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Updated at 12:27 p.m. ET on November 14, 2025
For a president who wants to project vigor and command at all times, Donald Trump made the worst possible spectacle of himself in the Oval Office last Thursday.
It came in the form of two images captured during a press event to announce cheaper weight-loss drugs. The first materialized when a participant fainted and several officials on hand rushed over. Not Trump, however, who, after turning to look at the fallen man, stood a few feet away at the Resolute Desk with his back to the action, wearing an indifferent expression. This was pointedly reflected in news photos that instantly went viral.
The second image, less noticed but possibly more damning, was memorialized just beforehand: As Mehmet Oz, the administration’s head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, delivered remarks, Trump appeared to be nodding off at his desk. The Washington Post, in keeping with its dogged Watergate-era traditions, undertook a thorough “analysis of multiple video feeds” and confirmed that, indeed, the 79-year-old president had “spent nearly 20
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