US President Donald Trump, 79, appeared to close his eyes and drift during a health care affordability event in the Oval Office on Thursday, 23 April, according to viral clips shared online, fuelling fresh questions about whether the president's evident struggle with sleep and his unexplained bruising should now be treated as a national security concern.
Clips of the Oval Office exchange raced around X, where critics seized on the images as proof that Trump is too old or too frail to serve. One user wrote: 'Can we please stop electing these geriatric patients for president?'
Another piled on with a harsher line: 'Looks like he is [in] a nursing home. To be honest, that's where the senile old lunatic belongs.'
A third viewer, apparently sympathetic but still alarmed, commented: 'He is fighting hard to stay awake, in a tough battle against sleepiness. Why the [sic] US keeps electing this type of President?'
Trump has been filmed nodding off in meetings before, and earlier this year, he tried to brush off similar footage by saying he sometimes closes his eyes when he is bored.
The president resting his eyespic.twitter.com/6sRHiwsJfr
The latest Oval Office moment did not land in a vacuum. It follows a striking intervention from Trump's former White House attorney, Ty Cobb, who was asked about the president's mental state during an interview with MS NOW host Ari Melber on 16 April.
Cobb claimed Trump looked 'lost' and linked his apparent drowsiness in official settings to a broader decline.
'We see him falling asleep in Cabinet meetings in the mornings and in the afternoon. That's a classic symptom of dementia,' Cobb alleged, before adding that Trump was showing 'great deterioration' and 'accelerated' mental decline.
No formal medical report and no independent physician has publicly endorsed Cobb's view.
Source: International Business Times UK
