Trump, 79, Falls Asleep After Bragging to Kids About Iran War Plans

President Trump thinks that an event where he is surrounded by children is the best time to discuss the Iran war and then doze off.

On Tuesday, at a signing ceremony in the Oval Office to restore the Presidential Fitness Award, Trump went off on a tangent on the war while thanking some members of his Cabinet, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, whom he praised for a press conference earlier in the day.

“That was really great, and you’re doing very well,” Trump said from his seat at the Resolute Desk, turning to Hegseth. Then he abruptly changed the subject to Iran.

“They don’t like playing games with us. They don’t like it at all, you’ll see that. As time goes by, you’re gonna see it. I think you’ve already seen it; we’ve basically wiped out their military in about two weeks,” Trump added, with kids and senior officials on either side of him. Later, Trump went further, describing Iran’s leaders as “sick people” and “lunatics” that he would not allow to have a nuclear weapon.

Then Trump thanked Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but as Kennedy spoke about how “grateful” he was for Trump’s decision to restore the fitness test, the president fell asleep.

When it became Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s turn to speak, Trump’s head was bobbing, his eyes opening and closing as McMahon spoke about needing to eat well and exercise to have a “sound mind.”

All of this shows that Trump is not well, mentally or physically. He is in clear decline in full view to the public, and no matter the subject, he will wander off topic and doze off if he gets the chance.

Donald Trump does not have the same sway that he used to.

The MAGA leader’s supposedly astronomical influence over the Republican Party is being tested in the run-up to the November midterms, Politico reported early Tuesday.

There’s plenty of evidence that his pull is fading. Trump’s retribution campaign begins in Indiana, where 21 local Republican legislators blocked his attempts to redistrict their state in December. Eight of them are up for reelection this cycle, and Trump aims to oust all of them. So far, Trump has endorsed primary challengers against seven, and his allies have spent millions of dollars on the relatively tiny races.

Yet his candidates have largely failed to break out on their own, with the strongest only holding narrow leads in polls. Even those close to the president are not expecting all of Trump’s favorites to win, reported Politico.

The president has also backed primary opponents to some of his biggest in-party thorns, including Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, the latter of whom has so far weathered the storm. Cassidy, who became an enemy of the far-right movement when he voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges in 2021, is down by just a handful of points, according to the ​​latest Emerson College poll.

It’s another indication that the MAGA movement is turning away from its longtime leader, potentially looking for new stewardship as Trump enters the lame-duck stage of his presidency—even if Trump has no plans to end his reign.

The 79-year-old once again toyed with the idea of extending his time in office while speaking at the White House small-business summit Monday, claiming that he could potentially stay in office for another two terms, or eight years in total.

“He’s hit his max power and now you’re seeing the backside of that power curve,” former GOP Representative Adam Kinzinger told Politico. “This will be his last competitive election cycle that will have any impact on him. And I think the base is starting to think into the future.”

President Trump is dumping toxic debris containing lead and chromium from his East Wing demolition onto East Potomac Golf Links—raising more questions about the health and safety standards tied to his vanity project, and potentially putting golfers in harm’s way. And the president is doing this debris dumping while simultaneously preparing to massively overhaul the public golf course, as well.

The National Parks Service claims that the soil, even with the presence of lead, is not excessively toxic, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department telling The New York Times that the soil has been tested “multiple times by multiple parties, and this project passed all standards set by law.” But doubts remain.

“There’s no safe level of exposure to lead; it’s one of the most toxic elements we know of,” Harvard exposure assessment professor Joseph G. Allen told the Times. “One of the risks you have to think about with lead is that it doesn’t just stay outside in soil.… We track it on our shoes. So depending on where the soil was placed, golfers and other people could track it indoors.

“We knew that the demolition of the East Wing and the changes to East Potomac were legally toxic; now we know they’re environmentally toxic as well,” said Democracy Defenders Fund executive chair Norm Eisen, who is representing the DC Preservation League in a lawsuit against the dumping and against Trump’s takeover of the public golf course. The group recently sought a temporary restraining order on construction and tree removal at the course, but its request was denied.  

President Donald Trump’s Department of Education is targeting Smith College for accepting transgender women.

The DOE’s Office of Civil Rights announced Monday that it would investigate Smith College for allowing “biological males into women’s intimate spaces” in violation of Title IX, the landmark 1972 law banning sex discrimination, which the Trump administration has used to rampantly discriminate against transgender people.

“Title IX contains a single-sex exception that allows colleges to enroll all-male or all-female student bodies—but the exception applies on the basis of biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity,” the DOE said in a statement. “An all-girls college that enrolls male students professing a female identity would cease to qualify as single sex under Title IX.”

Smith College is considered a historically women’s college, or HWC, founded as a single-sex education institution. The school accepts “any applicants who self-identify as women; cis, trans, and nonbinary women” and has accepted transgender women since 2015. Many other HWCs also accept transgender women.

As for the DOE’s phony concerns about “intimate spaces,” Smith College’s website says it provides single-occupancy, all-gender restrooms, and an all-gender locker room with private changing and showering areas on campus.

Shannon Minter, an attorney with the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, told CNN that the investigation was an “ominous” government overreach into the workings of private institutions.

“If [women’s colleges] have chosen—as many of them have—to admit transgender students, that’s something they should be able to do freely without being worried about persecution by the federal government,” he told CNN.

“This administration seems hell-bent on eliminating any inclusion of transgender people anywhere in our society.”

MAGA’s best case scenario for the war in Iran is, apparently, a return to the prewar status quo.

In an interview with Fox News Monday night, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham claimed that the U.S. would win the Middle East war if it regained “freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz” and attained relative peace for Iran’s neighbors—something that existed before Donald Trump decided to attack Iran.

“We’re close to victory,” Graham said. “Victory for me would mean regaining freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, degrading a little bit further—short, big, strong response—their military capability a bit further, threaten Kharg Island with destruction and pull out and try to get Israel and Saudi Arabia back to peace.

“The Strait of Hormuz is the only thing left,” Graham noted, touting White House talking points. “This has been a brilliant campaign by President Trump and our military.

“If we can take back control of the Straits of Hormuz, it is checkmate,” Graham said. “This thing is over.”

Yet even better than a win for the U.S. would be a win for Israel, according to Graham.

“The ultimate victory is that Saudi Arabia and Israel make peace, ending the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Graham continued, continuing to heap praise on Trump’s name by claiming that the president will “go down in history as the greatest peacemaker.”

U.S. involvement in the war was reportedly arranged following a February 11 meeting between Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and several U.S. and Israeli officials in the White House Situation Room. It was reportedly Netanyahu’s direct influence—and the ensuing pressure campaign—that thrust America into the war. U.S. military commanders advised Trump that components of Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran were “farcical,” but by that point, Trump had already been inspired to go after Tehran’s theocratic regime.

The State Department backed the narrative via a government release penned late last month, detailing how the U.S. “is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally, as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defense.”

Nonetheless, the White House has disputed that narrative, repeatedly insisting that Israel had nothing to do with Trump’s decision to involve the country in another unpopular war in the Middle East.

America has so far been at war with Iran for more than nine weeks and spent at least $25 billion in the process (though some estimates put the number at more than $70 billion). The regional conflict has damaged strategic alliances, stalled global trade, and thrust the world into an energy crisis due to the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.

It is not clear exactly what the war in Iran has accomplished. Together, the U.S. and Israel have killed thousands of Iranian civilians and obliterated Iranian civilian infrastructure, failing to damage Iran’s nuclear capabilities in the process. Meanwhile, 13 U.S. soldiers have died.

The war has also spiked the cost of living for people around the world and agitated international relations—particularly between the U.S. and longtime allies in the Western hemisphere.

It has also sparked a political rejection of MAGA ideology across the U.S. as the American public becomes more and more disillusioned with its increasingly infirm, unstable, and volatile president.