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A former White House adviser has warned that Donald Trump is under a major illusion, while claiming that the 47^th President has gone “power mad”.

Robert Kagan, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute and former adviser to the White House before Trump’s first term, has claimed that the controversial leader is under the illusion that America is all powerful.

What’s more, Mr Kagan pointed out that, when it comes to foreign policy, Trump only tends to attack countries “that can’t fire back” pointing to his Venezuela incursion and Iran threats.

Speaking to Channel 4’s The Fourcast podcast, he said: “Trump is simply power mad. He wants to get as much power for himself.

“He is under the illusion that the United States is omnipotent and that if he just sends an armada some place or if he threatens a tariff then the rest of the world will just go along….He only is using military power at this moment against people who can’t shoot back.”

Mr Kagan’s comments came as Trump issued a fresh threat to Iran, as he reiterated that he was sending military naval assets to the Middle East with the naval battle group being led by the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Trump has been threatening the regime in Tehran in recent weeks following their brutal crackdown of protesters, one which human rights organisations estimates may have killed anywhere between 5,000 and 33,000 people.

In January, Trump claimed he would “rescue” Iranian protesters if violence was used against them, but recent actions by the regime has heightened military tensions between the two countries.

Speaking to reporters on-board Air Force One, Trump was asked what his “thinking” was when it came to dealing with the autocratic theocracy.

He said: “I certainly can’t tell you that, but we do have really big powerful ships heading in that direction, as you know. I can’t tell you, but I hope to negotiate something that’s acceptable.”

Whilst Trump may be sending a massive armada to Iran, the regime has remained defiant. On Sunday, Iranian state television said that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had threated war if Trump does strike.

He was quoted as saying: “The Americans should know that if they start a war, this time it will be a regional war. We are not the instigators and we do not seek to attack any country. But the Iranian nation will deliver a firm blow to anyone who attacks or harasses it.”

With so much at stake for a region where the US has had a large amount of influence in the past 25 years, there are also concerns Trump’s decisions are being made with a deteriorating mind, after speculation about whether the president has dementia spiked following the release of fresh research.

The research, conducted by the New York Times, found that Trump is “speaking far more words” in his second term than even the first year of his first term. They found that Trump spoke two million words in 2025, but just 800,000 in 2017.

Following this statistical discovery, journalist Susan Glasser claimed in The New Yorker that Trump could be suffering from “the world’s most consequential case of untreated logorrhoea”.

Logorrhoea is a condition where patients speak excessively, rapidly and incoherently; it is normally caused by underlying health issues; issues that Trump’s administration has denied.

As recently as October 2025, White House physician Dr Sean Barbabella said Trump’s cognitive health was “perfectly normal”.