A question about a canceled rally in Kansas ended with President Donald Trump telling the reporter who asked it to put himself in shape.
Trump turned on Reuters reporter Jacob Bogage on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, as he took questions after stepping off Air Force One back in Washington from a campaign rally in South Carolina for Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C. Bogage wanted to know why the president had dropped a Saturday, Oct. 31, rally in Salina, Kan., for Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan.
“You not going to Kansas have something to do with you being sick of traveling?” Bogage asked.
“Oh, you’re sick to ask that question. You are sick. Who are you with?” Trump replied.
Told the reporter was with Reuters, Trump called him “a sick guy” and said the news agency is “terrible.” Bogage answered that he just wanted to make sure the president was doing well. That sent Trump to the subject of the reporter’s own condition.
Trump told him he was “way out of shape.” The president was drenched with sweat as he spoke.
“You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell,” Trump said, then walked away.
The Rally He Scrapped, Then Rebooked
The reason for skipping Kansas, Trump said, was that Marshall is “doing very well,” so he did not feel he had to make the trip. He said he was going to Florida the next day.
The Salina stop would have been his second rally in Kansas. The Republican National Committee also announced he would no longer hold a weekend rally in Iowa. The White House said Trump would hold a tele-rally for Marshall and other Republican midterm candidates instead, part of a schedule of tele-rallies reaching 19 states before Election Day.
A day later, Trump rescheduled both rallies in Kansas and Iowa. He is now due at Salina Regional Airport at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1.
The Voice Giving Out on the Trail
Trump has held more than two dozen rallies in the homestretch of the midterm campaign. The pace has cost him his voice: he has sounded raspy in recent days after nightly events at which he often speaks for nearly two hours.
Trump, 80, is the oldest president ever sworn into office, and questions about his physical health and mental fitness have followed him through his second term. He has said he is in “great shape.” Critics have pointed instead to his swollen, bruised hands and ankles.
Commentators seized on his appearance within hours. “Trump telling someone they look like hell while standing there looking like a microwaved pumpkin is absolutely hilarious,” progressive political commentator Alex Cole wrote on X. Political strategist Sawyer Hackett posted that the president could not handle the easiest softball question, and called it projection.
He Told Feinberg to Be Careful
Bogage is not the first reporter to draw this treatment as the midterms close in. Earlier in October, during an Oval Office briefing, Trump warned The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg that he had better be careful, saying he did not know who he was.
“Quiet. Quiet! What’s wrong with you? Are you a sick person? I actually think there’s something wrong with you,” Trump told Feinberg later in the same briefing.
In September 2026, asked in the Oval Office whether nuclear weapons were off the table as the conflict with Iran escalated, Trump called it a stupid question and ended the exchange. In August 2026, he repeatedly told a CNN reporter to be quiet over a question about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, describing her as a fake reporter and a loud, boisterous person. Last year he called a journalist “piggy” after she pressed him on the release of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein.
Marshall Trails in a State Trump Won
Kansas has become an unexpected battleground. Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton leads Marshall 49 percent to 45 percent, in a poll of likely voters released Oct. 29, which also found 57 percent of Kansas voters disapprove of Trump’s job performance. Trump carried the state by 16 percentage points in the 2024 election.
His standing is underwater in many of the states he has been visiting, Kansas among them, which makes his appearances a risk for the candidates he is trying to help. Graham, the senator he rallied for in South Carolina hours before the tarmac exchange, is in a razor-close race of her own in a state that votes solidly Republican. Control of Congress is on the ballot, with Democrats in reach of a takeover.
Kansas has not elected a Democratic U.S. senator since 1932.