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Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has accused President Trump of “suffering from dementia,” an allegation the White House forcefully denied.

Getting into it: Pritzker made the comments during a Tuesday appearance on CNN, where anchor Kaitlan Collins pressed him on Trump’s recent remarks calling communism a bigger threat to the US than both world wars, Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks. The Democratic governor, seen as a potential 2028 contender, has made similar claims before, telling Politico back in May that he thinks “the man has dementia.”

Trump, who at 80 is the oldest person ever elected president, has been dogged by questions about his health, though his most recent physical concluded he is in “excellent health.” Critics often say the questions related to Trump’s health are ridiculous, given President Biden’s health while in office.

Despite this, Pritzker said he genuinely believes the president is in cognitive decline, pointing to what he described as a change in how Trump speaks. “Look, the man is continually suffering from dementia,” Pritzker said. “I don’t think he really understands what he’s saying.”

When Collins pushed him on whether he actually thinks Trump has dementia, Pritzker didn’t back off. “I do,” he said, though he added, “I’m not a doctor. I haven’t diagnosed anything.” He argued the shift is visible when comparing Trump’s appearances from 2015 and 2016 to now, saying “there’s something genuinely wrong with him” and that the president “puts words and sentences together” in ways that are “almost divergent in the same sentences.” He also took a shot at Trump over how he treats political opponents, saying the president “regularly” threatens to wield government power against them. Trump, he added, has “concepts in his head” that he “blurts out without really thinking.”

The White House hit back hard. Spokesperson Davis Ingle called Pritzker “a slob and an incompetent governor who pushes blatantly false narratives like this in a desperate attempt to stay relevant,” and told him to “focus on fixing his broken state.” Ingle defended Trump’s health as “exceptional,” drawing a contrast with what he called the media’s cover-up of Joe Biden’s decline. “President Trump is the sharpest and most accessible President in American history,” he said.