President Donald Trump’s appearance at Arlington National Cemetery on May 25, 2026, has reignited a firestorm over the 79-year-old president’s fitness for office after a grainy video appeared to capture him with his eyes closed during Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remarks honoring fallen service members.
The 30-second clip rapidly spread across social media platforms, with critics accusing Trump of showing “no respect” during one of the nation’s most sacred annual ceremonies. While the footage’s poor quality prevents definitive verification — no high-definition recordings of the ceremony are available, and the camera was positioned far from the president — the political fallout has been swift.
Just two days after the Arlington ceremony, on May 27, 2026, Trump underwent what the White House called a “preventative medical checkup” at Walter Reed Medical Center, his fourth publicly disclosed health examination since taking office for a second term on January 20, 2025. The president posted on Truth Social that everything “checked out perfectly” following the three-hour visit. The exam came amid mounting pressure from Congressional Democrats, who had sent a letter to the White House physician on April 10 demanding cognitive screening results after no annual physical had been scheduled as of late April.
Doctors and Politicians Pile On
Multiple May surveys revealed that a majority of Americans no longer consider Trump mentally fit to serve, while an April Ipsos/Washington Post poll found only 40 percent of Americans believed the president possessed the mental capacity to perform his duties. The skepticism intensified on April 30, when 36 physicians released a public statement demanding Trump’s immediate removal from office on medical grounds, citing what they characterized as mental instability.
Around late April, after viral footage showed Trump leaning over the Resolute Desk with his eyes closed during a healthcare affordability event, CNN cardiologist Dr. Jonathan Reiner publicly recommended formal sleep testing and suggested Trump may be experiencing “daytime somnolence.” Governor Gavin Newsom responded with a familiar taunt: “Dozy Don is back.”
During a May 22 speech, Trump defended himself at length regarding cognitive testing, even as observers noted what appeared to be heavy makeup covering bruising on both hands — the latest in a series of unexplained physical markings that have sparked speculation.
A Pattern Stretching Back Months
The Memorial Day incident represents the most recent entry in a yearlong series of videos that critics have used to challenge whether Trump, who turns 80 on June 14, maintains the stamina required by the presidency. The December 2, 2025, Cabinet meeting remains the most widely discussed episode. Trump had begun that session by invoking “Sleepy Joe Biden” and insisting he was “sharper than I was 25 years ago,” responding to a detailed New York Times account of an apparently slowed second term. But over the following hour and a half, he appeared to lose a running battle with his own eyelids — including roughly 15 minutes into the meeting, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick praised “the greatest Cabinet ever for the greatest president ever.” Also present were Cabinet members Scott Turner, Brooke Rollins, Scott Bessent, Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Lee Zeldin.
On January 29, 2026, Trump addressed the incident head-on. “I didn’t sleep. I just closed them because I wanted to get the hell out of there,” he told the room, prompting laughter from Lutnick. The meeting, he acknowledged, had been “a little bit on the boring side.” Trump spoke for nearly 25 minutes straight before saying, “We’re not going to go through the whole table.”
Additional episodes followed: accusations of nodding off during a security roundtable in Memphis, Tennessee, in March, then authentic C-SPAN footage from an April 23, 2026, Oval Office meeting showing Trump closing his eyes for 12 seconds, briefly opening them, then closing them again for 10 more seconds. That same day, a deepfake video circulated on Facebook showing Trump striking his head on the desk — a fabrication traced to a self-described “digital memeist.” The White House dismissed concerns about the genuine footage as misinterpretation of “blinking.”
Fact-Checkers Urge Caution
Independent fact-checkers have consistently urged restraint on the most viral allegations. Snopes has investigated claims that Trump fell asleep at the 2024 Republican National Convention and at the funeral for Pope Francis, along with the December 2025 Cabinet meeting and April 2026 Oval Office gathering. In multiple instances, the most damaging imagery proved to be either manipulated or impossible to confirm.
The Arlington video occupies similar ambiguous territory. Shadows and low resolution obscure Trump’s face, and the camera’s distance makes it impossible to determine conclusively whether his eyes were open or shut. But political consequences appear independent of certainty. Each fresh clip has revived mockery of Trump’s own prolonged attacks on his predecessor as “Sleepy Joe” — a nickname voters, and an increasing number of medical professionals, are now redirecting at the man who popularized it. Trump, who was inaugurated alongside Vice President JD Vance, has faced sustained scrutiny over his fitness despite insisting on his mental sharpness.