What to Know
With everything going on in the United States right now, President Donald Trump is still fixated on Former President Joe Biden. The president spoke at the Detroit Economic Club on Tuesday, January 13. Although he did spend some time discussing the economy, he also blamed Biden for the issues affecting Americans today, and spent time mocking Biden’s public speaking skills, for some reason. Priorities, right?
Clips of Trump’s Biden impersonation started circulating on social media afterwards, and his mannerisms and claims seemed so strange (even for him) that some people assumed the footage was AI-generated.
He said Biden would speak for ‘a matter of seconds.’
Of course, about a year into his second term, Trump just couldn’t resist comparing himself to Biden and acting like he’s so much better than him. As Trump continues to insist that he is perfectly healthy and not showing signs of cognitive decline as he approaches 80, he chose to compare his speeches to the former president’s speeches.
Trump admitted that he goes “off teleprompter about 80% of the time” during his speeches, but portrayed it as a positive attribute. “Isn’t it nice to have a president that can go off teleprompter?” he said to the audience. “Don’t you think?”
Then, he said, “Remember the speeches Joe would make? First of all, they’d last a matter of seconds, you know.”
Trump tried to do a Biden impression.
In a raspy tone of voice, Trump said, “Thank you very much,” presumably trying to impersonate Biden. This was just before his speech became totally incomprehensible. Trump said, “You ever notice Joe would always cough before a speech? State of the Union gets…” And then he made several disturbing sounds, grunting in a way that was maybe meant to mimic Biden’s “cough?”
On X, journalist Aaron Rupar shared a clip of Trump’s weird sound effects and captioned it with, “checking in on the president of the United States.”
Because in the process of trying to make himself look way better than Biden, Trump arguably did something… much different from that. It actually seemed to raise concerns about Trump’s cognitive decline. Reacting to the clip, someone else commented, “we might be genuinely seeing the end in real time.” Another person questioned, “What kind of meds they got him on??” It’s hard to describe exactly what Trump sounded like during that moment, but one critic compared it to their “cat with a hairball at 4am.”
checking in on the president of the United States pic.twitter.com/vaL4BeZHLr
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 13, 2026
And sure, Trump was trying to mock Biden when making the strange sounds. But that didn’t make it any better in some people’s eyes. “Oh nothing to see here, just the President of the United States of America attempting to make fun of a man fighting for his life against cancer to a stunned silent audience,” a third critic wrote, referring to Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis.
Then, Trump also claimed that Biden was ‘high as a kite’ during one speech.
Trump called Biden’s speeches “very short,” but then referred to one in which Biden’s overall demeanor seemed different. It’s not clear which speech Trump was referring to, but Trump claimed that Biden was “floating” during it.
He said, “Although the one time they had him spruced up pretty good. Remember he was high as a kite? He was floating. He was up there, way up. He didn’t. That was a bad speech. But uh, hey, he got through it, you know. He got through it.”
