White House’s Latest Crash Out Shows Rumors About Trump’s Cognitive Decline Might Be Getting To Them

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What to Know

01 The White House Rapid Response X account has shared photos of several CNN hosts blinking.
02 In the posts, they suggested that these hosts were falling asleep.
03 Critics are confused about what they were hoping to achieve by doing this.

President Donald Trump has been spotted dozing off during important meetings for months now, sparking tons of conversations about whether he’s actually fit to serve as president. He previously pushed back on the concerns and claimed that photographers were just catching him at bad times, like when he was blinking or just closing his eyes to relax. Of course, Trump critics didn’t buy that explanation for even a second.

Well, the White House is clearly bothered by the attention the photos that appear to show Trump sleeping have been getting. Because now, in an attempt to make some sort of point, they won’t stop posting images of other people blinking.

So far, they’ve shared multiple images of CNN hosts with their eyes closed.

They were shared by the official White House Rapid Response account on X, which is said to focus on “supporting @POTUS’s America First agenda and holding the Fake News accountable.” On May 26, the account targeted several CNN hosts in separate posts and accused them of falling asleep on-air because they blinked at some point.

They even suggested that some of the people pictured would not be able to “ace” cognitive tests like Trump supposedly has. “BRIANNA KEILAR SAYS NAP WENT ‘PERFECTLY’ AFTER FALLING ASLEEP LIVE ON AIR,” the account wrote in one post. “RUMOR IS SHE ALSO FAILED HER COGNITIVE EXAM (UNLIKE PRESIDENT TRUMP — WHOSE WAS PERFECT!)”

Some might argue that the White House is just trolling, since the communications team has basically admitted that they like to do so to increase engagement. Of course, a lot of people have questioned why this seems to be a priority for the Trump administration. In this case, though, a lot of critics struggled to understand why the White House would want to draw more attention to Trump’s apparent sleeping issue. “I do not get this strategy at all,” one critic responded on X. “You really want to make this a bigger deal than it already is?”

People also had questions about who is managing the account and suggested that whoever is responsible for the posts should actually be embarrassed. “Who’s running this page, a 12 yr old?” another critic commented. “we know trump is falling asleep and not blinking.”

The White House also targeted Joy Behar.

They have lashed out at her several times at this point after she criticized Trump on The View, so it’s not all that surprising that they chose to target her as well. On May 26, the X account re-shared a post from another user, which included a photo of Behar with her eyes closed. “Wow! Poor health?” the White House captioned the post.

But once again, critics felt they were not successful in making the point they were presumably trying to make. For one thing, Behar is 83 years old, which makes her even older than Trump. But she’s also a talk show co-host, not the president. “Yeah maybe,” a critic wrote back. “She’s 83. She shouldn’t be president. Falling asleep during The View is different from falling asleep during, like, meetings about war.”

Critics just find the posts embarrassing.

It’s unclear what exactly the White House was hoping to achieve with these posts, but to a lot of critics, it just made it seem like they’re crashing out right now. “WOW SOMEONE HIT A NERVE LMFAOOOO,” another critic commented. “Now show video clips of how long they were blinking – they’re clearly ALL mid sentence. Idk how dumb you think we are, but this ain’t it…”

It also didn’t help that the White House shared all of these photos on the day the president had his semi-annual physical exam. The timing led to some assumptions, like “Trump’s physical must have gone really badly.” And even if the posts had nothing to do with his medical exam, they still drew attention to all of the rumors about Trump’s health, which is definitely an interesting choice.

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Paige Sheffield (she/her)