Many Americans continue to fear that Donald Trump is experiencing a decline in his mental faculties in a manner similar to what the country came to believe Joe Biden underwent during his own presidency.
With the president’s Oval Office events and rallies around the country increasingly defined by a tendency to wander off into unrelated topics and nonsensical asides Trump himself has dubbed “The Weave”, he’s is set to visit Walter Reed Medical Center Tuesday for a scheduled annual physical. It isn’t clear yet if he’ll be subjected to one of the “cognitive tests” he boasts about acing on the campaign trail as a means of heading off speculation about his capabilities.
But the president’s test results aren’t convincing more than half of Americans who say that the president has noticeably declined in the past year, according to polling, or boosting his sagging approval ratings that are now in the mid-30s in most surveys.
Trump received a CT scan to monitor for possible cardiovascular issues in a second visit to Walter Reed last year. His physical wellbeing has long been a point of debate, and even his close political allies such as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. frequently joke about his love of fast food and Diet Coke. In June, the president will turn 80.
Upon his return to the White House in 2025, Trump was the oldest person to ever assume the office of the presidency — beating out Joe Biden’s record by only a couple of months. Since then, his daily schedule has differed significantly from Biden’s in one key aspect: The president’s press availability, which has eclipsed Biden’s, has allowed him to maintain at least some of his image as an energetic leader even when his long tangents have left guests or other administration personnel standing awkwardly beside him as he speaks about seemingly random topics.
His tendency to comment on the construction process of his planned White House ballroom falls squarely into this dynamic. Along with hosting surprise press availabilities specifically meant to ensure that construction of the ballroom was highlighted, the president has often veered off into discussions about the project at his televised Cabinet meetings, where his deputies take turns paying him compliments.
During an Oval Office event in late March, a rant about California Governor Gavin Newsom, one of the Democratic Party’s potential 2028 contenders, turned into a spiel about Trump’s own supposed continued mental quickness after he claimed that Newsom’s dyslexia was caused by unintelligence.
“I’m the only president that ever took a cognitive test. I took it three times. It’s actually a very hard test for a lot of people. It wasn’t hard for me. But it’s a cognitive test,” Trump said at the meeting.
“It starts off with an easy question. And by the time you get to the middle, it gets tougher. By the time you get to the end, very few people can answer those questions. They get very tough mathematical equations and things.”
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in April found that 51 percent of Americans believe that Trump’s mental faculties declined over 2025 and early 2026. That same poll found that only a quarter of Americans believe he is “even-tempered.”
The same month, a Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that just four in ten Americans now believe that Trump has the mental sharpness required for the presidency, a drop of seven points in that category from several months ago. That poll also found that worries about Trump’s physical health were increasing as well.
The finding of fears about Trump’s possible instability comes after Democrats called on Cabinet members to begin the process of removing Trump via the 25th Amendment this spring, a response to the president’s threat to “end” Iranian “civilization” in a Truth Social post. The president’s statements about Iran in particular have shown an erratic and increasingly frustrated tone as what the White House pledged would be a war that was over in a few weeks has now stretched on for months, with a shaky ceasefire in place and the White House once again claiming to be on the verge of a longer peace deal as June quickly approaches.
Complicating the issue is the lack of trust many have in the White House physician’s office.
“After a decade of delusion, deceit, denial or delay from the administrations and White House physicians regarding presidential evaluations, my expectation bar is pretty low,” former White House doctor Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served the prior three presidents before the first Trump term, told the Washington Post. “I hope they are at least transparent and truthful.”
A cardiologist who previously served former vice president Dick Cheney added to the Post: “This White House just doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge any physical ailment, but older people develop medical issues, and the president is almost 80 years old.”
