Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok - Wikimedia Commons
Donald Trump - July 2025
President Donald Trump arrives to the Salute to America Celebration, Thursday, July 3, 2025, at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa.
As Donald Trump faces withering criticism over his Department of Justice's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein firestorm, one former White House reporter couldn't help but notice that the president is exhibiting not only more confusion but also signs of physical decline.
In his column for Salon, Brian Karem, who covered the first Trump administration for Playboy, stated pressure on Trump from his MAGA base on Epstein may be having a deleterious effect on his health. He also added that there has been a precipitous drop-off after surviving the trauma of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania just one year ago.
As he wrote for Salon, “on Tuesday, Trump issued a rambling statement in an attempt to defend Attorney General Pam Bondi’s lack of action on the Epstein files. He stressed her credibility, but he sounded as if he were stringing together random sentences culled from private briefings, without any concern or knowledge that they made sense.”
After pointing out, “he’s not as sharp now as he was in his first administration,” he also noted some elements of the president's visible physical problems. “Still, Trump in his first term was better for two reasons: He was more cogent and never left the house without a properly-worn necktie. Today, he can barely get out a sentence without babbling,” he wrote before adding, “He constantly demands to be the center of attention in his own production, on stage as well as off. But the recent pictures of swollen ankles—as well as his poor posture, bad gait, unexplained anger, extreme lethargy and deepening addiction to gibberish—are causing the show to falter.
“These are symptoms exhibited by traumatized shooting victims and are, I am told by several doctors, exacerbated by Trump’s age,” he added. “If you believe Biden slid into senility during his tenure in office, then Trump has plunged into it. During a Wednesday gaggle in the Oval Office, Trump said he was surprised Jerome Powell was appointed as chair of the Federal Reserve, apparently unaware that he had nominated Powell in 2017.”
Karem expanded on that by saying the decline is likely dangerous for the country. “This noticeable decline is part of what is causing his own supporters to now call his actions into question," he wrote before later adding, “... it is definitely dangerous. And if the MAGA split continues or widens, threatening an aging president’s power and status, the danger will increase.”
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