Those of you who don’t spend time on social media probably haven’t heard about the fact that Trump has weirdly gone without making an appearance with the press since last Tuesday, which is unprecedented. He stayed n DC all weekend instead of going to bedminster and has only been seen in pictures from a distance (or ones with dubious provenance.) It’s odd.
But the press isn’t saying much of anything although I did see one segment on MSNBC where everyone on the panel scoffed at the idea that there could be anything wrong with his health. That concern has gone out of fashion now that Joe Biden is out of office.
If you haven’t been paying attention, Washington and social media have spent Labor Day weekend in a frenzy over Donald Trump’s health. The president, who seems like he can’t stomach staying out of the public eye and spotlight for even a few hours, had no public appearances on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday — nor any over the long weekend. That’s an unusually long period of time out of public view. Searches for “Is Trump dead?” soared on Google Saturday and became one of the most-searched terms of the holiday weekend, and #whereistrump trended on other social media sites.
After he was glimpsed from a distance by the White House press pool leaving to golf on Saturday, social media Carrie Mathisons picked apart his golf photos wondering whether the White House was circulating old photos of the president on the links. Uncharacteristically, during the golf outing, he never even wandered up to the press pool to rant or rave about recent world headlines. Illinois governor JB Pritzker trolled Trump by demanding a proof-of-life photo. On Sunday, group chats around the capital lit up with a 31-tweet-long thread by a crypto investor named Adam Cochran alleging that Trump was in ill health. This morning, the press corps was kept about 100 yards from the president.
The speculation wasn’t helped by a series of strange answers J.D. Vance gave in a USA Today interview last week, where he said he was ready to be president if needed: “I’ve gotten a lot of good on-the-job training over the last 200 days.” Maybe that’s just Vance being awkward and strange — it’s hard to think of any subject where Vance giving an interview has helped — but Trump himself (or someone on his social media accounts) also engaged with the speculation by posting a “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE” post on Truth Social, which might rank second only this weekend to Rudy Giuliani’s bizarre car accident for raising more questions than it answered.
“Weekend at Bernie’s” jokes and memes have abounded, but this morning, there’s not a single story on the homepage of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, or CNN about Trump’s health — but there is a story on the New York Post about how robust the president’s health surely is! (One of the few very good treatments of the subject in recent days has come from Public Notice.)
Trump is 79 years old. He has a very serious case of cankles. His hands are all bruised up. He has gone underground for the best of a week. It’s all very weird. But none of this is of interest to the press, apparently.
