For months now, there have been whispers, rumors ,and online chatter about Donald Trump’s health, and lately they seem to have grown louder. Although I feel as though the state of his health is rarely given the scrutiny it deserves.
A bruised hand, a lumbered walk, a slurred phrase or jumbled thoughts — each moment has been scarcely reported on or even brushed aside, even as the evidence piles up.
We have seen the swollen ankles and the White House pithy response, the bruised hand that can’t be simply explained away by citing too many handshakes, the words that slur together until his sentences drift off to never-never-land. There’s also his noticeable fatigue.
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Standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House this week, Trump seemed visibly breathless, laboring through remarks that should have been routine.
Then there was that mysterious three-day disappearance before Labor Day that was dismissed. Then the following week, at the Pentagon, during the solemn 9/11 ceremony, he appeared to nod off, his face slacked in a way that evoked, for many observers, the image of someone recovering from a stroke.
But perhaps the most alarming was what happened this week at Quantico, Virginia, while speaking to military generals. After the dust settled about how grotesque and disgusting his speech was, I started to key in on just how sickly Trump appeared.
For my column summing up that horror show, I referred to him as “Sleepy Don,” since he seemed so lethargic. Some said it was because he feeds off a crowd, and the generals sat there stoic, but I had my doubts about that.
Then I read Tom Nichols's outstanding piece in The Atlantic, “The Commander in Chief Is Not Okay,” which went a long way into putting the whole disaster into context.
As Nichols described it, and as we all saw who watched it, Trump delivered a rambling, incoherent speech that exposed an awful lot about his state of mind, or lack thereof. It laid bare his evident cognitive decline and disconnection from reality.
His remarks wandered wildly from historical inaccuracies to bizarre threats, and he repeatedly resorted to familiar grievances and conspiratorial rhetoric rather than an organized train of thought.
The result, said Nichols, was a deeply unsettling commander in chief who appeared disoriented, underprepared, and incapable of clear communication in high-stakes settings. A leader who cannot consistently transmit coherent ideas or maintain basic control over his messaging is a liability, especially to a military audience trained to expect precision, clarity, and respect for institutional norms.
Nichols put it all out there, and rightfully so, since I feel the media concentrates more on the absurdity of what Trump says versus what’s behind all the incoherence.
Trump is 79 years old, and bad health at that age doesn’t suddenly reverse itself. You don’t suddenly wake up stronger, sharper, more resilient. Time doesn’t work that way. It wears you down, sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once.
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And yet throughout the campaign last year and the opening months of Trump's second term, the full force of medical speculation was directed at Joe Biden, while Trump’s obvious decline slipped under the radar.
Trump has never been known for discipline when it comes to his body. He’s gorged on decades of greasy fast food, endless Diet Cokes, and no exercise. All the while he disregards the most basic health requirements of the only home we all share, planet Earth.
President Donald Trump in the Oval Office during a swearingiin ceremony for Dr. Mehmet Oz for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator at the White House on April 18, 2025.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Since returning to the White House, Trump has unleashed an all-out assault on climate policy. On day one, he pulled the United States out of the United Nations climate treaty again, joining countries like Iran, Libya, and Yemen. Not being part of that agreement is not only bad for the planet, it makes the U.S. look leaderless and like a fool.
At the U.N. last month, he used his speech not to rally nations to act but to rail against climate science, mocking it as a “con job.”.
His so-called “big beautiful bill” gutted existing climate initiatives, doing away with years of progress. And just this week, as the shutdown began on, his budget director, Russ Vought, announced that the administration will scrap $8 billion in climate-related projects, a move in line with his broader blueprint in Project 2025, which envisions a wholesale dismantling of climate action at home and abroad.
It is impossible to miss the parallels between Trump’s personal decline and the decline of the health of our planet. He ignores advice from doctors, from scientists, from anyone who might challenge his instincts.
I spent several years working with climate scientists at the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so I have seen firsthand the clarity and urgency of their warnings. These incredibly smart and devoted people are not prone to exaggeration. And they are nearly unanimous on the point that if we delay in addressing climate change, the results will be deadly.
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To refuse to act now is to leave future generations to deal with the catastrophe. Yet Trump couldn't care less. He won’t take care of himself, and he won’t help to take care of the planet. And while his body is betraying him, the greater betrayal is the one he is committing against all of us.
Trump’s health will continue to decline because 79 year-old people don’t suddenly become 39. The natural course of age and neglect inescapably leads to bad health. But unlike his body, the planet can still be restored.
Trump’s body is beyond repair, but the Earth’s is not.
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