During a special welcome ceremony in Saudi Arabia, Donald Trump took a seat on stage, leaned back in his plush gold chair, and closed his eyes momentarily, appearing to doze off.
Video of the 78-year-old President apparently jolting himself awake a couple seconds later when someone addressed him, went viral on social media.
‘Sleepy Trump Caught on Camera Nodding Off at Summit in Saudi,’ read a headline from the Daily Beast, slyly referencing the nickname previously associated with President Joe Biden’s perceived tiredness. Journalist Aaron Rupar noted, ‘Trump is having a hard time keeping his eyes open.’
Critics were quick to highlight Trump’s brief moment of rest, following a 15-hour flight on Air Force One, as part of a supposed pattern rather than just a result of fatigue from travel.
Another widely circulated picture of Trump in a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Syrian ministers in Riyadh on Wednesday showed the president slumped into his chair with his chin tucked to his chest. And it’s not just journalists and casual onlookers making these observations.
White House insiders told the Daily Mail last month that Trump may be increasingly leaning on Melania for not just emotional, but physical support. One source revealed: ‘There is a possibility that he is reaching for Melania for both emotional and physical stability… the president is getting older. His gait is not as steady.’
But now, Trump insiders are firing back against these ‘false smears’ in exclusive remarks to the Daily Mail.
Indeed, a degree of increased physical frailty would not be surprising as the president ages. Trump will overtake Biden as the oldest sitting president in US history during the final year of his second term.
Video of the 78-year-old president shows him seemingly dozing off before jolting awake while in Saudi Arabia this week.
Critics weren’t content with the fact that the president had just disembarked Air Force One after a 15-hour flight to explain his apparent fatigue.
Critics are now claiming that Trump’s drowsiness is supposedly due to a physical and mental decline due to his age, allegations that insiders refute.
But many are taking the scrutiny a step further, claiming Trump’s health reflects something beyond natural aging, and instead is the result of a serious decline in his mental and physical acuity.
MSNBC primetime host Lawrence O’Donnell speculated that Trump is exhibiting ‘sign of mental illness’ or ‘early-stage dementia.’
Timothy L. O’Brien, senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion, claimed the Commander-in-Chief Trump is slowing, telling MSNBC last week: ‘Watching how he answers questions now compared to Trump 1.0, he slurs his words a little, he looks weary, he is slouched.’
‘He lives in fear of going down the path his father went down, which was dementia, followed by Alzheimer’s, into his 90s. And I think he’s carried that burden forever,’ he added.
Trump’s father, Fred, died of both pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease at age 93 in 1999 – and Alzheimer’s is, in part, hereditary, meaning if Trump’s father had it, he may be more likely to have it too.
Trump’s nephew Fred Trump III told People last year that he fears Trump may be heading down the same path as his father: ‘Like anyone else, I’ve seen his decline. But I see it in parallel with the way my grandfather’s decline was. If anyone wants to believe that dementia did not run in the Trump family, it’s just not true.’
Others have unreasonably compared Trump to Biden, whose cognitive decline – and an alleged White House cover-up of it – is the focus of a bombshell new book from CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson, ‘Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.’
The book is informed by interviews with senior Democrats and details an extensive campaign by officials to stop the public from realizing the extent of Biden’s cognitive decline.
They write that Biden was so impaired by the end of his term that he didn’t recognize George Clooney at a June 2024 Democratic fundraiser in Los Angeles, despite Clooney being one of his most famous supporters.
‘It was obvious to many standing there that the president did not know who George Clooney was,’ they write. Another Hollywood VIP guest reportedly said: ‘It was like watching someone who was not alive. It was so awful.’
‘There is a possibility that he is reaching for Melania for both emotional and physical stability… the president is getting older. His gait is not as steady,’ a White House insider previously told the Daily Mail.
‘Sleepy’ Joe Biden, whose health concerns are the center of a new book, has taken a tumble on multiple occasions, as seen here being helped up from the ground after falling during the graduation ceremony at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado.
The authors claim that from January 1, 2023 to April 27, 2024, Biden only undertook four public events before 10:00 am and only 12 public events after 6:00 pm, most of which were off-camera.
In fact, Biden’s physical deterioration was so severe during that period that his advisers reportedly discussed the possibility he’d need to use a wheelchair if he won re-election.
Finally, ‘Original Sin’ reveals that when the White House aides filmed Biden’s video appearances, they would use more than one camera, employing ‘jump cuts’ (switching from one view to another) to obscure his verbal stumbles.
The current hawkish scrutiny of Trump’s every fumble, however, could not be further from the blind eye that many commentators turned towards Biden’s struggles.
For instance, in June 2020 the New York Times seized on video of Trump, during his first term, gingerly walking down a steep ramp at the US Military Academy at West Point.
‘Trump’s Halting Walk Down Ramp Raises New Health Questions,’ trumpeted the headline.
Fast forward four years, the New York Times’s coverage of Biden’s more obvious physical limitations portrayed a different tone, one headline read: ‘How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts.’
The irony of this apparent bias is, perhaps, lost on the pundits.
‘Just like with Biden, questions about Trump’s mental acuity aren’t going away,’ Democratic strategist Max Burns wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill last week. ‘If the scandal around Biden’s cognitive decline taught us anything, it’s that the American people deserve to know if their president is mentally up for the job,’ he wrote. ‘Trump should spare our country years of doubt and speculation by agreeing to sit for a public cognitive exam.’
Whether Trump will accept that challenge remains to the seen, but sources close to the president see a political dirty trick.
‘President Trump is traveling the world securing trillions in investments. These false smears are a clear attempt to cover up for the revelation that Joe Biden’s aides were preparing to put him in a wheelchair,’ one Trump insider told the Daily Mail.
‘Just like with Biden, questions about Trump’s mental acuity aren’t going away,’ Democratic strategist Max Burns wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill last week.
Trump is still flying around the world, attending events and taking meetings that are physically and mentally demanding.
Another insider, who speaks to the president every week and has known him his entire political career, agreed: ‘The only verifiable disease and obvious diagnosis that is plain to see is Trump Derangement Syndrome. President Trump exhausts staffers one-third his age. I speak with him often, and he is before the cameras daily. Trump is leading peace deals, trade deals, hostage deals, tax deals and investment deals. Walking and talking was seen as an accomplishment for Biden.’
It is undeniable that Trump is maintaining a full schedule of physically and mentally demanding events that stand in stark contrast to the Biden’s rare public appearances.
On Tuesday in Riyadh, Trump stood for almost an hour delivering a speech – and he regularly hosts unplanned meetings with the media, fielding questions off the cuff. By Wednesday, he was in Qatar where he spoke before American troops at Al Udeid Air Base, on Thursday, he landed in the United Arab Emirates.
In February, Trump outlined his daily routine to the New York Post, saying his workdays start at 6am and end close to midnight.
‘There’s no thoughts of leisure, no going to the beach like Sleepy Joe Biden did and falling asleep in front of the press,’ he said.
A medical report released by the White House in April corroborates their statements, insisting that Trump was in ‘excellent health’ and showed ‘no abnormalities’ in neurological and cognitive tests.
Even critics were forced to concede the reality.
‘In 2020, his body mass index was just over the threshold for obesity… Then, last month, Trump’s latest physical showed that he had dropped 20 pounds, moving him from obese to overweight,’ wrote Dr. David Kessler, former Biden science advisor, in the Atlantic this week. Trump’s ‘LDL (the ‘bad’ cholesterol) has dropped dramatically in recent years,’ he concluded.
When the president was asked by reporters what his neurological test covered shortly after, he simply insisted ‘it’s a pretty well known test.’
He didn’t seem concerned, adding: ‘Whatever it is. I got every one right.’
