of the Union address to Congress in history, White House officials regularly point out.

The Reuters-Ipsos poll did find fewer voters believe Trump is "mentally sharp" or "able to deal with challenges" than during the 2024 campaign, however. In September 2023, a similar survey showed 54% of Americans agreed with that statement versus 45% in February 2026.

"No Kings" protesters gathered with signs, chants and costumes on Saturday, part of the third such coordinated demonstration against President Donald Trump's actions and policies since he took office for his second term. More than 3,000 events are expected throughout the nation. See moments from the protests across the nation. See the signs protesters created.The Roebling Suspension Bridge near Cincinnati stands tall in the background while a protester holds a sign that reads "Elvis forever Trump never," at a protest against President Trump and his administration's policies on March 28, 2026.

"No Kings" protesters gathered with signs, chants and costumes on Saturday, part of the third such coordinated demonstration against President Donald Trump's actions and policies since he took office for his second term. More than 3,000 events are expected throughout the nation. See moments from the protests across the nation. See the signs protesters created.The Roebling Suspension Bridge near Cincinnati stands tall in the background while a protester holds a sign that reads "Elvis forever Trump never," at a protest against President Trump and his administration's policies on March 28, 2026.

But just 23% of voters agreed when a Reuters-Ipsos poll asked if Biden was mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges in July 2024, when he eventually dropped out of the election.

Dallek, the presidential historian, said the concerns with Biden were legitimate but a different sort when compared to what's worrying voters about Trump currently.

"With Biden, the concerns were primarily around age ‒ was he up to the job," he said. "With Trump, the primary consideration is about character. The concern, such as it's been expressed by critics and in the public, it is less about he's old and frail, and more that he is vigorous and crazy."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Needs to be examined' MAGA figures questioning Trump's mental fitness