“NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social on Sunday night that linked to a post from a MAGA influencer that claimed the “media freaks out” if he disappears for 24 hours.
Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment via an email sent outside regular business hours.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Why It Matters
The false rumors began circulating on social media on Friday after some noted Trump had not been seen in public for several days. He also had no public events scheduled for the weekend.
Thousands of posts were shared on X, featuring hashtags including #whereistrump and #TRUMPDIED. According to Grok, X’s AI-powered chatbot, posts speculating about Trump’s possible demise had acquired over 1.3 million user engagements as of Saturday morning.
Some 158,000 X posts including the phrase ‘TRUMP IS DEAD’ and 42,000 stating ‘TRUMP DIED’ had been made as of 7:48 a.m. ET. on Saturday, according to the platform’s analytics. X users continued posting about the rumor on Sunday, though engagement dropped after Trump was spotted heading to his golf course in Virginia on Saturday.
A TikTok from Harry Sisson, a progressive commentator, discussing the rumor, and dismissing it, racked up 1.9million views and 227,000 likes since it was posted. His subsequent posts on the subject have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
Trump also continued to post on his Truth Social platform throughout the weekend.
What To Know
Questions about the president’s health were also spurred after new photos showing bruising on the president’s hand last week spread on social media.
In July, the White House said Trump had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI), which his physician described as “benign and common.”
The rumors came days after Vice President JD Vance said in an interview with USA Today that he was ready to assume the presidency if a “terrible tragedy” occurred.
Vance said he is “very confident the President of the United States is in good shape, is going to serve out the remainder of his term and do great things for the American people.
“And if, God forbid, there’s a terrible tragedy, I can’t think of better on-the-job training than what I’ve gotten over the last 200 days.”
What People Are Saying
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday night: “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE. Also, DC IS A CRIME FREE ZONE! President DJT”
Mike Rothschild, a journalist and conspiracy theory expert, wrote on X on Sunday: “I get that the vibe is very weird around Trump right now. But these rumors that he’s secretly at Walter Reed have no credible evidence to support them, and are being spread by small-time influencers looking for clicks.”
Ian Bremmer, a political scientist who founded the Eurasia Group consultancy, wrote on X: “So many times internet has gone wild with the putin is dead and xi is dead rumors. that now happening with trump says a lot more about the state of mistrust in information and institutions in the united states than it does about the health of the president.”
What’s Next
Trump has no public events scheduled for Monday.
